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Template:ScientologySeries In Scientology doctrine, space opera was the term used by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard to describe extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in past lives. Descriptions of space opera incidents play an important part in beliefs of Scientology and has led to Scientology being characterized by some critics and commentators as a UFO religion (Partridge, UFO Religions). Hubbard claimed that the modern-day science fiction genre of space opera is merely an unconscious recollection of real events from millions of years ago.

Scientology's doctrines famously include the story of Xenu, the ruler of the Galactic Confederacy who brought billions of frozen people to Earth 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, creating swarms of disembodied alien souls known as Body Thetans. Xenu is only one element of Scientology beliefs in alien civilizations. Such doctrines have existed in Scientology virtually since its beginning, with Hubbard writing and lecturing about civilizations such as Helatrobus, the Espinol Confederacy and Arslycus in the 1950s and Xenu's Galactic Confederacy in the 1960s. He described repeated instances of them using brainwashing implants on hapless beings. He also spoke of alien invasions of Earth, such as that carried out around 6235 BC by the Fifth Invader Force, who were "very strange insect-like creature with unthinkably horrible hands."

Scientology and science fiction

Often members of the Church will publicly deny the existence of space opera doctrines, or attempt to minimize their importance. However, Scientology has many graduated levels that one can progress through. Many who remain at relatively 'low' levels in the church are unaware of much of the space opera doctrines, which mostly begin at Operating Thetan level three, or "OT III". Because the secret information imparted to members is to be kept secret from others who have not attained that level, the member must publicly deny its existence when asked. OT III recipients must sign a waiver promising never to reveal its secrets before they are given the manila envelope containing the Xenu knowledge. It is knowledge so dangerous, members are told, anyone learning this material before he is ready could die.

Many members who remain at The Church of Scientology have objected to Scientology being painted as a science fiction fantasy . Space opera is defined in the Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary as:

"of or relating to time periods … millions of years ago which concerned activities in this and other galaxies. 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 and things that occurred on the track. " (Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary)

Particularly during its early years, Scientology had many links with science fiction. Hubbard was originally a pulp science fiction and adventure story writer, his book Dianetics was first publicised through John W. Campbell's magazine Astounding Science Fiction and many of his early followers were recruited from the science fiction milieu. Indeed, Hubbard returned to science fiction in the 1980s with his books Battlefield Earth and the ten-volume Mission Earth series.

Many science-fictional references can be found in Hubbard's Scientology-related works. Scientologists could find themselves living in "robot bodies" in past lives, being killed by "zap guns", living aboard spaceships or flying "space wagons" capable of travelling "a trillion light years per day". ("The Helatrobus Implants") Scientology magazines even now are often illustrated with pictures of spaceships and exploding stars, and some Scientology books published during the 1960s and 1970s depicted science fictional scenes on their dustjackets.

Hubbard later dramatised the story of Xenu as a film script, Revolt in the Stars, in the late 1970s, but failed to find a studio willing to buy the work. His novels Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth are not directly related to Scientology, but critics have noted a similarity between some themes of Mission Earth and Scientology doctrine, particularly "the very strong opposition against 20th century psychology and psychiatry, which is seen as a major source of evil." (Frenschkowski)

Rather than Scientology being based on science fiction, however, Hubbard argued that science fiction was actually an unconscious recollection of real past lives that could be uncovered in detail through Scientology auditing:

ou say, well, this is science fiction. No. No, no. No. The only part of science fiction they are, is the mistakes the science fiction writers have made while writing about their own past. ("The Helatrobus Implants")

Scientology's view of the universe

Scientology doctrine holds that the human spirit is manifested as what it terms thetan, a spiritual being roughly corresponding to religious and philosophical conceptions of the soul, which is immortal and theoretically immensely powerful, but is currently imprisoned in mortal human bodies and unable to reach its full potential. Thetans are credited with having created the universe trillions of years ago and with having the potential for "knowing and willing cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time": the ability to operate free of the encumbrances of the material universe.

