The Cult of Scientology

The Truth of God Versus the World’s Philosophies

And for the word of prayer, our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to be again in your house and to study your word and to be about the business of proclaiming the truth and uncovering error as your word commands us, Lord, not just to proclaim the truth, but to also stand against the world's philosophies, to stand against the world's ideas and to stand against untruth.

For your word is the truth as Pilate asked Christ, what is truth? We know the answer. He is the way, the truth and the life, and we trust in him to get to you. So as Lord, we study tonight, we pray that we would be seekers of truth.

We pray for the many people who have been caught up in this cult of Scientology. We pray, Lord, that you would bring enlightenment to them, open their eyes to the untruths that they have been convinced of and bring them into your glorious grace.

We love you. We praise you. We thank you and all things. We give you glory in Jesus name and for his sake. Amen. I want to begin tonight by saying that I have never, ever been. As depressed. As I was when I was studying this religion, that sounds funny, maybe maybe I should restate that because I have had in the past bouts of depression, let me say that again.

I've never had a false religion make me so depressed as this one. Let me tell you why. When we begin to look at what Scientology is and we begin to compare it to scriptural truth. Immediately, what we realize is that much of what is said at the beginning sounds really helpful.

It sounds really good and it would be something that I could imagine someone who has low self-esteem or a low self-image or a particularly difficult life experience would look to this as being their emotional savior, because that is what it promises.

It promises that even though you've been through trauma and even though your life has been hard, your life is important and here are the tools that you need to make your life better. What's sad is, and I know this is going to go off on a bit of a tangent, but what's sad is so many people have begun to look at Christianity that same way.

They've begun to look at Christianity as a self-help system. So really, what made me so sad at looking at this is I began to look back at myself. I began to look back at the church. I began to look back at what has become modern day Christianity.

And a lot of what they're doing to bring people into Scientology has snuck into the church and it's become the church of self-help. So that's why it made me depressed. The second reason why it depressed me in the study, and please know I'm using that word, is simply it made me sad.

I don't mean it made me clinically depressed. It made me sad. It saddened me on another level. It saddened me that so many people could be so willing to believe such absurdity because they hurt so much.

Because people are so emotionally damaged. Because people are so emotionally hurt. When they find something that they think answers the question and gives them the tools, it's easy to glom onto that, to grab it, to attach themselves to it and to believe in it.

I decided tonight to do something that I haven't done before, at least in this series. We've been now for three months in the study of comparative religion. This is the last night. You can thank Patsy Hoffman because Patsy Hoffman requested Scientology.

So the last week of my life has been devoted to answering her request, which I was glad to do. But the first place I went, I hate it when people automatically go to the anti-whatever sources. If I'm going to teach on Mormonism, I'm going to go find out what the Mormons believe.

If I'm going to teach on Islam, I'm going to go find out what the Islamic people believe. The Muslims, if I'm going to teach on Buddhism, I'm going to go find out what the Buddhists believe in their own words.

Now, I'm then going to study what does it really mean? I'm then going to research further because I know generally on the face, they're going to tell you exactly what sounds the best. They're not going to tell you the worst part of it.

But in the beginning of this, I didn't know hardly anything about Scientology. In fact, years ago, I made the mistake, as some of you might, to think that Scientology and Christian science are the same thing.

Some people have probably made that connection. You have Christian science and Scientology, and maybe there have been those who have thought that those two were the same. That's not correct, obviously.

Christian science, Mary Baker Eddy's religion, is an entirely different religion, entirely different foundation. Scientology is really a philosophy of a religion that's based on the works of one man. And that man's name is L. Ron Hubbard.

Now, you'll see the board. You'll see how I've got it laid out. I've got it laid out this way very specifically. And yes, I did put the dollar sign here on purpose. But that's for the end, because as you're going to see as we make our way around the board tonight, that in the end, the almighty dollar is foundational in the cult of Scientology.

Let's begin by hearing it from their words. I want to show you a couple of videos. They're really short. But I want you to see what they believe they're teaching and what they believe they're promoting.

All right. Just give me a second to have the televisions on. I'll ask Cody, flip the lights off behind you. Or I guess that's what George is going. George has got it. If you read that, if you read what was saying, it was saying a world without war, without illiteracy, without racism, a world where everyone is functioning at their highest potential, where everyone loves everyone and no one fights, where everyone understands and there's there's no battle that are happening.

