Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Wikipedia: Xenu, the highlights

Within the Church of Scientology, the Xenu story is part of the church's secret "Advanced Technology",[7] considered a sacred and esoteric teaching,[11]and normally only revealed to members who have contributed large amounts of money.[12]

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In 1988, the cost of learning these secrets from the Church of Scientology was £3,830, or US$6,500.[10][32] This is in addition to the cost of the prior courses which are necessary to be eligible for OT III, which is often well over US$100,000 (roughly£60,000).[14] Belief in Xenu and body thetans is a requirement for a Scientologist to progress further along the Bridge to Total Freedom.[33] Those who do not experience the benefits of the OT III course are expected to take it (and pay for it) again.[27]

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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 Scientology.

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The Church of Scientology forbade individuals from reading the OT III Xenu cosmogony without first having taken prerequisite courses.[35]Scientologists warn that reading the Xenu story without proper authorization could cause pneumonia.[35][36]

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In a letter of the time to his wife Mary Sue,[42]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").

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Writing in the book Scientologypublished by Oxford University Press, contributor Mikael Rothstein observes that, "To my knowledge no real analysis of Scientology's Xenu myth has appeared in scholarly publications. The most sober and enlightening text about the Xenu myth is probably the article on Wikipedia (English version) and, even if brief, Andreas Grünschloss's piece on Scientology in Lewis (2000: 266–268)."[20] Rothstein places the Xenu text by L. Ron Hubbard within the context of a creation myth within the Scientology methodology, and characterizes it as "one of Scientology's more important religious narratives, the text that apparently constitutes the basic (sometimes implicit) mythology of the movement, theXenu myth, which is basically a story of the origin of man on Earth and the human condition."[20]Rothstein describes the phenomenon within a belief system inspired by science fiction, and notes that the "myth about Xenu, ... in the shape of a science fiction-inspired anthropogony,explains the basic Scientological claims about the human condition."[20]

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