Hubbard made the claim, which Scientology continues to make, that the
The Way to Happiness booklet is non-religious. At the same time, Scientology sells the "Happiness Rundown," ("HRD") which Hubbard introduced with HCOB 16 January 1984RA Happiness Rundown Series 1RA The Happiness Rundown. A section from this HCOB, which is designated "BPI" (Broad Public Issue) follows, and is posted in the public interest.
Like virtually all Scientology "rundowns," the HRD is a set of "auditing" procedures a customer undergoes while hooked up to the E-meter.
Scientology spiritual counselling is called auditing. It is the central practice of the Scientology religion.
The primary means by which the basic truths of Scientology are applied to the rehabilitation of the human spirit is called auditing. It is the central practice of Scientology, and it is delivered by an auditor, from the Latin word audire, “one who listens.”
Scientology's religious expert Professor Frank K. Flinn testified about auditing in the Scientology v. Armstrong trial in Los Angeles Superior Court in 1984:
Q [by attorney Barret Litt] And would you characterize from a religious point of view auditing as a sacramental practice within Scientology?
A [by Flinn] I would say that auditing is the principal chief sacramental practice within Scientology.
Yet Hubbard states in the HRD HCOB that "the rundown is not religious."
Even though Hubbard asserted that the "Happiness Rundown" is not religious, Scientology includes it, and also includes the "Hubbard Happiness Rundown Auditor Course" on the cult's "List of Services Qualifying for Charitable Contribution Deducations." (Ref. Brochure Church of Scientology Updated Information On Taxes & Your Donations 2002/2003.)
This rundown is based on the booklet
The Way to Happiness.
It has been successfully piloted and now is generally released to orgs and missions.
The booklet is distributed on general public lines. It is not a Church publication as it is not religious. The Church has its own creed and codes.
A minister or pastoral counselor can, however, counsel on any subject and that the Church sells a rundown based on the booklet does not make the booklet religious.
THE WAY TO HAPPINESS
Factually, the world has gotten itself a lot of new violence potential without also getting a campaign for higher morality. Such an imbalance is catastrophic. The police, banks, merchants, insurance people are all in real trouble through the decline of morality.
The Kentucky school board, right now, is faced with no morals being taught in their schools. They already have a crime problem if their schools are like anyone else's.
Materialism and mechanism (these are philosophic schools) are on a rampage. The biologists, psychs, evolutionists are pushing them to the limit. These are blown up by the simple question, "Your data may be quite correct but you have no proof that there is not something else that uses all this." Their position is untenable philosophically. Using materialism, the psychs and biologists and so on are edging the churches out and factually are creating a dangerous social situation. At a time when man can wield unlimited force, he has no moral codes or restraints.
There factually is no moral code today. The Christian one was nice. But if you read the Ten Commandments, they are designed for people several thousand years ago.
There have not been any codes of morals based on common sense. They are handed down from heaven, even in China. The psychs use this to get an inside track. The US government—and possibly some others—cannot finance religion, per the First Amendment. This means they cannot allow children to be taught morals, and cannot permit any power to churches. The psychs love that. They are antireligious. They teach that one succumbs to temptation, that morals are inbred by paralleling the history of the race and when a child gets old enough his inbred nerves go moral. This is pure claptrap, but that happens to be their belief. This means that crime will worsen, the psychs will ride higher and higher.
Philosophers (not religious ones) over the world in various times and places have noted these qualities of morality so don't get the idea this is all derived from China. Confucius, for instance, was mainly interested in reforming the government, not the individual.
In all times and all places, the morals contained in this book have appeared amongst tribes and races. What they lacked—in China, in the Near East, in Europe—was some basic principle which made the picture clear. When I isolated the common denominator, the dynamic principle of existence, I had such a factor. I never before applied it to straightening out ideas on the subject of morality. But the precepts contained in this book are not just culled here and there and put together. I worked them out newly with due attention to what had gone on before in man's history. His moral codes are woefully inadequate to deal with modern life. This one will.