Oh, it went to the next video. That wasn't supposed to happen. I don't want to watch. There are tons of videos on there. I've spent time watching them and I picked out a couple that I want you to see.

But my point is, just by watching that first one, you see the promotion. The promotion is that by one person becoming what they would call an OT or an operating thetan, and I'll explain that in a little while, by one person becoming an OT, they help multitudes of people.

And that's the goal is becoming an OT, becoming an operating thetan. All right. We're going to do some definitions in a little while. But let's go to right now. In fact, if you would, Cody, flip the lights back on real quick.

I keep I appreciate it. We're just hey, hey, you ran right past the switch. Yeah, there's two sets of switches. Before we go any further, let me very quickly just run down the founded by this this side right here, because before we go to the next video, some of this is sort of important foundational information.

Number one, Scientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard. Lafayette Ron Hubbard is his name. L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer and he was a self-help advocate. That needs to be understood because I've heard people say that L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer and he wrote science fiction in regard to religion.

That is true. And we'll see how that's true. But his book that is that is proclaimed as to be the book of books in regard to Scientology is not a science fiction novel. It's based on his views, which we'll see are science fiction in theory.

But he considers himself a self-help guru. This book is Dianetics. It's been sitting on my shelf collecting dust now for years. It was given to me by a friend who had it on their shelf back when I was teaching comparative religions years and years ago.

This is his magnum opus. This is his great work, the work that they reprint into many different languages and send out all over the world. And I want to give you just a little bit of information about where the history in this book comes from, where the information in this book comes from.

This is from Hubbard's own words. He says that the resources for Dianetics, by the way, that's the name of the book, Dianetics, the modern science of mental health. That's the name of this book, Dianetics, the modern science of mental health.

He says the resources for Dianetics include the medicine men of the Goldie people of Mancuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles, and modern psychology. Among the people questioned about its existence were a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kubla Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats.

Dabbles have been made in mysticism. Data has been studied from mythology to spiritualism. And that ends the quote. So you can understand that even though we would, you know, we would say this is purely a work of fiction, this is purely a work of science fiction, and in the end we'll see much of it is, his followers believe this book to be very much a self-help guide, a guide to reaching your highest potential, a guide to reaching what you were created to be.

And in many ways, this is the Bible of Scientology. This is the book that you would go to that would answer life's questions. The book, Dianetics. Now, since we've learned a little bit about that word, let's look real quick at a video on the subject.

Oh, boy. This is the one I was having trouble with earlier. Excuse me. May not be able to watch the Dianetics video. I forgot. All the rest of them work fine.

From a serious loss in life or a traumatic experience, and in your own day-to-day life, do you sometimes experience self-doubts, negative thoughts, unreasonable fears, upsets, or irrational behavior?

The painful experiences of our past clearly have an effect upon our present behavior, but to what degree and why? What causes the mind to depart from rational thought or behavior? That is the subject of Dianetics.

Every moment of your life, your mind is recording everything that's happening to you, every sight, every sound, every taste, smell, pain, emotion, touch, everything. These recordings form what is called the time track, a consecutive record of all the experiences accumulated throughout your existence.

Your mind uses this information to make decisions and solve problems relating to your survival. The better its decisions, the better you survive. Most of this data is stored in your analytical mind, that part of your mind that thinks, remembers, and calculates.

But some of your experiences are not recorded into those analytical memory banks. It is the discovery of Dianetics that all of your painful experiences are stored in a previously unknown part of the mind.

It's called the reactive mind, and it throws those experiences back at you in an irrational attempt to get you to avoid the same painful thing from happening to you again. Here's a simple and common example.

At some point, you've probably gotten sick from eating painted food. Later in life, if you see or smell or possibly even think about that particular food again, you start to feel a little nauseous. Now you know that logically, the mere sight or smell or thought of a food can't physically make your body ill, because you haven't actually eaten it again.

And yet you're experiencing the same sick feeling you had before. This is your reactive mind, making you re-experience the same perceptions it recorded in that earlier incident, in a crude attempt to protect you from what it believes is a dangerous situation.

It reacts solely on a stimulus-response basis and below your awareness. The painful experiences hidden in your reactive mind are the cause of your fears, insecurities, negative thoughts, unwanted emotions, and irrational behavior.