However, over the "trillennia", thetans have been repeatedly subjected to the depredations of beings in the material or "MEST" universe. In the ongoing conflict between "theta" (good) and "entheta" (bad), material beings have captured, tortured and brainwashed thetans to make them more tractable. Xenu's galactic genocide was the most famous example of such methods but was not by any means the only such incident related in Scientology doctrine.

According to Hubbard, there have been many other such incidents and alien involvement in Earth's affairs is still ongoing. The result is that thetans today are severely "aberrated" by billions of years of mistreatment in past lives, causing mental and physical problems such as illness, insanity and war. The only way to resolve this is said to be through Scientology's "auditing" or counselling methods. During Scientology auditing sessions, the Scientologist confronts and handles a series of past lives and key incidents which they may have experienced.

Hubbard described many key incidents on the "whole track" ("the moment to moment record of a person’s existence in this universe in picture and impression form" ) in his writings and lectures. He also gave details of various alien civilizations, their roles and their histories — most of which seem to have involved the mass brainwashing of thetans with "implants" (false memories).

Scientologists and space opera

Some aspects of Scientology space opera are revealed only in higher-level Scientology courses. For instance, the story of Xenu is part of the Operating Thetan level III course, which requires an extensive (and expensive) preparatory series of courses. Only high-level Scientologists are given access to such "Advanced Technology" materials. This has not always been the case, as the Church of Scientology was initially quite open about its beliefs in space opera. Some "advanced" material was withdrawn from public circulation from the late 1960s onwards (although old copies can still be found in some public library collections, due to the Church's energetic policy of book donations).

Much Scientology space opera is nonetheless still accessible to "ordinary" Scientologists and in materials which are readily available to the general public. The Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary (ISBN 0884040372) contains many definitions for extraterrestrial civilizations and brainwashing incidents, and many of L. Ron Hubbard's publicly available works contain extensive references to space opera. Within Scientology, internal magazines often publicize aspects of space opera to entry-level "preclear" Scientologists. For instance, International Scientology News issue 3 contains an advertisement for volume 10 of Hubbard's Research and Discovery Series (ISBN 0884042189), which says in part:

Your mind is completely UNPREPARED for what is about to HAPPEN to your REALITY ...

Volume 10: The Infinite Potential of Theta is unsurpassed: Nowhere will you find more knowledge about the mysterious ENTITIES, also known as theta bodies, those inhabitants of every human being that talk to him, and lead him astray. Nowhere are you likely to find more concentrated data about the BETWEEN LIVES AREAS and LRH's eye-popping discovery of BODIES IN PAWN.

Do YOU have a body in pawn?

Read Volume 10, for once you know ALL about it, you won't have to worry about nightmares, inexplicable somatics, disturbing visio images of cylindrical tanks, bodies floating in green fluid ...

(International Scientology News issue 3, 1997; formatting as per original)

It is not clear to what degree the typical Scientologist personally shares the official belief in "space opera", though the above advertisement features in an "entry-level" publication. The views of a number of individual Scientologists were recorded in the 1960 book Have You Lived Before This Life? (ISBN 0884049582). It describes "past life" episodes as recounted by 43 Scientologists undergoing Scientology auditing during a conference in London in 1958 . The participants in the conference reported having lived past lives including the following:

• A past life as a robot working in a factory in space, which had gold animals hanging around it which "appeared solid but periodically imploded or exploded". It ground up discs to make small animals, which were then "inflated after blowing up through a totem and a cat devil" before being sent to other planets. A planet blew up, and the robot was blamed. He was drugged and forced to work the grinder.
• A past life "55,000,000,000,000,000,000 years ago" in which the being had to do outside repairs on a space ship. He suffered radiation burns and fell off, plunging into an ocean on the planet below. A manta ray killed him and he in turn inhabited the manta ray.
• A past life as a trouble-making free being on Mars "469,476,600 years ago". He tried to inhabit a "doll body", but he was captured and beaten up. The being was zapped with a ray gun by a Martian bishop in front of a congregation chanting "God is Love", before being run over by a large car and a steamroller. He was then frozen in an ice cube and dropped on Planet ZX 432, where he took another robot body and zapped and killed another robot. He took off in a flying saucer, and died when it exploded.
• A past life in which a being went to a planet where the forces of good were fighting evil black magic forces. After 74,000 years of battle, implants and hallucinations, he lost the fight, and joined the black magic side. He went to another planet on a space ship, where he was "deceived into a love affair with a robot decked out as a beautiful red-haired girl."
• Being transformed into an intergalactic walrus which perished after falling out of a flying saucer.
• Being "a very happy being who strayed to the planet Nostra 23,064,000,000 years ago".

