Xenu

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In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (also Xemu), pronounced /'zi.nu/, was the alien dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of aliens to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to wreak chaos and havoc today.

These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The story of Xenu is part of a much wider range of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of Scientology.

Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, famously warning that R6 was "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." The Xenu story was the start of the use of the volcano as a common symbol of Scientology and Dianetics from 1968 to the present day.

Criticism of the Church of Scientology often includes details of the Xenu story. The Church has tried to keep Xenu confidential;^[1] critics say that revealing the story is in the public interest, given the high prices charged for OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to members who have already contributed large amounts of money to the organization.^[2]

The Church avoids making mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story's confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of both copyright and trade secrecy. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public, largely via the internet.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Xenu's volcanoes 3 Xenu in Scientology doctrine 4 Origins of the Xenu story 5 Other versions of the Xenu story 6 Xenu in popular culture 7 The influence of OT III on Scientology 8 "Xenu" or "Xemu"? 9 The Church of Scientology's position on Xenu 10 Scientific critiques 11 Notes 12 Sources 13 Other references 14 External links

[edit] Summary

The story of Xenu is covered in OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to advanced members. It is described in more detail in the accompanying confidential "Assists" lecture of 3 October 1968 and is dramatized in Revolt in the Stars (an unpublished screenplay written by L Ron Hubbard during the late 1970s). Direct quotations in this section are from these sources. (See also Scientology beliefs and practices)

Seventy-five million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of people to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans.

When the space planes had reached Teegeeack/Earth, the paralyzed people were unloaded and stacked around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes, and all were detonated simultaneously. Only a few people's physical bodies survived. Hubbard described the scene in his abortive film script, Revolt in the Stars:

Simultaneously, the planted charges erupted. Atomic blasts ballooned from the craters of Loa, Vesuvius, Shasta, Washington, Fujiyama, Etna, and many, many others. Arching higher and higher, up and outwards, towering clouds mushroomed, shot through with flashes of flame, waste and fission. Great winds raced tumultuously across the face of Earth, spreading tales of destruction. Debris-studded, and sickly yellow, the atomic clouds followed close on the heels of the winds. Their bow-shaped fronts encroached inexorably upon forest, city and mankind, they delivered their gifts of death and radiation. A skyscraper, tall and arrow-straight, bent over to form a question mark to the very idea of humanity before crumbling into the screaming city below...

– L. Ron Hubbard, Revolt in the Stars treatment

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.

The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and locked him away in a mountain, where he was imprisoned forever by a force field powered by an eternal battery. (Some have suggested that Xenu is imprisoned on Earth in the Pyrenees, but Hubbard merely refers to "one of these planets" [of the Galactic Confederacy]; he does, however, refer to the Pyrenees as being the site of the last operating "Martian report station", which is probably the source of this particular confusion.^[3]) Teegeeack/Earth was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since that time.

[edit] Xenu's volcanoes

In OT III, Hubbard names the locations around the world where Xenu's mass murder took place, in addition to the two "implant stations" located at Hawaii and Las Palmas. The volcanoes which Xenu blew up were said to have been situated at:

• Asia and Pacific
  • North Japan (presumably Hokkaidō)
  • South Japan (could be Honshū, Shikoku, or Kyūshū)
  • "Krakajawia" (possibly a combination of Krakatoa and Java), Indonesia
  • Philippines
  • Himalayas
  • Hawaii
• The Americas
  • Mount Washington (it is unclear which of the 15 mountains of that name in the US is meant, but it is probably Mount Washington, Oregon, a shield volcano)
  • Mount Rainier, Washington
  • Mount Hood, Oregon
  • Mount Shasta, Northern California
  • Mount San Gorgonio, Southern California
  • Canada
  • Andes, South America
• Atlantic and Africa
  • Tangier, Morocco
  • Saint Helena
  • "Kolomonjero" (apparently a misspelling of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania)
  • Las Palmas, Canary Islands

Critics have pointed out that many of the volcanoes named by Hubbard did not exist 75 million years ago, and that other regions — notably Tangier and the Himalayas — have no history of vulcanism. (See Scientific critiques.) It is possibly not coincidental that Hubbard had visited many of the places where Xenu was said to have operated; indeed, he announced OT III while his private fleet was berthed at Las Palmas, declaring that Xenu's principal implant station had stood on the main street of the island's capital.

In Revolt in the Stars, the volcanoes named differ somewhat from those in OT III; for instance, Etna and Vesuvius are named in Revolt but not in OT III.