You've been accumulating these deeply buried experiences throughout your existence. In fact, the most damaging among them occurred before you were born. Dianetics reveals how these negative experiences are stored and contains a technology to free yourself from them.

What would life be like if all of the pain you've experienced no longer affected your abilities, emotions, and behavior? You would think and behave rationally, making the best possible decisions relating to your survival.

You would be able to utilize your imagination and creativity to their fullest. You would be confident, more intelligent, and productive, and happier. You would be yourself, free to enjoy life and reach your full potential.

In short, your mind would be clear. That's the goal of Dianetics. People achieve this state every day.

Pretty interesting sales pitch, isn't it? If you think about it, it sounds... Thank you. You can turn them off. It sounds like something that everybody would want. We've all had pain, we've all had suffering, we've all had to experience life's difficulties.

And the concept that you could move on in your life without having the holdbacks of that traumatic event in your life, whatever it may be. You see why it saddened me so? Because it really would take someone with a lot of pain and it would give them what they think is the answer to their suffering.

And I hurt for people like that. I hurt for people who have been convinced by this movement. And even though it might not be as big as Mormonism or Hinduism or Islam, it is growing in the sense that there are people all around the world who are just grasping for self-help.

They're grasping for things like this. And because I know this is out there, and because I know it so easily would convince people... I mean, these are professionally done things. This was not something somebody did in their garage and put on YouTube.

That video you just watched is four and a half minutes long. It probably cost thousands of dollars, if not more, to produce such a thing. They've got the money and the resources to spread this wide. And though we may see it and say, boy, that's foolish, and we may snicker and say, boy, why would anybody believe that?

People are believing it. People are grasping onto it. Because people are hurting, and people want an answer to their hurt. So that's why, as I said earlier, it was really sad. Because it demonstrated to me just how easily people can be manipulated.

It doesn't surprise me when a person grows up in an Arab land, and they grow up in an Arab land, and they become a Muslim. You know, I love it to see when Christ goes into that person's life and changes their life, and they see the truth.

But it doesn't surprise me when a person grows up in an Arab land and becomes a Muslim. It doesn't surprise me when a person grows up in the Far East and becomes a Buddhist. This doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that a 1950s era sci-fi writer could write a book like Dianetics, and it could so profoundly influence people that there have been over two million people who have attended their introductory seminar.

Now, after that, the numbers get askew, but they have well documented over two million people have taken their introductory seminar, which is a first session of auditing. We'll talk about what auditing is in just a bit.

Two million people. Well, there's six billion people on the planet. Pastor, that's not a lot of people. One soul that is led astray by this is sad enough. But two million people looking for self-help in the hands of L. Ron Hubbard.

That's tragic. It's tragic. So let's talk a little bit more about what they believe and what they teach. As I said, the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard are found in the writings of Hubbard himself. The teachings of Scientology, rather.

The primary text is Dianetics, but also they have a creed. I also read that they had a catechism, but I don't. I couldn't find it. So that could have been that could have been erroneous. But all a catechism is, is a way of children to remember a creed or a confession.

But I read somewhere, but I don't. There's a couple of things I'm going to say tonight. I'm going to add a caveat and say I don't have this documented. This is something I understand is possibly true.

Just understand there are going to be times when I say that because I've done a lot of research. But, you know, I'm limited in time. But I know there's a creed. I like to read it to you. These are the essential beliefs of Scientology, the creed of Scientology.

Taken directly from their website. This is not taken from a website that would have an axe to grind. This is directly from what they believe and what they teach. The creed of the Church of Scientology was written by L. Ron Hubbard shortly after the church was formed in Los Angeles on February 18, 1954.

By the way, Hubbard before this was a Navy man. He claims to have been completely blinded and damaged while in the service. But yet through the process that he came up with the Dianetics and all this, he was completely healed.

However, there are no documents that show his injuries or anything like that. His entire history of his being blind and all these things are much contended within the community of history. The historical community, there's just no evidence.

But the Scientologists will believe it. It's not a point to argue with. Who cares? But that's what I'm saying. Don't use that if you're going to talk to a Scientologist. Don't use that as your argument.

It doesn't matter if he was blinded and got healed. It doesn't matter at all. But there isn't any evidence of it outside of his claims. Okay? This succinctly states what Scientologists believe according to them.

