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Tony O asks why we believe in Xenu

Tony has an interesting article that was just posted, and it brings up a neat point, does belief in past lives bring about the mental shift from non-beliver to Scientologist? Is that a key point in the journey? Mimsey

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/07/scientology_xenu_whole_track.php#more

For going on 17 years I've been writing about Scientology, and over that time there's one question that has come up again and again.

Why don't Scientologists, when they've been in the organization long enough to reach the legendary material in "Operating Thetan Level Three" -- the stuff about Xenu the galactic overlord which made for a great 2005 episode of South Park -- bust out laughing and walk away?

Tom Cruise and John Travolta and thousands of other Scientologists have moved on beyond the space opera stuff in OT 3 (Cruise, for example, has moved up to OT 7), and for some reason, they accepted the Xenu story and never looked back.

When I've been asked that question, I had a ready answer that I'd put together after talking to many ex-Scientologists who told me their own experiences.

But now, I realize that the answer I was giving was wrong. The reason why Scientologists accept the story about Xenu and disembodied alien beings infesting this Earth is actually much simpler, and much more mindblowing, than I ever realized.



<snipped> See link above
 
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Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Please don't quote the entirety of Tony's article. It both violates his copyright and pisses him off.

Paul
 

Jquepublic

Silver Meritorious Patron
I hate the Xenu stuff for one simple reason: I NEVER AGREED IT WAS TRUE! I didn't even have the opportunity to accept or reject it because of the secretive nature of it within CoS. Yet for the rest of my life I'll be the girl who was in the Xenu cult to people who know me and my backstory with the church. :angry:

FWIW I think Amy Scobee nailed the why people accept it. It has nothing to do with the story itself. It's the phenomena associated with the accompanying process that sells it to people who might otherwise not accept it.
 
Sorry Paul ( and Tony ) I didn't realize it had that effect - I assumed, he would want his message spread around. Next time I'll pick out some of the points that interest me and post those. You will notice, I did put a link so people could visit his site...

One of the defining moments, of what makes a person become (mentally) a Scientologst, to me is when the person exteriorizes. But does that realization depend upon the philosophy that is being appended to the event? I ask because, I had an out of body experience when I was in college (no, I was not high or drunk at the time) and while it made me think there is more to life than I imagined previous to that point, it didn't have the same effect as when I exteriorized after being in Scientology for a few years.

Mimsey
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Sorry Paul ( and Tony ) I didn't realize it had that effect - I assumed, he would want his message spread around. Next time I'll pick out some of the points that interest me and post those. You will notice, I did put a link so people could visit his site...

Yes, but basically he does all the hard work of the research and the writing, and his reward is people clicking on the link to read the original and comment about it on his site. If someone reads "the interesting bits" of the article here as a substitute for reading the original, then he doesn't get the credit.

We are mostly going to comment here (as opposed to the Village Voice site) about things that interest us, as this is a message board, after all. But the principle still holds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use is an article covering the relevant law.

Here's his comment on the matter:

STOP RIPPING ME OFF LIKE THIS.

Please just quote a short portion of my story and then provide a link to the rest.

This is twice recently that you have ripped off my entire story, and I'm really not happy about it.

Tony Ortega

Paul
 

Veda

Sponsor
Please don't quote the entirety of Tony's article. It both violates his copyright and pisses him off.

Paul

Yes, someone needs to contact an admin to have that snipped.

Also someone should tell Amy Scobee that "Incident 1" is only a metaphor. She describes it as an incident. Doesn't she know that Marty Rathbun is majorly "handling" the "wogs" with LRH's Propaganda and PR tech?

C'mon, Amy, you're letting Marty down!
 

NoName

A Girl Has No Name
I wish Tony had pointed out a few things:

1. According to Janet Reitmann, Tom Cruise took a break after OT 3 cause he was basically weirded out by it. The Co$ worked very hard to recover him, but that probably wouldn't have been the case with an average public.

2. Paul Haggis talked about how he thought it was bullshit, in his words, but played along because everyone else was talking about their wins and he was waiting for his own win.

