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Xenu

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In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (pronounced "ZEE-noo") or Xemu is the name of a Galactic ruler who perpetrated a mass murder on Earth 75 million years ago, the lingering effects of which are said to cause many problems in Earth's present population.

Described by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard in OT III, an upper-level Scientology course, these events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as "The Wall of Fire".

Much of the controversy between supporters and critics of the Church of Scientology has focused on the story of Xenu. The Church avoids making mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain its confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of both copyright and trade secrecy. However, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public.

The Xenu story was also dramatized in Hubbard's unpublished film script, Revolt in the Stars.

Xenu in Scientology doctrine

75 million years ago, according to Hubbard, Xenu brought billions of Galactic citizens to Earth and killed them by dropping them into volcanoes and exploding them with hydrogen bombs, effectively imprisoning their immortal souls or thetans. He then spent thirty-six days implanting the thetans with memories and images, collectively called the R6 implant. The traumatised thetans remained on Earth and clumped together in clusters, which are stuck to the bodies of all living humans (as body thetans). In fact, "One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body." Scientology doctrine states that they are the source of many of mankind's problems and that a person can be freed from their influence by auditing. (See Scientology beliefs and practices.)

The "Wall of Fire" is covered in OT III ("Operating Thetan Level Three"), part of Scientology's secret teachings to advanced members. OT III was alluded to in Ron's Journal 67 (RJ67), a tape Hubbard recorded on 20 September, 1967 to be sent to all members of the Church. Hubbard claimed to be 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". It is discussed in greater detail in the confidential Class VIII "Assists" lecture #10 (3 October, 1968). 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."

OT III also deals with Incident I, set four quadrillion years ago at which time Scientologists believe the current universe to have been created. (Currently accepted scientific theory places the Big Bang at only 14 billion years ago, and does not believe the universe to have existed prior to that time. See also creation of the Universe and creation belief.) 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 these traumatic memories are what separates thetans from their static (natural, godlike) state.

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 long process, and the current versions of OT levels IV to VII continue the long process of dealing with one's body thetans.

The Xenu story is part of an elaborate mythos of what Scientology terms space opera. According to Scientology doctrine, modern-day science fiction space opera is merely an unconscious recollection of events, such as Xenu's galactic genocide, that really happened millions of years ago. "Space opera" is defined in the Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary as follows:

of or relating to time periods ... millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents and things that occurred [in the past]. [1]

Hubbard attached tremendous importance to Incident II, saying it constituted "the secrets of a disaster which resulted in the decay of life as we know it in this sector of the galaxy". [1] He is reported to have ordered that Scientology books be reissued with covers based on images from OT III [2]. According to Hubbard, "Man responds to an exploding volcano" ("Assists"); the volcano on the cover of current editions of Dianetics seems to allude to the volcanoes in the Xenu story. Other cover images may reference Xenu as well; the original cover of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science shows pictures of men in white helmets carrying boxes in and out of a spaceship, which may refer to the transportation of Xenu's victims.

Hubbard's statements concerning the R6 implant have been a source of enormous friction and conflict between the Church and its critics, with many critics and Christians stating that Hubbard's statements regarding R6 implants prove that Scientology is not compatible with Christianity [3] [4] [5], despite the Church of Scientology's claims to the contrary [6]. 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.

Origins of the Xenu story

The details of how Hubbard devised or discovered the Xenu story are somewhat unclear. He is known to have written OT III in late 1966 and early 1967 in North Africa while was on his way to Las Palmas to join the Enchanter, the first vessel of his private Scientology fleet (the "Sea Org"). [2] If he followed what was apparently his usual practice, he would have conducted his research by auditing himself and unearthing what he regarded as his hidden memories, using an E-meter. 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 also have been at work. According to a letter of the time to his wife [3], he states that he was drinking a great deal of rum and taking stimulants and depressants ("I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys") to assist his research. His assistant at the time, Virginia Downsborough, said that he "was existing almost totally on a diet of drugs." [4]

Other versions of the Xenu story

Hubbard wrote a film script in the late 1970s, Revolt in the Stars, which is an extended version of the story of OT III, and 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 have leaked, and Scientology critic Grady Ward has published a summary. [7]

Geoffrey Filbert, a Free Zone (non-CoS) Scientologist, wrote a book, Excalibur Revisited, in 1982, containing his own version of OT III.

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.

Critics have mockingly depicted Xenu as a Roswell-style grey alien. However, Hubbard envisaged Xenu's technology to have been very much like our own, and it is reasonable to surmise that he envisaged Xenu as being essentially human or at least humanoid in form.

"Xenu" or "Xemu"?

The manuscript of OT III contains the only known example of Xenu's name in Hubbard's handwriting.

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. 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).

The Church of Scientology and Xenu

Although the official policy of the Church of Scientology is to keep the story of Xenu secret, details of the Xenu writings have been revealed to the general public over the years. OT III first emerged in a court case brought against the Church by Lawrence A. Wollersheim and was synopsised in the Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1985.

Old versions of OT levels I to VII were later 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 were released onto the Internet in August 1995 and are known collectively as the Fishman Affidavit, which was a subject of great controversy and legal battles for several years.

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 [8]). Internet critics of Scientology commonly use the tale of Xenu to criticise and mock the Church. They claim the Xenu story as evidence that Scientology is a scam and a confidence trick, and at the very least peddles bad science fiction. Operation Clambake, the most popular critical Web site concerning Scientology, uses the Internet domain name xenu.net.

The factual basis of the Xenu story has also come under attack, with critics pointing out that the volcanoes Hubbard mentions in the story (notably Las Palmas and Hawaii) did not exist at the time that the events of Incident II are said to have taken place (Forde). Furthermore, Incident I is placed four quadrillion years ago, which is nearly 300,000 times the currently accepted age for the universe of 13.7 billion years.

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" [9], a treatment given to no other Scientology term. In the relatively few instances in which it has acknowledged Xenu, the Church has stated that 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 that it assumes true meaning only after years of study. They complain of critics using it to paint the religion as a science fiction fantasy (Observer, Sun 16 May 2004).

Summary of the Xenu story

Note: Scientologist confidential doctrine follows.

Some 75 million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of all planets in this part of the galaxy, including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The 76 planets of the confederacy which he ruled were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. His 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. ("Assists")

The tyrannical Xenu 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 paralyse 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 planes were exact copies of DC-8s, "except the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." ("Assists")

The volcano on the cover of Dianetics is conjectured to refer to the Xenu story; according to Hubbard, "man responds to an exploding volcano."

When the planes had reached Teegeeack, the paralysed people were 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.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, or thetans as Hubbard termed them, were blown into the air. They were captured 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 form of cinema, where they were forced for 36 days to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture". This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera" (including 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 memory implants.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the motion picture had the effect of loosening their sense of 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 techniques for removing body thetans.

The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and locked him away in a mountain, where he was imprisoned by a force field powered by an eternal battery, and is still alive. (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]". Hubbard 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.5) 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 then.

References

  1. Hubbard, Mission into Time
  2. Miller, ch. 16, p. 266
  3. Corydon, pp58-59, 332-333; letter filed as evidence in Church of Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, 1984, Los Angeles Superior Court, Case No. C420153
  4. Atack, part 4, ch. 1
  5. Hubbard, A History of Man

Sources

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