Non-Scientologists and space opera

Non-Scientologists have, on the whole, not reacted with much sympathy to Scientology space opera. However, Hubbard claimed that the power of past life implants was such that non-Scientologists would involuntarily react to depictions of space opera incidents. In the wake of Hubbard's revelation of Xenu's act of mass murder, images from the Xenu story and the related implants were exploited to improve Scientology's recruitment prospects.

Hubbard is reported to have ordered that Scientology books be reissued with covers based on images from OT III . The 1968 and subsequent reprints of Dianetics have had covers depicting an exploding volcano, apparently alluding to the volcanoes in the Xenu story — "Man responds to an exploding volcano" (Hubbard, "Assists"). Other cover images may reference Xenu as well: the cover of the 1972 edition of Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science shows pictures of uniformed men in white helmets carrying boxes in and out of a spaceship, which may refer to the transportation of Xenu's victims. These images were supposed to have a lasting impact on non-Scientologists:

A special 'Book Mission' was sent out to promote these books, now empowered and made irresistible by the addition of these overwhelming symbols or images. Organization staff were assured that if they simply held up one of the books, revealing its cover, that any bookstore owner would immediately order crateloads of them. A customs officer, seeing any of the book covers in one's luggage, would immediately pass one on through.
(Corydon)

Since the 1980s, the volcano has also been depicted in television commercials advertising Dianetics.

Scientology's history of the universe

• 70 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago (7×10 years): The Story of Creation Implants
• 40.7 trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago to 5.9 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago (4.07×10–5.9×10 years): The Glade Implants are implanted
• 83 trillion trillion trillion years ago to about 40.7 trillion trillion trillion trillion years ago (8.3×10–4.07×10 years): The Bear Goals are implanted
• 110,000 trillion trillion years ago or earlier to 390 trillion trillion years ago (1.1×10–3.9×10 years): The Invisible Picture Goals implants are implanted by an unknown alien race
• 390 trillion trillion years ago to 370 trillion trillion years ago (3.9×10–3.7×10 years): The Black Thetan Goals are implanted
• 4 quadrillion years ago (4×10 years): Thetans enter the present universe and experience Incident I
• 382 trillion years ago to 52 trillion years ago (3.82×10–5.2×10 years): The Helatrobus Implants are implanted
• 319 trillion years ago to 83 trillion trillion trillion years ago (3.19×10–8.3×10 years): The Gorilla Goals Implants
• 315 trillion years ago to 216 trillion years ago (3.15×10–2.16×10 years): The Aircraft Door Goals are implanted
• 80 trillion years ago (8×10 years): The Galactic Confederacy is established
• 52 trillion years ago (5.2×10 years): The Helatrobus government is established
• 44 trillion years ago (4.4×10 years, "43,891,832,611,177 years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10:02½ PM Daylight Greenwich Time May 9, 1963"): The Heaven Implants are given, presumably by Helatrobus
• 38 trillion years ago (3.8×10 years): Helatrobus falls or is destroyed

  It should be noted that all dates given above are far beyond the current scientific consensus for the age of the present universe (approximately 13.7 billion years)

• 75 million years ago (7.5×10 years): Xenu commits his famous genocide and brainwashes his victims with the R6 Implants
• 50 million years ago (5×10 years): The Body Builder Incident
• 200,000 years ago (2×10 years): The Marcab Confederacy is established
• "Hundreds of years ago to hundreds of thousands of years ago":- The Marcab Invasion Force implants thetans with the Train Goals
• Circa 6235 BC: The Fifth Invader Force invades the Solar System but is defeated by the Fourth Invader Force
• AD 1150: The Espinol Confederacy abandons the Solar System

Alien civilizations

Hubbard said that the following "alien civilizations" exist(ed):

Arslycus

Arslycus was an ancient civilization located in space, rather than on a planet, as this was at a time when "nobody had invented planets yet." Hubbard described it as being notorious for its mind-numbingly tedious jobs, putting thetans to work for "ten thousand lives in Arslycus, on the average", spent doing nothing better than polishing bricks.

