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.