3. Kristi Wachter provides a statistical analysis of how many people walk away after OT3. There's no way to know if that's Xenu's fault, but it's telling, imho.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
I wish Tony had pointed out a few things:

Well, if we're getting into wishes. . . .

I wish he hadn't quoted that Inside Edition segment about the E-meter as if it were valid. I commented in a post already about why it's false:

Their expert (ho ho) says it reads on sweat, salt, and grip. The CofS's response is that he's not qualified to comment on the (religious) device.

Pathetic from both sides. Any trainee auditor knows that moisture and grip affect the TA and needle and must be taken into account. The notion that the meter "reads on sweat and unsweat" is easily disproved by an underwater experiment, where the meter still reads when the hands (or feet - it works on feet too) aren't touching the cans. I'm sure the CofS could do a better-looking experiment than mine to show this.

<snip example underwater metering video>

Paul
 
He raises some good points in the article. My comments ...


1. All scientologists do not necessarily accept the xenu narrative, although a failure to accept is typically a shortcut either to leaving the church or continuing problems (i.e. 'ethics') with organizational management.


2. It is true that the prior experience of running one's own past track makes one predisposed either to accept belief in past track histories OR at least be open to the possibility of such having a degree of truth, or some sort of metaphorical utility.

[Note that Buddhist & Vedic traditions also include stories of prior lives on other worlds, some seemingly involving apparently advanced technologies, and that these accounts also appear as a result of the insights provided by stories of the knowledge of various sages of their own prior lives.

Also some therapists combine regression therapy with a Jungian sense of the study of symbols for understanding similar apparently prior lifetime experiences.
]


3. As a result of #2 above there is according a tendency either to accept the truth of hubbard's story of xenu as given OR to accept that hubbard himself believed it to be true and that familiarity with his narrative is sufficient for auditing on the upper levels.


4. With regard to the process of actually auditing the upper levels actual belief in the story is NOT necessary, although there again the failure to accept that narrative on hubbard's word as 'true' sets an individual up for probable difficulties with church management and resulting 'ethics' trouble.


5. Auditing on the upper levels is actually centered on the idea of handling the supposed effects of spiritual entities (i.e. 'bts') on an individual. The Xenu myth is merely hubbard's explanation for ONE of the reasons this is seen to be necessary. Hubbard himself put a great deal of importance on this myth, nonetheless it is only ONE aspect of auditing on the upper levels.


6. Contrary to popular misconception, the xenu myth is NOT a central feature of the scientology spiritual philsophy or practice. It comes up ONLY on the hubbard approved advanced levels of the scientology bridge. Accordingly, it is not a basic feature or 'creation myth' of the subject of scientology.


Mark A. Baker
 
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Jquepublic

Silver Meritorious Patron
I wish Tony had pointed out a few things:

1. According to Janet Reitmann, Tom Cruise took a break after OT 3 cause he was basically weirded out by it. The Co$ worked very hard to recover him, but that probably wouldn't have been the case with an average public.

2. Paul Haggis talked about how he thought it was bullshit, in his words, but played along because everyone else was talking about their wins and he was waiting for his own win.

3. Kristi Wachter provides a statistical analysis of how many people walk away after OT3. There's no way to know if that's Xenu's fault, but it's telling, imho.

I can't find the analysis of people leaving after OT 3, would you mind linking it?
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
6. Contrary to popular misconception, the xenu myth is NOT a central feature of the scientology spiritual philsophy or practice. It comes up ONLY on the hubbard approved advanced levels of the scientology bridge. Accordingly, it is not a basic feature or 'creation myth' of the subject of scientology.

Mark A. Baker

In theory, that is probably exactly correct. However, in real life, it doesn't always work like that.

When I was a true-believer, the idea that all these Earthlings were infested with dead space-aliens and the R6 implant was operational on all of them was constantly in my mind, leading to a day-to-day smugness and feeling of superiority when dealing with those who were not privy to the secret.

Paul
 
In theory, that is probably exactly correct. However, in real life, it doesn't always work like that.