[edit] Xenu in Scientology doctrine

Within Scientology, the Xenu story is referred to as "The Wall of Fire" or "Incident II". Hubbard attached tremendous importance to it, saying that it constituted "the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy".^[4] The broad outlines of the story — that 75 million years ago a great catastrophe happened in this sector of the galaxy which caused profoundly negative effects for everyone since then — are publicly admitted to lower-level Scientologists. However, the details are kept strictly confidential, at least within the Church.

Hubbard said that he was the first to map a precise route through the Wall of Fire, "probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years". He first publicly announced his "breakthrough" in Ron's Journal 67 (RJ67), a tape Hubbard recorded on 20 September 1967 to be sent to all members of the Church. According to Hubbard, his research was achieved at the cost of a broken back, knee and arm. OT III contains a warning that the R6 implant is "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." In RJ67, Hubbard then alludes to the devastating effect of Xenu's genocide:

“

And it is very true that a great catastrophe occurred on this planet and in the other 75 planets which formed this [Galactic] Confederacy 75 million years ago. It has since that time been a desert, and it has been the lot of just a handful to try to push its technology up to a level where someone might adventure forward, penetrate the catastrophe, and undo it. We're well on our way to making this occur.

”

OT III also deals with Incident I, set four quadrillion years ago (roughly 300,000 times longer than current scientific consensus holds the age of the universe to be). In Incident I, the unsuspecting thetan was subjected to a loud snapping noise followed by a flood of luminescence, then saw a chariot followed by a trumpeting cherub. After a loud set of snaps, the thetan was overwhelmed by darkness. This is described as the implant offering the gateway to this universe, meaning that these traumatic memories are what separate thetans from their static (natural, godlike) state.

Hubbard uses the existence of body thetans to explain many of the physical and mental ailments of humanity which, he says, prevent people from achieving their highest spiritual levels. OT III tells the student to remove the body thetans by bringing them to awareness of themselves as individual beings: "One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I." The student is directed to find a cluster of body thetans, address it "telepathically" as a cluster and take first the cluster then each individual member of the cluster through Incident II, then Incident I if needed. Hubbard warns that this is a painstaking procedure, and OT levels IV to VII continue the long process of dealing with one's body thetans.

The Church has objected to the Xenu story being used to paint Scientology as a mere science fiction fantasy.^[5] However, it strongly illustrates the crossover between Scientology doctrine and the world of science fiction, risible throughout the organization's history. See Space opera in Scientology doctrine.

Hubbard's statements concerning the R6 implant have been a source of enormous contention between the Church of Scientology and its critics, with many critics and Christians stating that Hubbard's statements regarding R6 prove that Scientology doctrine is incompatible with Christianity,^[6][7][8][9] despite the Church's claims to the contrary.^[10] In "Assists", Hubbard says:

“

Everyman is then shown to have been crucified so don't think that it's an accident that this crucifixion, they found out that this applied. Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC, found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madmen or something, but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the Cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman.

”

[edit] Origins of the Xenu story

Hubbard wrote OT III in late 1966 and early 1967 in North Africa while on his way to Las Palmas to join the Enchanter, the first vessel of his private Scientology fleet (the "Sea Org").^[11] (OT III says "In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge", but the material was publicised well before this.) He emphasized later that OT III was his own personal discovery and, judging by his statements on the subject, regarded it as one of his life's greatest achievements.

Critics of Scientology have suggested that other factors may have been at work. In a letter of the time to his wife Mary Sue,^[12] Hubbard said that, in order to assist his research, he was drinking alcohol and taking stimulants and depressants ("I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys"). His assistant at the time, Virginia Downsborough, said that he "was existing almost totally on a diet of drugs."^[13] Miller (p290) speculates that it was important for Hubbard to be found in a debilitated condition, so as to present OT III as "a research accomplishment of immense magnitude".

Elements of the Xenu story appeared in Scientology before OT III. Hubbard's descriptions of extraterrestrial conflicts were put forward as early as 1952 and were enthusiastically endorsed by Scientologists, who documented their past lives on other planets (published in 1958 as Have You Lived Before This Life).

OT III may not even have been Hubbard's first mention of Xenu, albeit in a different form. In an obscure lecture of 25 July 1958, "The Rock: Putting The PC At Cause", he refers to "Mount Zenu". Compare this with the fate of Xenu, who Hubbard says was imprisoned under a mountain.