The civilization was ultimately destroyed when "one of these slaves suddenly got the big idea of mass" and Arslycus "broke to pieces and scattered around in that particular part of the sky as being of too great a mass to sustain itself". This was, apparently, "about the point where you got the law of gravity coming in strongly. And after that the law of gravity began to affect itself on the universe more and more and more and more and you started to get all kinds of suns and planets and the most fantastic array of things." (PDC, 1 December 1952)

The name was possibly tongue-in-cheek, given that it was pronounced as "arse-lickers" and would have originated when Hubbard was in England in the early 1950s.

Espinol Confederacy

The Espinol Confederacy is a lesser but apparently still extant alien civilization, said by Hubbard to have lasted "something on the order of a few hundred thousand years." ("The ITSA Line") It used to control Earth's Solar System, which was "Sun 12" of the "Espinol United Stars" (formal name: "Espinol United Stars, or the Espinol United Moons, Planets, and Asteroids: This Quarter of the Universe is Ours"). The Espinols abandoned the Solar System in AD 1150, "when a group on Mars was finally abolished and vanished", and since then have used the system as a dumping ground for convicts. ("The Free Being")

Galactic Confederacy

Main article: Galactic Confederacy

The Galactic Confederacy was the political unit formerly ruled by the tyrant Xenu. It ruled a broad swath of the galaxy, and lasted for "eighty trillion years". ("The ITSA Line") 75 million years ago, at the time of Xenu's mass murder, the Galactic Confederacy comprised 26 stars and 76 planets, including Earth (then called Teegeeack). Its inhabitants "were walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute. And the cars they drove looked exactly the same and the trains they ran looked the same and the boats they had looked the same. Circa 1950, 1960." ("Assists") Modern civilization closely resembles that of the Galactic Confederacy 75 million years ago because of an unconscious re-enactment of Xenu's "R6 implants".

The Church of Scientology consciously models itself on aspects of the Galactic Confederacy. The Sea Org, an elite grouping within the Church of Scientology, has a laurel wreath logo said by Hubbard to be based on the symbol of the "Loyal Officers", an anti-Xenu faction within the Galactic Confederacy. Each of the leaves on the laurel wreath is said to represent one of the Galactic Confederacy's stars. According to the Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, "the Sea Org symbol, adopted and used as the symbol of a Galactic Confederacy far back in the history of this sector, derives much of its power and authority from that association."

Helatrobus

Main article: Helatrobus

Helatrobus was a now-extinct "interplanetary nation" which was only a "little pipsqueak government, didn't amount to very much." It was distinguished by "gold crosses on their planes, like the American Red Cross or something of the sort." ("State of OT") Despite their outwardly friendly aspect, the Helatrobans were responsible for a particularly vicious set of implants, the "Heaven Implants", which were given some 43 trillion years ago. They were also responsible for implanting the Gorilla Goals.

Invader Forces

According to Hubbard, the Solar System has been occupied repeatedly — and sometimes concurrently — by multiple Invader Forces. They were discussed in detail in a 1952 lecture, "The Role of Earth", in which Hubbard described the conflict between the Fourth Invader Force (already occupying the Solar System) and the Fifth Invader Force (which invaded without knowing that the Fourth Invader Force was already in residence).

