THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE: Xenu (sometimes Xemu) is introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and they continue to do this today, wreaking havoc in the process. Hubbard called these clustered spirits "Body Thetans," and the advanced levels place
considerable emphasis on isolating them and neutralizing their ill effects. I must tell you the founder of this so-called "religion" was L.Ron Hubbard a SCIENCE-FICTION writer. Hubbard's 1958 book Have You Lived Before This Life documents past lives described by
individual Scientologists during auditing sessions. These included memories of being "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl", "being run over by a Martian bishop driving a
steamroller", "being transformed into an
intergalactic walrus that perished after falling out of a
flying saucer", and (my personal favorite) being "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago". In comparison, modern astrophysical observations have established the age of the universe at 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years, to within about 1% confidence. Scientology, their beliefs, and followers in a nutshell...