The idea that Earth is a "prison planet", maintained by "entheta [evil] beings" or Targs who dumped their enemies on Earth, was first publicly put forward in an obscure taped demonstration of Scientology auditing recorded in April 1952 and released as "Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes".^[14] In many respects, OT III is virtually a retelling of this early tape, delivered in the first month of Scientology's existence. Hubbard describes how "entheta beings" defeat mutinous "theta [good] beings" and decided that "the battleground is too rough and these things have mutinied so let's put 'em all in one place and lock 'em on to Earth." The entheta beings were "controlled over by religion"; Mary Sue Hubbard asks "Is that when Christianity came into being?" to which Hubbard replies, "That's an entheta operation." Communism is also apparently "their great success" — "anybody who thinks in this society is immediately attacked, you're surrounded by Targs." A steady flow of flying saucers is still dropping off more entheta beings. The "Battle of the Universes" tape is no longer available from the Church of Scientology, presumably because of its considerable overlap with OT III.

[edit] Other versions of the Xenu story

Hubbard wrote the Revolt in the Stars film script, an extended version of the story of OT III, in the late 1970s. It states Xenu's full name to be Xenu Etrawl. It has not been officially published, although the treatment was circulated around Hollywood in the early 1980s (Young). Copies of the treatment leaked, and Scientology critic Grady Ward published a summary.^[15]

Geoffrey Filbert, a Free Zone (non-CoS) Scientologist, wrote a book, Excalibur Revisited, in 1982, containing his own version of OT III. This was the first of several versions available in the Free Zone.

Roland Rashleigh-Berry, an ex-Scientologist, wrote a "Xenu leaflet", popular with critics, that summarizes the story of OT III. The leaflet includes part of the first page of OT III in Hubbard's handwriting, mentioning Xenu.

[edit] Xenu in popular culture

Although the Xenu story first leaked in 1972 and was widely publicised on the Internet and hence in news stories from 1995 onwards, it only achieved currency in popular culture in mid-2005, when Tom Cruise changed publicists and actively promoted Scientology while doing publicity for War of the Worlds; press reaction was to include a summary of the Xenu story in almost every article at the time.

In November 2005, an episode of the animated television series South Park called "Trapped in the Closet" satirized Scientology, including an animated retelling of the Xenu story. During most of the retelling, the words "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" were superimposed on-screen. However, whereas the original doctrine states that the aliens were placed around the volcanoes and eliminated by hydrogen bombs, in the South Park episode the aliens were directly dropped into the volcanoes, and the thetans rose up in an effort to return, but were then captured.

The episode had been scheduled to be rebroadcast on 15 March 2006. However, Comedy Central did not air this specific episode, instead running an old episode which featured 'Chef' as the main character (Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls). According to the TV channel, the substitution was intended to pay tribute to Isaac Hayes. According to the makers of South Park (Matt Stone and Trey Parker), Viacom (the corporation that owns Comedy Central) replaced the episode because Scientology intervened and, more specifically, because Tom Cruise (himself a Scientologist who is lampooned in the episode for other reasons, as well) threatened distributor Paramount (also a Viacom affiliated company) with refusal to cooperate with the promotional campaign on the upcoming film Mission Impossible 3. This was denied by Cruise's representative. This press release, issued by Parker and Stone, was published in the entertainment newspaper "Daily Variety":^[16]

“	So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!	”
—Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu, Daily Variety

Comedy Central did eventually rebroadcast the episode on 19 July 2006.

On 4 May 2006, OffTopic.com raised over US$4,000 to fly banners over Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood where Tom Cruise was scheduled to appear for the premiere of Mission: Impossible III. The banners said "Hail Xenu LOL <3 OT" and "The baby is Xenu's". The planes were supposed to lift off at 17:05 PT and circle until 19:30 PT.^[17] The planes did not arrive, and the aircraft banner company said that fog grounded the planes.

Xenu appeared on season 4 of the FX show Nip/Tuck while Kimber Henry was having hallucinations and doubts about scientology. Her character had been an open Scientologist since the beginning of the season.

The television show Boston Legal had an episode that involved a legal suit brought by a Scientologist for being fired due to his faith. During the court scene, Xenu is mentioned.