The Fifth Invader Force renamed the Solar System as "Space Station 33" but "without suspecting that the Fourth Invader Force had been there for God knows how many skillion years, had been sitting down, and they have their installations up on Mars, and they have a tremendous, screened operation". The result was a major clash between the two Invader Forces some 8,200 years ago in the Himalayas, when the Third Battalion of the Fifth Invader Force landed about 72 miles (116 km) northwest of the Khyber Pass and attempted to set up an implant station. The battalion was captured, taken to the Fourth Invaders' complex on Mars, brainwashed and stuck into human bodies. As for the remainder,

the Fifth Invader Force, out of its own protection, took over Venus – oh, relatively in modern times – took over Venus and tried to stabilize the Venusian. If you called a Fifth Invader, though, a Venusian, he would probably shoot you out of hand, because it would be a horrible insult. They merely monitor the government of Venus, and they leave Mars strictly alone.
("The Role of Earth")

Many present-day thetans are said to have been former members of the Fifth Invader Force and can be distinguished by the fact that they believe themselves to be "a very strange insectlike creature with unthinkably horrible hands." (Scientology 8-8008)

The Invader Forces are still said to be controlling "installations in Mongolia … installations in the Pyrenees here on Earth, and there are installations down in the Mountains of the Moon in Africa which pick up, very often, people on death." (sic)

Marcab Confederacy

The Marcab Confederacy is said to be one of the most powerful galactic civilizations still active. He describes it as:

various planets united into a very vast civilization which has come forward up through the last 200,000 years, formed out of the fragments of earlier civilizations. In the last 10,000 years they have gone on with a sort of decadent kicked-in-the-head civilization that contains automobiles, business suits, fedora hats, telephones, spaceships — a civilization which looks almost an exact duplicate but is worse off than the current US civilization.
("Auditing Comm Cycles")

The capital of the Confederacy is said to be "one of the tail stars of the Big Dipper", probably Alkaid, a star 108 light years distant from Earth. The Marcabians used to rule Earth at some point in the past but lost control of it due to "losses in war and other things".

The Marcabians had an oppressive political system: "if was considered to be in contempt of court or anything like that, simply fried since there was a curtain of radioactive material which went clear across the front of the bench anywhere that a witness or anybody would stand, and so on." ("History and development of processes: question and answer period") They invented income tax as a means of punishment, with the death penalty imposed for making even the slightest mistake in returns — "one comma wrong and it's 'dead forever'." The Marcabians also appear to have been distinctly socialistic, having "had plan balanced economies" (presumably some form of planned economy). ("E-Meter Actions, Errors in Auditing")

They were also keen on motor racing and every once in a while Scientologists undergoing auditing "will run into race tracks and race-track drivers". Hubbard described this in some detail in a 1960 lecture:

They had turbine-generated cars that went about 275 miles an hour (443 km/h). They ran with a high whine. I notice they've just now invented the motor again. And they had tracks that were booby-trapped with atom bombs, and they had side bypasses. The tracks were mined, and the grandstands were leaded-paned.
("Create and Confront")

The tracks were deliberately designed to be as dangerous as possible, with "a mountain that you went up to the top of and fell off", and death was commonplace. This, however, was not a problem, as Marcabian medicine was so good that nobody ever died permanently. According to author Russell Miller, Hubbard liked to reminisce to his followers about "how he was a race-car driver in the Marcab civilization". One of the people who accompanied him aboard his private fleet in the late 1960s described Hubbard's stories of life with the Marcabians:

LRH said he was a race driver called the Green Dragon who set a speed record before he was killed in an accident. He came back in another lifetime as the Red Devil and beat his own record, then came back and did it again as the Blue Streak. Finally he realized all he was doing was breaking his own records and it was no game any more.
(Miller, p.280)

Hubbard describes exactly this in his lecture "Create and Confront", telling how he went through multiple lives as a Marcabian racing driver with names like The Green Rocket, The Red Comet, The Silver Streak, The Gold Bomb, and so on.

Hubbard stated that the Marcab Confederacy was now using Earth as a "prison planet". When a person dies or "drops the body", as Scientologists put it, his thetan is pulled into a Marcab-established "implant station" or "report station". The idea that Earth is a "prison planet", maintained by "entheta beings" or Targs who dumped their enemies on Earth, was first put forward in a 1952 lecture, "Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes". A steady flow of flying saucers is said to be still dropping off more entheta beings.