When I was a true-believer, the idea that all these Earthlings were infested with dead space-aliens and the R6 implant was operational on all of them was constantly in my mind, leading to a day-to-day smugness and feeling of superiority when dealing with those who were not privy to the secret.

Paul

I see that as essentially the result of church culture, and specifically the sort of 'group think' encouraged & reinforced among members of the Sea Organization. The Sea Org was of course directly established by hubbard as his personal agency of control of the greater community of the church. It also appears itself to be largely a direct dramatization, or an acting out, of the xenu story.

My experience has been that the tendency is that the farther removed one was from involvement with the Sea Org the less that has been a factor.

Of course the Sea Org oversees much of the training and all of the advanced levels of the church, and thus the more deeply one is involved with the Co$ the more likely the individual has been pressured to accept a world view in keeping with the Sea Org mindset.


Mark A. Baker
 

Veda

Sponsor
He raises some good points in the article. My comments ...


1. All scientologists do not necessarily accept the xenu narrative, although

-snip PR damage control-

a metaphorical utility.

-snip-

Contrary to popular misconception, the xenu myth

-snip-

Without INCIDENT TWO on the TIME TRACKS of oodles of BODY THETANS there would be no OT 3.

And without IMPLANT INCIDENTS on the TIME TRACK, there would be no OT 2.

Why are you attempting to mislead people?

Incidents on Time Tracks are literal, down to the fraction of a second.

OT 2 is pretty crazy too, and the only reason that PRs, such as yourself, haven't done PR damage control, specifically, on OT 2, is that it hasn't been publicized.

"This is a cold blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years," Baker. DEAL WITH IT. It's SCIENTOLOGY.
 

Veda

Sponsor
So hubbard claimed to believe. Evidently you do too.


Mark A. Baker

Your PR B.S. doesn't work on me. It doesn't work on most people, haven't you noticed?

And hasn't it occurred to you that people are becoming tired of watching Scientologists lying and spinning on behalf of Scientology?

Enough already!
 

Freeminds

Bitter defrocked apostate
Tony O asks about a belief in the thoroughly implausible and widely derided Xenu story... but Xenu is far from the only example of pulp era UFO fiction to be found within Scientology scrapture.

Consider, for example, the 1952 lecture, "The Role of Earth". A more magnificently retarded piece of Hubbardspew you would have to work hard to find... and this isn't OT anything (because it's 1952). The proof that LRH was a major loon and that Scientology was a UFO cult was right there to hear, being sold on tape. Hardly confidential!

As for the Xenu thing, I don't think anybody who studied the story (which is what the Scientology victims paid to do) could fail to spot some planet-sized plot holes. I reviewed a few of them here.
 

Smilla

Ordinary Human
Current Freezone PR Nonsense:

1. Arriving 2 or 3 at a time on any thread critical of the Freezone, blustering and protesting with huge simulated moral indignance, injecting enough commotion into the mix to kill the thread. It's exactly the same fake moral outrage thing that the Cof$ uses, but without actually using the term bigot.

2. Asserting that anything about Scientology which is contentious - Such as the States of Clear and OT, or the Xenu rubbish, is Metaphor, not be taken literally. This is fundamental dishonesty, as Clear, OT, and the Xenu rubbish have always been presented as fact, and still are. The Freezone sells a Bridge just like the Cof$, but an even longer and more bizarre one in the Case of Ron's Orgs.

3. Whenever any criticism is made of the Freezone that contains an accusation of abuse - brainwashing etc, the reply goes: "Tell that to the Catholics, Jews, Muslims" etc. Don't look at us - look over there. Look over there. Look over there. Look over there.

There's a lot besides, but that's mostly what's going on just now.

The "Why are you against human rights?" and "Don't you want people to have wins?" nonsense seems to have been dropped due to people ridiculing them, and having a good laugh at the silliness of them.

So come on - let's see that moral indignation!

Point your finger at the Catholics, Jews, and Muslims!

Tell us it's all metaphor!

Be indignant!

This post is an outrage!

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