Comedian Julia Sweeney jokes about Xenu in her monologue Letting Go of God.[3][4]

[edit] The influence of OT III on Scientology

In the wake of Hubbard's revelation of the Wall of Fire, aspects of OT III and reflections of the Xenu story were adopted as symbols by the Church of Scientology. Hubbard is reported to have ordered that Scientology books be reissued with covers based on images from OT III.^[18] The 1968 and subsequent reprints of Dianetics have had covers depicting an exploding volcano, apparently alluding to the volcanoes in the Xenu story — "Man responds to an exploding volcano" (Hubbard, "Assists"). Other cover images may reference Xenu as well: the cover of the 1972 edition of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science shows pictures of uniformed men in white helmets carrying boxes in and out of a spaceship, which may refer to the transportation of Xenu's victims. Some of the cover images are more obscure but are conjectured to refer to other elements of OT III:

“	A special 'Book Mission' was sent out to promote these books, now empowered and made irresistible by the addition of these overwhelming symbols or images. Organization staff were assured that if they simply held up one of the books, revealing its cover, that any bookstore owner would immediately order crateloads of them. A customs officer, seeing any of the book covers in one's luggage, would immediately pass one on through.	”
—Bent Corydon, Messiah or Madman?

Since the 1980s, the volcano has also been depicted in television commercials advertising Dianetics.

Scientology's "Sea Org", an elite group within the church that originated with Hubbard's personal staff aboard his fleet of ships, takes many of its symbols from the story of Xenu and OT III. It is explicitly intended to be a revival of the "Loyal Officers" who overthrew Xenu. Its logo, a wreath with 26 leaves, represents the 26 stars of Xenu's Galactic Confederacy.^[19] According to the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, "the Sea Org symbol, adopted and used as the symbol of a Galactic Confederacy far back in the history of this sector, derives much of its power and authority from that association."

In the Advanced Orgs in Edinburgh and Los Angeles, Scientology staff were at one time ordered to wear all-white uniforms with silver boots, to mimic Xenu's Galactic Patrol as depicted on the cover of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science. This was reportedly done on the basis of Hubbard's declaration in his Flag Order 652 that mankind would accept regulation from that group which had last betrayed it — hence the imitation of Xenu's henchmen. (This was almost certainly a misinterpretation of what Hubbard meant — he was most likely referring to psychiatrists, whom he believed had played a key role in Xenu's crimes.) In Los Angeles, a nightwatch was ordered to watch for returning spaceships.^[20] These measures were discarded after a time and their instigator, "Captain" Bill Robertson, was expelled from the Church; he continued to campaign until 1991 against the malign influence of the alien "Markabians".

A more lasting legacy of OT III was Scientology's organizational structure. The current "org board" is "a refined board of an old galactic civilization [the Galactic Confederacy]. We applied Scientology to it and found why it eventually failed. It lacked a couple of departments and that was enough to mess it all up. They lasted 80 trillion [years]."^[21]

[edit] "Xenu" or "Xemu"?

The name has been spelled both as Xenu and Xemu. The Class VIII course material includes a three-page text, handwritten by Hubbard, headed "Data", in which the Xenu story is given in detail. Hubbard's indistinct handwriting makes either spelling possible, particularly as the use of the name on the first page of OT III is the only known example of the name in his handwriting. In the "Assists" lecture, Hubbard speaks of "Xenu, ahhh, could be spelled X-E-M-U" and clearly says "Xemu" several times on the recording. The treatment of Revolt In The Stars, which is typewritten (presumably by Hubbard), uses Xenu exclusively. Ex-Scientologists have reported that Xenu is the more commonly used form (Touretzky). Hubbard may have two separate names for the "Xenu" figure.

[edit] The Church of Scientology's position on Xenu

Even members of the Church of Scientology who know of Xenu will publicly deny the existence of space opera doctrines, or attempt to minimize their importance. Scientology has many graduated levels through which one can progress. Many who remain at lower levels in the church are unaware of much of the space opera doctrines, which mostly begin at Operating Thetan level three, or "OT III".^[22] Because the information imparted to members is to be kept secret from others who have not attained that level, the member must publicly deny its existence when asked. OT III recipients must sign a waiver promising never to reveal its secrets before they are given the manilla envelope containing the Xenu knowledge.^[23] It is knowledge so dangerous, members are told, anyone learning this material before he is ready could die.