The report area for most has been Mars. Some women report to stations elsewhere in the Solar System. There are occasional incidents about Earth report stations. The report stations are protected by screens. The last report station on Earth was established in the Pyrenees.
(A History of Man)

The thetans are brainwashed and sent back to Earth, where they find a new body to inhabit. Only Scientologists who have reached the level of "Operating Thetan" are said to be able to avoid this fate.

Other alien civilizations

Hubbard mentions a number of other alien civilizations in his writings, though he does not go into any detail about them. These include the "Three-and-a-half Invaders, ... the Psi Galaxy, Galaxy 82." ("The Story of a Static") According to the official Church of Scientology notes accompanying the lectures in which he alluded to them, these were "made up" (presumably for humorous effect), contrasting with the supposedly real invader forces and civilizations cited above.

Key incidents

In his writings and lectures, Hubbard describes many key incidents said to have occurred to thetans during the past few trillion years. Generally speaking, these followed a consistent pattern. A hostile alien civilization would capture free thetans and brainwash them with implants designed to confuse them or otherwise render them more amenable to control. Instances of implantation are termed incidents, while the subject of the implants are often termed goals.

In a specific incident, a thetan would be implanted with two or more opposing objectives (e.g. "to be", "not to be") which, being opposed, cause the thetan great confusion. The memory of the implanting then becomes obscured or is deliberately deleted. This confusion is said to linger for trillions of years and causes unresolved psychological problems in the present day. According to Hubbard, only Scientology methods can resolve the burdens left by such traumas.

Aircraft Door Goals

The Aircraft Door Goals were implanted between 315 trillion years ago and 216 trillion years ago aboard the fuselage of an aircraft, with the thetan held motionless in front of the aircraft door. Hubbard writes that "the goal items were laid in with explosions". The specific goals given in this implant were variants of the command "to create." ("Routine 3N: Line Plots", HCOB 14 July 1963)

Bear Goals

The Bear Goals were very similar to the Gorilla Goals (see below) with the same set of goals, except that "instead of a mechanical gorilla a mechanical or live bear was used, and the motion was even more violent." They were implanted by "a group called, I think, "The Brothers of the Bear" and were the ancestors of the Hoipolloi." ("Routine 3N: Line Plots", HCOB 14 July 1963)

Black Thetan Goals

The Black Thetan Goals, also known as the Glade Implants, were implanted between "390 trillion trillion years to 370 trillion trillion years ago". According to Hubbard, they were "in a glade surrounded by the stone heads of "black thetans" who spat white energy at the trapped thetan". The goals included such things as "To End, To be Dead, To be Asleep" and so on.

Body Builder Incident

The Body Builder Incident took place around 50 million years ago. The thetan was forced to "fight again with his attention units" and was "generally tailored into a body." (A History of Man)

Bodies in pawn

Bodies in pawn result from an ancient "very gruesome experience" in which

a fellow is grabbed, hypnotized, shoved into an electronic field, and then told he is somewhere else. And so he departs – most of him – and goes to the new location while still being under control of the implanters. He picks up a MEST body in the new location and starts living a life there, while still having a living body somewhere else. The implanters can keep his original body alive indefinitely, and control the thetan through it. If the thetan tries to flee, the hypnotizers simply cause pain to the original body, still alive in a vat of fluid, and he is immediately recalled. That's a BODY IN PAWN. It's a second body you may have, living somewhere else, right in present time. But the second body is not under YOUR direct control.
(Adventure magazine, Church of Scientology, 1998; see also Hubbard, Research and Discovery Series vol. 10)

They can apparently cause major problems for people undergoing medical operations, as "pain, an anaesthetic or a serious accident cause him to change to the other area with a shocking impact on the other body. The other body quite commonly dies or is deranged by the sudden impact." This gives the patient a repressed feeling of having died and leaves him "very, very badly disturbed." (A History of Man)

Bubble Gum Incident

The Bubble Gum Incident was an important early incident "where you are hit with a motion and finally develop an obsession about motion". It was the first incident on the "time track" which included words. ("Technique 88 and the Whole Track Part I")

Gorilla Goals

The Gorilla Goals were a series of implants created by invaders from Helatrobus "between about 319 trillion years ago to about 256 trillion trillion years ago" (or 89 trillion trillion years ago in another Hubbard lecture). They were

given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel ... The symbol of a Gorilla was always present in the place the goal was given. Sometimes a large gorilla, black, was seen elsewhere than the park. A mechanical or a live gorilla was always seen in the park.