There is another point. Nobody could ever possibly have kept any of the old moral codes. Old Mo-Tzu's code only lasted a few hundred years until people finally decided you couldn't keep it—too severe—and they even forgot it ever existed after about the first century B.C. and only found it again this century. There have been novels and plays about someone trying to live the life of Christ and the hero always winds up in a mess, the lesson being that His teachings couldn't be followed.
The booklet The Way to Happiness contains a nonreligious moral code based on common sense. It may be the first such code.
THE HAPPINESS RUNDOWN
Essentially, what the booklet does is give people stable data which holds off confusions. For people will be found to be quite confused on this subject.
This new moral code is different in that it can be kept. It consists of 21 major rules or precepts and about 15 subrules making a total of about 36 in all. In number 20 there are about 20 additional items. In all, the rundown, then, would be handling about 56 separate concepts on the subject of morality, plus morality itself. There are 10 basic steps for each concept: There are therefore over 500 questions or actions. This gives one some idea of the length of the rundown.
The object of the rundown is to clear up any confusions on the subject of morals, any and all transgressions against these specific morals, to slide the person out of the [url="http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=837&Itemid=165"]valence[/url] of any immoral person and obtain an EP of a realization that one really is on the Way to Happiness.
As these precepts and booklet do contain, in fact, the major principles of morality as they apply to modern life, and as it is a fact that tragedy and unhappiness occur when the points are violated, the rundown can steer the person in a direction where he is certain he can live a happier life. So the rundown has been quite successful. It is quite a tour de force, really, to assemble the essentials into a modern moral code. And because these are somewhat universal, they will be found to have a lot of charge on them as they were the points where one went off the rails.
The rundown itself picks up specific confusions, transgressions and valence closures. It can get rid of a lot of shame, blame and regret. A person should feel pretty clean and sparky after it. The potential is there.
DELIVERY
[...]
The booklet itself is running on through the society, and feeding back pcs to the org even if the rundown is not religious. As I have said, a pastor can counsel anything.
Good luck with this RD.
— L. Ron Hubbard
HCOB 16 January 1984RA Issue I HRD Series 1RA The Happiness Rundown
Technical Bulletins Subject Volume 3 (pp. 633-635) © 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
While repeatedly declaring that The Way to Happiness is "not religious," but is instead a "non-religious moral code," Hubbard also asserts essentially that it is replacing the Bible's Ten Commandments, because "they are designed for people several thousand years ago." He "updated, for example, the commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." (KJV Exodus 20:16) with "Do not tell harmful lies." As is well known, Hubbard was a judicially declared pathological liar, and the Scientology organization its alter ego. Harmful lies to Hubbard, and to the cult's leadership now under David Miscavige, are the truths that good people speak about Scientology fraud, abuses and criminality. Non-harmful lies to the same Hubbard and Miscavige Scientology liars are the lies they tell to Black PR and destroy the good people who oppose their fraud, abuses and criminality.
Scientology's
Way to Happiness moral code, as the cult's leadership insist their Scientologist juniors apply it, is grossly amoral. It is the moral code of a sociopath.
Hubbard acknowledges in the above HCOB that there was a "Christian moral code," and even grudgingly admits that it "was nice." Hubbard doesn't say, however, what the Christian moral code is, or was, so it's not possible to see what "nice moral code" Christianity had, which he's saying Christianity no longer has. He seems to be stating in the next sentence that the Ten Commandments are, or were, the Christian moral code, which is untrue. Christians, and their moral code, whatever it is, moreover, have not been around several thousand years, but only two thousand. Although Hubbard the sociopath denigrates and dispenses with the Ten Commandments, that code has actually stood the test of time very well.
The Happiness Rundown steps:
BASIC PROCEDURE
The basic steps of the HRD procedure follow:
A. Clean up the word "moral." Get it defined. Get off any false data on it, if there. Two-way comm it and get it to F/N.
B. Take up each numbered section of the booklet from precept number 1 forward, in sequence, and do the following steps:
1. Read the precept (done by pc).
2. Clean up any Mis-U word in it.
3. Pc reads the section.
4. Clear up any Mis-U word in the section.
5. Look for and clear up any false data the pc may have for that precept.
6. The transgressions of others (general) against that precept. Two-way comm. Don't make it a listing question. E/S it to F/N.
