The
Xenu story is often used by Scientology critics to describe
Scientology to outsiders. However, contrary to what critics say,
this isn't the core belief of Scientology. While it does
some good to have this secret teaching out in the open, critics
mostly use it to ridicule Scientology's beliefs, to taunt
Scientologists, and to reduce Scientology in the eyes of outsiders
to nothing more than a nut UFO cult.
You have probably read on
web sites critical of Scientology or in the
alt.religion.scientology newsgroup how the core of Scientology
belief is summarized by the Xenu incident in which a despot
called "Xenu" supposedly clustered several human
spirits together 75,000,000 years ago and threw them in physical
bodies.
This, however, is a
completely misleading presentation on the part of critics.
The core belief of Scientology is that Man
gradually forgot his spiritual nature after a tumultuous history
of past-lives incidents, and that Scientology has the "tech" to
help him regain his full spiritual awareness and abilities.
The Xenu incident, although an important
one in the overall Scientology scheme, is just one of these
past-lives incidents.
A very simple reasoning will show that the
Xenu incident can't be the core belief of Scientology.
The Xenu incident was not
known even to L. Ron Hubbard when he founded Scientology in 1953.
Scientology existed as such for 14 years before the incident was
discovered. When he added it on the "bridge", it did not
fundamentally change anything to the basic process Scientologists
followed and still follow. To this day, you could just abstract
the Xenu incident and you would still have a relatively intact
system referred to as "Scientology".
Since the Xenu incident is
only revealed at a very late stage of Scientology processing, the
vast majority of Scientologists don't even know about it. Yet,
they call themselves "Scientologists" and refer to what they do as
"Scientology".
To summarize Scientology by
the Xenu incident is thus completely false. The purpose of such
action is to frighten newbies away and to ridicule Scientology
beliefs. It shows that, contrary to what they claim, critics are
not interested in honest presentation but in propaganda and
proselytism.
Secret Teachings
Critics claim that the Xenu
incident shows the true science-fiction nature of Scientology, and
that by revealing it they are doing a service to members to whom
the incident is hidden until they are duly brainwashed.
This is another fallacious
argument, and falls apart when you examine it more closely:
Contrary to what critics
would want you to believe, the Science-fiction nature of Scientology is
already very
much present in public books and magazines.
You will find there stories of past lives incidents, galactic
battles, and many science fiction elements. The Xenu story as such
is not particularly more or less "ludicrous" than these. Why would
it require "brainwashing" to accept the Xenu story and not these
other stories?
Secret teaching only revealed after people are
considered ready to confront it is nothing new. It has been
widely practiced by occult groups throughout history. Even to
this day, it exist within groups like the Mormons or Free
Masons. It even exists as part of the Jewish Quaballah. Why
would it be brainwashing in one case and not in the other?
Why would the Xenu story be more ridiculous than Moïse
splitting the red sea in two, Jesus being born from a virgin, Mohammed raising to the sky on a ball of
fire, or Christians eating wafers and drinking red wine while
the minister mumbles about the body of Christ?
It is true that the Xenu
story is used in Scientology as a "Mystery sandwich" to keep
people on the bridge in the promise that their case will be
ultimately resolved going through the "Wall of fire". As such,
critics are doing some good in revealing the nature of this
incident and in demystifying it. The way they use it, however, as
part of their propaganda machine makes their actions hardly better
than what they condemn within Scientology itself.
Size's post
This page originally came about because a post made by one poster
(Size) in the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup. Here is that
post:
Usenet post from the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.
Tilman Hausherr:
>Here's the belief of scientology: that you are possessed by the
spirits of aliens murdered 75,000,000 years ago by
"Xenu." You have to exorcise these spirits, at a very
high cost per alien.
Yeti:
Since most ars critics believe that the BT exorcism business is
unknown to Scientologists except for those who've become
extensively involved in it, this Xemu story can hardly be what's
sums up Scientology in the consensus of critics, if they really
were to be honest about it. This is so as the vast majority of
people who were involved with but then ditched Scientology never
heard of Xemu, yet they for some time had some belief in
Scientology. This is, and forever will be, the basic flaw in going
around telling people that Scientology amounts to the Xemu
weirdness.
Of
course there's a great deal of distortion that can be achieved by
going around saying Scientology is just Xemu in essence.
Scientologists don't resemble suicidal "UFO cults"
(recently and shockingly in the news) but can be made to carry
some of their odor by playing up the Xemu business as if it were
really important in the overall scheme of Scientology beliefs.
It's a *distortion*, which along with such things as shore
stories, "PR", acceptable truths and the like, basically
amounts to what is usually called "lying".
Don't forget, should the Scios succeed in playing a dirty trick on
you, that you threw your hat into the dirty trick playing arena
with this kind of "Scientology is belief in Xemu" crap
right along with them.
This web site is
NOT created by a Scientologist. It is created by a Scientology EX-MEMBER
who is critical of Scientology. However, this ex-member is ALSO critical
of the anti-Scientology movement. This does not make him a
Scientologist, nor a defender of Scientology.
Yeti:
Of
course there's a great deal of distortion that can be achieved by
going around saying Scientology is just Xemu in essence.
Scientologists don't resemble suicidal "UFO cults"
(recently and shockingly in the news) but can be made to carry
some of their odor by playing up the Xemu business as if it were
really important in the overall scheme of Scientology beliefs.
It's a *distortion*, which along with such things as shore
stories, "PR", acceptable truths and the like, basically
amounts to what is usually called "lying".