This activity was conducted by the Hoipolloi, a group of operators in meat body societies. They were typical carnival people. They let out concessions for these implant "Amusement Parks." A pink-striped white shirt with sleeve garters was the uniform of the Hoipolloi. Such a figure often rode on the roller coaster cars. Monkeys were also used on the cars. Elephants sometimes formed part of the equipment.
("Routine 3N: Line Plots", HCOB 14 July 1963)

The Hoipolloi used "fantastic motion" as well as "blasts of raw electricity and explosions" to brainwash the hapless thetans into accepting the Gorilla Goals. The goals themselves were a series of simple tasks intended to trick the thetans into limiting their inherent abilities, with the goals including "To End", "To be Dead", "To be Asleep", "To be Solid", "To be Sexual" and so on.

Heaven Implants

The Heaven Implants were given "43,891,832,611,177 years, 344 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes and 40 seconds from 10:02½ PM Daylight Greenwich Time May 9, 1963." They comprised two series of views of Heaven, the first of which was quite positive: Hubbard compares Heaven to "Busch Gardens in Pasadena". In the second series, Heaven had become a lot shabbier:

The place is shabby. The vegetation is gone. The pillars are scruffy. The saints have vanished. So have the Angels. A sign on one (the left as you "enter") says "This is Heaven". The right has a sign "Hell" with an arrow and inside the grounds one can see the excavations like archaeological diggings with raw terraces, that lead to "Hell".

Hubbard reported that he had encountered no "devils or satans". Heaven was, however, not quite as conventionally depicted, and took the form of a town which "consisted of a trolley bus, some building fronts, sidewalks, train tracks, a boarding house, a bistro in a basement where there is a "bulletin board" well lighted, and a BANK BUILDING." Hubbard described how the second series of Heaven implants depicts:

a passenger getting on the trolley bus, a "workman" halfway down the first stairs of To Forget "eating lunch" and in To Be in Heaven a gardener or electrician adjusting an implant box behind a hedge and periodically leaping up and screaming.
("Heaven", HCOB May 11 1963)

After being ridiculed in the Anderson Report (an Australian public inquiry into Scientology), this bulletin was withdrawn from circulation.

Helatrobus Implants

These were implanted by the inhabitants of the planet Helatrobus, some "382 trillion years ago to 52 trillion years ago". The Helatrobans were motivated by a fear of free thetans and sought to restrain them by capturing and brainwashing thetans in order to weaken them. In a series of lectures, Hubbard goes into some detail about how this was done:

Planets were surrounded suddenly by radioactive cloud masses. And very often a long time before the planet came under attack from these implant people, waves of radioactive clouds, Magellanic clouds, black and gray, would sweep over and engulf the planet, and it would be living in an atmosphere of radioactivity, which was highly antipathetic to the living beings, bodies, plants, anything else that was on this planet.

And so planetary systems would become engulfed in radioactive masses, gray and black. And the earmarks of such a planetary action was gray and black – gray towering masses of clouds. These Magellanic clouds would not otherwise have come anywhere near a planetary system.
("State of OT")

(Note that the Magellanic Clouds are in fact dwarf galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way, and so are not clouds at all, let alone "radioactive clouds".)

When a planet had been engulfed, the Helatrobans would attack it with "little orange-colored bombs that would talk" and the clouds themselves would talk: "And here you'd have a gray cloud going by and it'd be saying, 'Hark! Hark! Hark!' you see? 'Watch out! Look out! Who's there? Who's that?'"