We at the Church believe that all men of whatever race, color, or creed were created with equal rights. That all men have inalienable rights to their own religious practice and their performance. That all men have inalienable rights to their own lives.

That all men have inalienable rights to their sanity. That all men have inalienable rights to their own defense. So far, so good. That all men have inalienable rights to conceive, choose, assist, or support their own organizations, churches, and governments.

Fine. That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions, and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others. That sounds good. But the truth of the matter is, in the history of Scientology, if anyone has ever spoken out or written against them, there has been a horde of response from them.

So they say, you should be able to freely write or say whatever you want unless you're writing about them. I want to mention, and by the way, I do not watch South Park. I don't recommend watching South Park.

But I will say this. Most of you know what that is. It's a very bad television show. It's a cartoon on the Comedy Channel. There was a character on the show. His name is Isaac Hayes. I put his name up here.

He was on the show. They had lampooned every other religion. Islam, Christianity, everything. Mormonism. When they came to Scientology, they lampooned it. And they lampooned it well. Hayes left. And he said, it's not right to make fun of religions.

When two months earlier, or some very short time earlier, he had said, oh, everybody gets made fun of. It's no big deal. But when his religion was lampooned, he was out of there. Interestingly enough, it's okay unless you're talking about us.

I just think that that part of their creed is somewhat hypocritical. All men have inalienable rights to the creation of their own kind, that the souls of men have the rights of men. They make a big deal about soul being the real us, which is very it's not that that's bad.

I mean, Christianity talks about the soul as being the living part of us, the real part of us. But the way that they make it is very interesting. We'll talk about that in a minute. The creed goes on to say that the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion or condoned in non-religious fields.

And that no agency less than God has the power to suspend or set aside these rights overtly or covertly. And we of the church believe that mankind is basically good. Therein lies the foundation for the entire heresy.

And we're going to talk about that in a little while, too. But that is a big deal in Scientology. You are basically good and all of your bad is a result of external factors. That in and of itself, it means it's anti-biblical right away.

That mankind is that he is seeking to survive, that his survival depends upon himself and upon his fellows and his attainment of brotherhood with the universe. We believe that the laws of God forbid man to destroy his own kind, to destroy the sanity of another, to destroy or enslave another soul or to destroy or reduce the survival of one's companions or one's group.

And we of the church believe that the spirit can be saved and that the spirit alone may save or heal the body. That's the creed of Scientology. It's an interesting belief system. It all comes back to what can the mind do?

The mind can heal all things. In fact, the word dianetics is supposed to be a connection of dia and nous, two Greek words, dia being through and nous being mind. It's supposed to be the combination dianetic meaning through the mind.

The idea of how does salvation comes through the mind. Salvation comes through self-help, through our ability to overcome through the mind our problems. Now comes the fun part. Let's define the rest of these words.

We've looked at dianetics. That's the name of the book. That's what it means through the mind. An engram. An engram is any negative experience that you have had in this life or in previous lives. And we're going to talk about reincarnational eschatology in a moment.

But anything that you've had happen in this life or in previous lives that is held over in your spirit that is bringing you negative energy. These are engrams. They are negatives from your life, whether it's something that happened to you.

Remember the pit video? A guy got shot and later here's a firecracker and he has that moment of fear. Well, that to them would be an engram. They would seek to rid the body of engrams or to seek to rid the soul of engrams through a process called auditing.

Auditing is done with one of these machines. This is called an e-meter. I have a couple of pictures here of different ones. It's very similar in its function to a lie detector. Instead of being strapped to the machine, you have two what look like V8 juice cans hooked to a wire.

In fact, one person I heard in an interview about Scientology said the original ones were V8 juice cans hooked to a wire. Now they're a little fancier. But it's hooked to a device that has a meter. You hold these in your hand.

I'll be happy to pass these around if you want to look at those. You hold the metal rods in your hand and they ask you questions. And as they ask you questions, they read your meter and they can tell where these negative engrams are, where these engrams are in your life.

And they can give you the ability to work them out. You begin as a PC. That does not mean personal computer. Everyone who begins, begins as a PC. A PC is a pre-clear. A pre-clear. Before you have been audited, you are a pre-clear.

Once you have been audited to the point that you no longer have these negative engrams, and you no longer have these attachments, these things that are holding you back, you become a clear. Alright? You go from being a pre-clear to a clear.