Despite the Church's efforts to keep the story secret, details have been leaked over the years. OT III was first revealed in Robert Kaufman's 1972 book Inside Scientology: Or How I Found Scientology and Became Super Human, in which Kaufman detailed his own experiences of OT III. It was later described in a 1981 Clearwater Sun article by Richard Leiby, and came to greater public fame in a 1985 court case brought against the Church by Lawrence A. Wollersheim. The Church attempted to keep the case file checked out by a reader at all times, but the story was synopsised in the Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1985 and detailed in William Poundstone's Bigger Secrets (1986) from information presented in the Wollersheim case. Church lawyer Warren McShane claimed in a 1995 court case that the story had never been secret,^[24] although maintaining there were nevertheless trade secrets contained in OT III. Notably, McShane discussed the details of the story at some length and specifically attributed the authorship of the story to Hubbard.^[25]

Older versions of OT levels I to VII were brought as exhibits attached to a declaration by Steven Fishman on 9 April 1993 as part of Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz. The text of this declaration and its exhibits, collectively known as the Fishman Affidavit, were posted to the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology in August 1995 by Arnie Lerma and on the World Wide Web by David S. Touretzky. This was a subject of great controversy and legal battles for several years, notably a copyright raid on Lerma's house (leading to massive mirroring of the documents) and a suit against Dutch writer Karin Spaink — the Church bringing suit on copyright violation grounds for reproducing the source material, and also claiming rewordings would reveal a trade secret.

The Church's attempts to maintain confidentiality concerning Xenu have been tremendously controversial, particularly given its high price (the 1997 members' price for OT III alone was US$19,500^[26]). In September 2003, a Dutch court, in a ruling in the case against Karin Spaink, stated that one objective in keeping OT II and OT III secret was to wield power over members of the Church and prevent discussion about the Church's teachings and practices.^[27]

Critics of Scientology commonly use the Xenu story to criticise and mock the Church, putting it forward as evidence Scientology is a scam and a confidence trick, and at the very least that the Church peddles bad science fiction; they maintain that spreading the story informs the public of what the Church actually sells and is thus in the public interest. Operation Clambake, the most popular critical Web site concerning Scientology, uses the Internet domain name xenu.net.

In its public statements, the Church of Scientology has been notably reluctant to admit the existence of writings on Xenu and even to mention Xenu's name; court filings and legal correspondence issued by the Church of Scientology in the 1990s frequently struck out the name "Xenu" and replaced it with "Xxxx",^[28] a treatment given to no other term. In the relatively few instances in which it has acknowledged Xenu, the Church has stated the story is a religious writing that can be seen as the equivalent of the Old Testament, in which miraculous events are described that are unlikely to have occurred in real life, and assumes true meaning only after years of study. They complain of critics using it to paint the religion as a science fiction fantasy.^[5]

After the Xenu story received considerable mainstream media attention from mid-2005, upper-level Scientologists involved in recent debates with critics have acknowledged the legitimacy of the story.^[29] Additionally, public statements by the Church now tend to position the tale as a very small part of the religion, and not the core of the movement's belief system.

[edit] Scientific critiques

Incident 1, preposterous as an event in its content, is dated ten thousand times older than science dates the universe, (going by "Big Bang" theory). The scientific "criterion of falsifiability" by which scientists insist that statements be testable such as to conceivably be shown false before being considered as scientific, fails twice over with Incident I.^[30]

It has been suggested that Hubbard meant to explain the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event through the Xenu story, but got the dates wrong — 75 mya as opposed to 65 mya — though this is unproven. There is no evidence of mass extinctions around the time given for the Xenu story.

The Xenu mythos includes humanoid Galactic citizens living on Earth at the time; no traces whatsoever of human-style habitation circa 75 mya have been noted.

The volcanoes that Hubbard specifically mentions in the story (notably Las Palmas and Hawaii) had not formed when Incident II is said to have taken place. Forde goes into considerable detail on this point.

The related Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago, which is nearly 300,000 times the currently accepted age of the Universe of 13.7 billion years.^[31]

As with other of Scientology's concepts about ancient alien civilizations such as Helatrobus, critics have noted many problems with the story of Xenu. Peter Forde's paper A Scientific scrutiny of OT III analyzes the matter in detail.^[32]

The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet -- 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged." His name was Xenu.