7. The transgressions of oneself against that precept. Two-way comm, earlier-similar to F/N. Don't make it a listing question. Don't miss any W/Hs even though this is only a cousin to O/W. E/S to F/N.
8. See if the pc spots another specific person in his or her past who really transgressed against the precept. Treat it more like Straight-wire: an exact moment the person was transgressing. A light auditor can get the valence to spring apart just by doing that and without plowing the person into an engram. Alternate for this step: an overt the pc did against the person. The object of the step is to get the valence sprung out (separated from the pc).
9. Check if the person now has any reservations about keeping the precept. Handle with two-way comm (one of the above steps might have been missed if the person has reservations). Get it to F/N.
10. Check any reservations on getting someone else to keep it. If any, handle as a problem and E/S to F/N.
Note on Step 8 where the object is to "get the valence sprung out (separated from the pc)." Splitting valences, or removing these "false identities," is a very important feature of Dianetics and Scientology auditing at all levels of the grade chart, inspired undoubtedly by Hubbard's personal psychology.
— L. Ron Hubbard
HCOB 17 January 1984 Happiness Rundown Series 2 Happiness Rundown Basics
Technical Bulletins Subject Volume 3 (pp. 636-638) © 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
TO SPLIT VALENCES
A term that really makes a psychiatrist feel like somebody is "schizo," their nickname for the schizophrenic. It is an odd misnomer in that it means split personality and the trouble with a schizo is that he needs splitting, not that he's split. He's in another's valence, and what is required is to remove or split the preclear out of that other's valence.
— L. Ron Hubbard
PAB 106 15 February 1957 Good Processes
Technical Bulletins Volume IV (p. 18) © 1991 L. Ron Hubbard Library
Step 8 of the HRD seeks to strip the personality of earlier authorities and influences such as parents, teachers, religious leaders, etc., people who influenced the person morally. The emotional affect is flattened on this step by getting the preclear to disclose the transgressions of the other person, and getting the preclear to divulge any transgressions the preclear had against that person. This is a form of interrogation. The HRD is simply one of the first grade chart attempts to undermine past authorities and to bring the person under the authority of Hubbard, David Miscavige and the Scientology organization and its hierarchy.
Scientology's Ethics modalities mirror this feature with formulae and other procedures that remove "counter intentions" and "other intentions" in Scientologists' environment and forcibly modify the Scientologists' behaviors, allegiances and compliance patterns.
Brainwashing’s Goal Is Conversion
Stressed humans naturally tend to make conversions—which may, or may not, be permanent. The conversions happen because stressed humans (and dogs) may respond to crisis by discarding inappropriate old programming and discovering, in suffering, the key to spiritual growth and to new and better behavior. A person can change by adopting a group’s shared values and beliefs. Or, they can change independently, creating a new personal path out of the debris of shattered past attempts. Brainwashing is a deliberate regimen of stress that seeks a true change of heart, which results in future collaboration. In the 1950s, certain U.S. government agencies began to fund brainwashing research. In 1957, Dr. William Sargant, an English brainwashing specialist, stated the goal in one question: “Why do stressed humans tend to make conversions?” They were looking for a way to deliberately, systematically elicit conversion: predictable stresses for predictable results. The experiments confirmed that harsh manipulation of a confined person can break down previous attitudes and instill a new set of the brainwasher’s choice.
Brainwashing is not what advertisers, politicians, educators, and evangelists do, because their audience is not a captive one. If you can walk away from unwelcome persuasion, it is not brainwashing. If you cannot walk away, it may be. Indoctrination is the mildest level of brainwashing. Indoctrination is a very direct conversion system which attempts to change a person’s viewpoint while he or she is still a thinking individual. More severe and classic brain washing regimens differ from indoctrination in that they attempt to change a person’s mind without allowing any input or control from the victim. Complete control over a person’s environment allows extreme psychological manipulations.
— Carla Emery
Encyclopedia of Hypnotism
The Brainwash System 