A PC to a clear. By the way, I have another picture, if anybody's interested. I have a picture of John Travolta holding the E-meter. Looks quite younger and his hair was more full. And I have a picture of Priscilla Presley holding the E-meter with her thumb up like this.

So if you want to pass those around. So this is the belief that you have these negative things, they're engrams. Before you start, you're a pre-clear. Once you get to clear, you are on the road. And I want to say right here, I'm a little bit confused how this takes place.

But my understanding of once you are a clear, you go on to become an Operating Phaeton. Or what they would call an OT. You've gone from a PC to an OT. Now what is... I see some of you beginning to smile a little bit.

I was the one who had to look all this stuff up. This is really interesting. Operating Phaeton. What is a Phaeton? According to L. Ron Hubbard, a Hubbard, Theta is the Greek letter Theta. He said the Theta was the symbol for the spirit.

That's actually not true. Pneuma is the word for spirit in Greek. But be that as it may, his argument was Theta was the symbol for the spirit. And a Phaeton is your spirit. Right now, your spirit is held back by engrams.

But what happens is through auditing, these engrams go away. And when you are a clear, you become an Operating Phaeton. Your spirit is finally functioning as it should. It's finally working as it should.

You're an Operating Phaeton at that point. You're an Operating Spirit. So you've gone from being full of all of these problems and issues. And then you've gone to become an OT. Now, there are eight levels of OT.

According to my research, Tom Cruise is a Level 7. I don't know that anyone has made it to Level 8 other than Hubbard himself. However, it is understood that Deity is Level 8. God himself is an Operating Phaeton Level 8.

So what does that tell us that they believe about L. Ron Hubbard himself? That he himself attained Deity because he attained OT Level 8. And Tom Cruise is right behind. Now, here's the interesting thing.

Your initial conference costs very little for you to go and get the initial audit. That costs very little. But every audit after that on the way to becoming clear is a little bit more and a little bit more.

One of the things that I read said that it was potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars for somebody to actually become an Operating Phaeton, to actually get through all of the necessary clearing that it would take to become an OT.

That kind of it is interesting because I want to go back to the writings of Hubbard because something he said very early on is this. And this is a direct quote that he said. He said, writing for a penny a word is ridiculous.

If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start a religion. End quote. Writing for a penny a word is stupid. You make a religion, you make a million dollars. Well, he certainly died having proved that very true because he died as a multi-millionaire.

But you see how it works. It starts out as a self-help program. We'll begin to help you. We'll get you tasting the good life. And now you begin to mortgage your house. You begin to sell all you have.

You begin to do away with any inheritance you may have had. You begin to give all of your money to this program. Somebody said, I don't know anybody who's a Scientologist. Neither do I. I don't know anybody who can afford it.

But who do we see who are Scientologists? People who can greatly afford it. Multi-million dollar athletes and singers and actors and musicians. That's what we see. And again, people see that and that makes them want to be.

Hey, man, Tom Cruise is talking about the value of these things and begins to trickle down into the system. All right. Now, getting back to the definition. So, we understand the Phaetons. Operating Phaeton is an OT.

He mentioned in the video the analytical mind, the reactive mind. That's something to understand. They believe that all the engrams are held in the reactive mind and that's what's being cleared. We don't understand the reactive mind in medical science.

It's only understood by, of course, Hubbard and his ilk. And that's part of another thing cults often do. You can't see what we can see. You don't know what we know. And that's that. All right. I want to make sure that I haven't left anybody behind.

I'm sure that you guys are very confused now as to why anyone would believe this. But does everybody understand on this side of the wall? I don't want to get into much of the history of Hubbard. I've got an entire stack of stuff on the history of Hubbard.

It really doesn't matter. What matters is what he's telling these people. What matters is what they believe. He is a man from when he went from being a sci-fi writer to a self-help guru to a religious leader.

That's the chronology of his life. And all the rest is really unnecessary for us to know at this point. The major heresies. The entire system is a cult. So to say heresies, the entire thing begins and ends with heresy.

But I wrote these down as the things that really stuck out in my mind as the thing that got my most attention. Number one, they forced the idea that mankind is good by nature. What does the Bible say?

The Bible says that we are by nature children of wrath. Ephesians chapter 2. The Bible says there is none who does good. No, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. Romans chapter 3.