– L. Ron Hubbard, OT III: Incident 1

76 planets of aliens filled with 178 billion aliens per planet totals 13.528 trillion aliens that were packaged and blown up by Xenu. Hubbard did not elaborate on the number of space planes required to transport a population of some 13.5 trillion people. The Douglas DC-8, said to be an exact copy of Xenu's spaceships, seats a maximum of 250 people and has a payload of only around 40–50,000 kg, depending on the specific model. This means that, assuming the Galactic citizens had bodies about the same as humans, and the space planes were the same scale as DC-8s, only about 600 to 700 human-sized frozen bodies could have been transported on each such space plane. To accomplish the deed in a single trip, it would therefore have required around 54.1 billion planes with everyone seated or 19.3 billion planes with frozen bodies packed more efficiently.

Assuming the people were about the same size as humans, 76×178 billion×2 ft³ per alien is 184 cubic miles (766 km³). This is about ten percent of the volume of the Chicxulub Crater, the site of the asteroid impact that is credited with killing the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 mya (million years ago). The frozen bodies would have had to have been stacked a mile (1.6 km) deep, covering an area more than six miles (10 km) across around 6 volcanoes. Even assuming that they were all killed, their fossilized remains would certainly be visible in geological strata today. There is no sign of any such remains.

The energy required to blow up Xenu's victims would also have been colossal, requiring thousands of hydrogen bombs with a cumulative yield equivalent to gigatonnes of TNT. This would certainly have left physical traces; Forde lists plausible craters as the Manson crater (35 km, dated at 73.8 mya), Eagle Butte (10 km) and Dumas (2 km, both 78–74 mya). The hydrogen bombs would have left a residue of radioactive isotopes which would have been easily detectable today.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Sources

• Jon Atack, A Piece Of Blue Sky (Kensington Publishing Corporation, New York, 1990; ISBN 0-8184-0499-X)
• Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman? (Lyle Stuart, New Jersey, 1987; ISBN 0-8184-0444-2)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man (American Saint Hill Organization, 1968; current edition Bridge Publications ISBN 0-88404-306-1)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Mission into Time (American Saint Hill Organization, 1973; current edition Bridge Publications ISBN 0-88404-023-2)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Have You Lived Before This Life? (1958; current edition Bridge Publications ISBN 0-88404-447-5)
• Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story Of L. Ron Hubbard (Henry Holt, New York, 1988; ISBN 1-55013-027-7)
• FACTnet report: Hubbard and the Occult (Jon Atack)
• Robert Kaufman, Inside Scientology: Or How I Found Scientology and Became Super Human, (Olympia Press ISBN 0-7004-0110-5, 1972; (1995 edition published on Web)
• Sect courses resemble science fiction (Richard Leiby, Clearwater Sun, vol. 68 no. 118, 30 August 1981)
• Scientologists Block Access To Secret Documents: 1,500 crowd into courthouse to protect materials on fundamental beliefs (Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos, Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1985)
• Testimony under oath (pp274–275) from Robert Vaughn Young in RTC v. FactNet, Civil Action No. 95B2143, United States Courthouse, Denver, Colorado, 11 September 1995
• Audio extracts from Class VIII "Assists" lecture (3 October 1968)
• Excalibur Revisited: The Akashic Book of Truth (Geoffrey Filbert)

[edit] Other references

• Dawson, Lorne L.; Douglas E. Cowan (2004-04-01). Religion Online. Routledge (UK), 261 et. seq.. ISBN 0-415-97022-9. 
• Grünschloß, Andreas (2003-12-01), "Waiting for the "Big Beam," UFO Religions and "UFOlogical" Themes in New Religious Movements", in James R. Lewis, The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, Oxford University Press US, ISBN 0-19-514786-6

[edit] External links

• What is Scientology: OT III Released
• Scientology.org: OT Level Successes
• Michel Snoeck on Some usual misconceptions clarified: “Xenu”
• OT III Scholarship Page (David S. Touretzky; includes page scans, commentary, audio files)
• Xenu TV
• Revolt In The Stars summary (Grady Ward)
• Xenu Leaflet (Roland Rashleigh-Berry)
• The Fishman Affidavit: OT III (extracts and synopsis by Karin Spaink)
• A Scientific scrutiny of OT III (Peter Forde, June 1996)
• The Story of OTIII: A RealPlayer animation that takes a humorous yet accurate look at the Xenu doctrine. From the BBC Panorama documentary "The Road to Total Freedom?"
• Operation Clambake - The Inner Secrets Of Scientology
• The First Church of Xenu A parody of the Church of Scientology, with Xenu as the leader
• Another Look at Scientology: Xenu The Xenu incident and Scientology critics by Bernie
• Research essay describing OT 3 as a drug induced hallucination posted to alt.religion.scientology on 3/29/96 by Prignillius

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