Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [56]
Jeff Hawkins was primed for years for OT 3 by other Sea Org friends who'd done the level and hinted at something so fantastic, "it would blow my mind beyond anything I'd ever imagined." He waited more than five years to learn the secret. OT 3 wasn't something one simply purchased and then followed unreservedly, like other auditing processes. Scientologists had to be invited to pass through the Wall of Fire. Beforehand, they were put through a security check to verify that they were ready to receive this knowledge. They then signed a waiver promising never to reveal the secrets of OT 3, nor to hold the Church of Scientology responsible for any trauma or damage they might endure during this stage of auditing. Finally, they were given a manila folder, which they placed in a locked briefcase; they were instructed to read it in a private, guarded room. Inside was a single-page document, written in Hubbard's longhand script, which laid out what seemed, to some, to be Hubbard's book of Genesis.
It began like this: "The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here—founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet—178 billion average) by mass implanting." This leader, a tyrant named Xenu, set out to capture the trillions who opposed him and deposited them in volcanoes on the prison planet of Teegeeack, otherwise known as Earth. He then eradicated them and all life on the planet with hydrogen bombs, leaving only the thetans, or souls, of the captives—which were then brainwashed, or "implanted," to rid them of their original identities. Millions of years later, when life began again on Teegeeack, the traumatized thetans attached themselves to human bodies.
This was the crux of OT 3: that one's problems were not caused merely by the reactive mind, but by aberrant "body thetans," each one reliving the trauma of Xenu's ancient genocide. That trauma had set the course of human history, resulting in the social and political ills—war, famine, genocide, poverty, drugs, nuclear weapons, acts of terror—that had played out on the planet for generations. To truly clear oneself, a Scientologist had to audit each one of these body thetans through specific processes Hubbard had designed: unclustering them, clearing their engrams, and ultimately freeing them of their implants. This, Hubbard believed, would be each individual's salvation, and ultimately, it would be the salvation of mankind.
Jeff Hawkins believed every word of this new gospel. Nancy Many, the Scientology executive from Boston, took it with a grain of salt. But then, she'd also taken the idea that Christ walked on water with a grain of salt, she said. "I was raised as a Catholic to believe that Jesus turned water into wine and raised the dead. I mean, is that plausible? So, to me, the Xenu story was like a Bible story." More than a few Scientologists read the Xenu story as "a bizarre science fiction story," as one former member described it. But fearing they'd be denounced for doubting Hubbard's teachings—to do so would be a thought crime—they held their tongue.
Whatever OT 3 and the subsequent OT levels may have been, one thing is certain: they were perfectly timed. Mikael Rothstein, a professor of religion at the University of Copenhagen who specializes in new religious movements, has commented that a number of "UFO religions" emerged during the 1960s. "Hubbard's noting that human souls—thetans—are spiritual implants that originate in another world is ... quite parallel to religious assumptions expressed by UFO religions," he said. Most of these groups were "very much concerned with the mind-body complex and the impact of extraterrestrials. Hubbard was not original in that respect."
But where Hubbard