And it goes on to say in the Old Testament that the heart is deceitfully wicked. Who can know it? That the heart itself, the internal nature of man. That's what it means when it talks about the heart.

It's talking about our very nature itself is so corrupt that we can't even understand the level of corruptness. We can't even understand ourselves. Yet they would say we are by nature good and it is these external influences that have caused us to be bad.

That's the second one. Man's problems come from external influences. Would you agree that some of man's problems come from external influences? Could we agree with that? Yes, we could obviously agree that some of the things that we deal with.

But could you also not very quickly affirm that much of our problems come from within ourselves? That we have a propensity to sin. We have a propensity to do wrong. And when we do wrong, that brings problems.

And the thing about external influences is that generally the external influences that hurt us come from the inside of someone else. You know what I'm saying? It's only taking a step back to say all my problems are external.

They're coming from someone else. It's only taking one step back and say well who did it come from? It came from inside them. So it's still going back to the heart of man. It's still going back to the problem of the sin nature.

And that's the third one I put here. These first three kind of go together. Mankind is good by nature. Man's problems come from external influences and denial of the sin nature. There is no sin nature.

And that's the three main what I would call anthropological problems in Scientology. Anthropological being man focused. The study of man, anthropology, they have a skewed view of man. Now these four also go together.

These three go together and these four go together. I say the other heresies, they have an evolutionary biology. They have a reincarnational eschatology. They have a mythical cosmology. And they have a Christless sociology.

Oh boy, those are big words. They better break them down. First and foremost, evolutionary biology. They believe that mankind did evolve. They believe that we evolved. And they talk about evolution as part of their system.

Yet at the same time, they believe in reincarnation. So even though we're constantly evolving physically, our spirits have gone from one physical person to the next physical person. That these spirits are seeking to become clear and phaetons so that they can go on.

But until then, we're still we're just simply hitching a ride with these physical bodies. Our phaetons are within us. They have the engrams around them. But they're simply hitching a ride on this evolutionary track.

OK. Now, interestingly enough, going back to the clear and preclear, they don't believe Jesus ever was an operating phaeton. They say Jesus was just above a clear. If you think about the hierarchy, Jesus was well below L. Ron Hubbard.

In fact, some people have actually some people. And I don't know that L. Ron Hubbard ever did this, but Walter Martin made the point in his teaching on this. And Dr. Walter Martin is very respected. He said that it became L. Ron Hubbard, E .L.

Why would that matter? E .L. is the name for God in the Old Testament. Elohim, El Shaddai. You know, we've heard these names before. The E .L. is the prefix for the name of God in the Old Testament. So it became L. Ron Hubbard, as in a deified person.

And, of course, they believed he was well over Jesus Christ, who himself was only preclear. Or he was only a clear. He was just above a clear. All right. So they have an evolutionary biology. They have a reincarnational eschatology.

They believe that there is a reincarnating of our spirit into new bodies. And that goes on until we achieve clarity. In fact, they do not ever say that L. Ron Hubbard died. He did die. But they won't say that he died.

In fact, I couldn't find it in my notes if I wanted to. But there's somewhere in my notes where it actually has a quote of what they said. But effectively, it was this, that his spirit moved on to consider research as an operating thetan.

He didn't die. He departed the body to continue his research as an operating thetan. So, I mean, that's the belief, is that your spirit just moves from one to the next. And then when you become this operating thetan at this certain level, you go on to this higher plane of existence.

So reincarnational eschatology. Mythical cosmology. Oh, I've been waiting for this one. I have a tract called, What is Xenu? I have to read this to you. Because if I didn't, you wouldn't believe me. This is what is taught, not at the base level.

And I want to tell you, if you're ever going to talk to a Scientologist, if you ever happened upon one and you wanted to share the gospel with them, don't ask them about Xenu. This is OT level 3 stuff.

You don't learn about this until you're an operating thetan level 3. Don't laugh, I promise. This is OT level 3. But this is the history of our universe, according to L. Ron Hubbard. Here's where we find out how good of a sci-fi writer he really was.

Because, honestly, George Lucas doesn't hold a candle to this guy. Once upon a time, 75 million years ago to be precise, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy, including our own planet Earth.

But in those days, Earth was called Tigiac. Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had an average of 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of the excess population, so he formulated a plan.