Like a lot of critics, including old hands like Charles Barwell, I view the Xenu/body thetans story as Scientology's "achilles heel" (WCB's term). It's the pot of crap at the end of their rainbow.

But after having done five radio interviews in the past three weeks, I think I've found a more effective angle for getting people to understand why Scientology is bad. Xenu is just SO FAR out there that they can't really get their heads around it, even after you show them the OT III document. Add in all the Scientologists who call in to the radio shows to deny that Xenu has anything to do with their religion, and the public doesn't know what to believe.

Here's something that seems to be more effective:

1. Tell people that Scientology not only believes in reincaration, it teaches people to RECALL their past lives, using a LIGHT HYPNOTIC TRANCE that Hubbard called "Dianetic reverie".

2. Tell them that Scientologists are forbidden from discussing their past life memories, even with other Scientologists on the same level as them. This is part of how Hubbard maintains control over people, by preventing them from comparing notes with each other, or seeking any independent verification of their experiences.

3. Point out that this practice is actually a form of mental abuse. Psychologists call it "false memory syndrome". In the 1980s it was the source of many bogus claims of child molestation, when children were manipulated by incompetent or unethical therapists into "recovering" memories of things that never happened. Many adults also fell victim to it. But in Scientology, false memory syndrome is a sacrament!

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The advantage of this approach is that even low-level Scientologists are familiar with the practices surrounding past life recall, and will admit to it if asked. In one of the radio shows I did, we had a woman call in who claimed to be an OT 6. She denied Xenu, but freely admitted to recalling past lives, and also admitted that she wasn't allowed to talk about her own past lives. Even Tom Cruise said in a recent media interview that we have all lived many lives before this one.

Once you have your Scientologist admitting on the air to past life recall, the next step is to ask them whether all our past lives were necessarily lived here on earth. Homo sapiens is only about 400,000 years old, and human civilization is only a few tens of thousands of years old, while the universe is around 13 billion years old. If we're immortal beings, doesn't it make sense to assume we had past lives in earlier civilizations before life evolved on earth?

If they deny this, you can point to the definition of "space opera" from the Scientology online glossary and show that Scientology teaches this to be the case:

"Space opera has space travel, spaceships, spacemen, intergalactic travel, wars, conflicts, other beings, civilizations and societies, and other planets and galaxies. It is not fiction and concerns actual incidents,"

If you have a copy of Hubbard's book "Have You Lived Before This Life?" you can even quote case histories from it. I'll post some to ARS.

The public can absorb this more readily than the Xenu and body thetans stuff, and getting Scientologists to publicly admit to it is much easier.

If you talk to media, or to Scientologits, give this a try and report your results here. (Hey, that sounds like the "scientific method"! Verification through independent attempts at replication. Something Scientology is never willing to submit to.)

-- Dave Touretzky: "If it's true for you, we'll reg you for it."
http://LisaCLause.org http://PerkinsTragedy.org

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