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L. RON HUBBARD: HOW HIS WORK HAS INFLUENCED THE WORLD
This growing acceptance of past lives had a subtle but noticeable influence in the culture at large. First came the mid-1950s book, The Search for Bridey Murphy. Remarking on it later, Mr. Hubbard explained, “When Bridey Murphy came up, some London researchers came to me and asked me to prove the existence of past lives, using Dianetics. Naturally I refused, because I’d already done that anyhow.”
By the mid-1960s, more popular books were being written on the subject. Press accounts of those who had recalled past lives appeared in newspapers and magazines in the United States, England and as far away as New Zealand. Underscored by both the quantity of material and the popularity of such works as Out On a Limb and Lives Unlimited, past lives became a popular craze that included such activities as “come as you were” parties.
Eventually, even those in ever-skeptical scientific circles began to acknowledge the validity of past lives. One clinical psychologist told of hypnotically regressing patients through former incarnations to relieve suffering in this life. Another told of using various past-life techniques in therapy for a decade.
By the early 1980s, past lives were very much in the national consciousness. In fact, surveys now report that 27 percent of all Americans – an extraordinary number when one recalls how alien was the concept only forty years before – have finally come to accept that they live not once, but over and over again.
Books and newspaper articles told the story of popular acceptance with such headlines as “She Remembers Well That Winter of 1200,” “Children Who Have Lived Before” and popular titles like Life After Life. It should be noted, of course, that by this point in our recent history, thousands and thousands of Scientology auditors had been routinely helping to free others from the layers of past-life trauma for nearly three decades.
 
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