Mr. David Miscavige, Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center

Keynote Address at the Grand Opening of the Church of Scientology of San Francisco (cont.)

And, if that's just the brief recap of why this area is where it all began, well, let's put an exclamation point on it: As in 1950, with Book One first on the shelves, riding the New York Times bestseller list and otherwise taking this nation by storm. For, it was then, right across the Bay, in Oakland, that LRH spoke to the world's largest Dianetics group.

Moreover, those lectures, and his personal demonstrations of Dianetics auditing techniques, stand as the only such recordings in existence, and are studied to this day by every one of the new millions continuing to step on the Bridge.

But, if that is the "history" of LRH, Dianetics and Scientology in the Bay Area, there yet remains world conditions and the greater significance of all LRH sought to accomplish. For that view, you only need to turn to Book One, Chapter One, paragraph one. Here is what he says,

"A science of mind is a goal which has engrossed thousands of generations of man.

"Armies, dynasties and whole civilizations have perished for the lack of it.

"Rome went to dust for the want of it.

"China swims in blood for the need of it.

"And in the arsenal is an atom bomb, its hopeful nose full-armed in ignorance of it." — L. Ron Hubbard

And if those words were written in the aftermath of a world war and the beginnings of a new cold war, their relevance to any time was brought home to one and all two years ago.

For while the past half-century since the publication of Dianetics has seen so much "scientific" advance, with man even reaching the stars, the evils of 9/11 have demonstrated it is all but a fragile facade that can tumble down at any time, if we don't resolve the real enemy of man—the reactive mind that enslaves him and makes him act as he so irrationally does. And that is what our "wake-up call" was all about, and the greater significance of how this new church came to be, and the responsibility it now must carry.