Hapless people on the planet's surface would be kidnapped using a small capsule "placed at will in space. It shot out a large bubble, the being would grab at the bubble or strike at it and be sucked at once into the capsule. Then the capsule would be retracted into an aircraft." A victim would then be implanted for up to six months and the Helatrobans would "fix him on a post in a big bunch of stuff ... put him on a post and wobbled him around and ran him through this implant of goals on a little monowheel. Little monowheel pole trap. And it had the effigy of a body on it." ("State of OT")

Incident I

Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago and provides a cosmological explanation of the origin of all universes. The unsuspecting thetan was subjected to a loud snapping noise followed by a flood of luminescence, then saw a chariot followed by a trumpeting cherub. After a loud set of snaps, the thetan was overwhelmed by darkness. This is described as the implant opening the gateway to this universe, meaning that these traumatic memories are what separates thetans from their static (natural, godlike) state. The incident is described in Operating Thetan level III (OT III), written in 1967.

Invisible Picture Goals

The Invisible Picture Goals were implanted by an early race of alien implanters some time between "110,000 trillion trillion years ago or earlier to 390 trillion trillion years ago". They comprised brainwashing of captive thetans by showing them pictures of diametrically opposed goals such as "Wake, Never Wake, Sleep, Never Sleep", as well as invisible pictures to confuse the thetan. The other pictures would "consist usually of a scene of a cave, a railway, an airplane, a view of a sun and planets". ("Routine 3N, Line Plots", HCOB July 14 1963)

Obscene Dog Incident

In the "Assists" lecture of October 3, 1968, Hubbard described a surreal cosmological event said to take place shortly after Incident I (the creation of the universe): "There's the incident called "The Obscene Dog" with it's just a little bit later than Incident One. And sometimes actually by running it, why you can get the PC into Incident One. The Obscene Dog was a sort of a brass dog in a sitting position and anybody who got around to the front of the dog got caught in some electronic current and passed through the dog to the dogs rear end and spat out. Thetans didn't like this."

R6 Implants

Main article: Xenu

The R6 Implants were the work of the Galactic Confederacy's tyrannical leader, Xenu, 75 million years ago. According to Hubbard, after Xenu blew up his billions of captured subjects, they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted pictures "contain God, the Devil, Angels, space opera, theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England." ("Assists")

Train Goals

Devised by the Marcab Invasion Force and implemented between "hundreds of years ago to hundreds of thousands of years ago", the Train Goals were a series of implants given in a huge train station. The thetan was put into "a railway carriage quite like a British railway coach with compartments" and subjected to a barrage of "white energy". During the implant sequence:

a face may come up and say "You still here? Get out. Get off this train. We hate you." And from the speakers "This happened to you yesterday, tomorrow, now. This is your departure point, keep coming back. You'll be meeting all your friends here. When you're killed and dead keep coming back. You haven't a chance to get away. You've got to report in. This happened to you days ago, weeks ago, years ago. You don't know when this happened to you. We hate you. Get out. Don't ever come back."
("Routine 3N - The Train GPMs - The Marcab Between Lives Implants", HCOB 24 August 1963)

References

Lectures by Hubbard

• "Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes", April 1952
• "Technique 88 and the Whole Track Part I", 26 June 1952
• "The Role of Earth", November 1952
• Philadelphia Doctorate Course (PDC), 1 December 1952
• "History and development of processes: question and answer period", 17 December 1954
• "Create and Confront", 3 January 1960
• "E-Meter Actions, Errors in Auditing", 12 June 1961
• "The Helatrobus Implants", 21 May 1963
• "State of OT", 23 May 1963
• "The Free Being", 9 July 1963
• "Auditing Comm Cycles", 6 August 1963
• "The ITSA Line", 21 August 1963
• "Org Board and Livingness", 6 April 1965
• "Assists" lecture. 3 October 1968, #10 in the Class VIII series. (Audio extracts - )

HCO Bulletins

• "Heaven", HCOB May 11 1963 (no longer published by the Church of Scientology)
• "Routine 3N: Line Plots", HCOB 14 July 1963
• "Routine 3N - The Train GPMs - The Marcab Between Lives Implants", HCOB 24 August 1963

Books

• Jon Atack, A Piece Of Blue Sky (Kensington Publishing Corporation, New York, 1990; ISBN 081840499X)
• Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman? (Lyle Stuart, New Jersey, 1987; ISBN 0818404442)
• L. Ron Hubbard, A History Of Man, 1954
• L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary (current edition, Bridge Publications, 1995; ISBN 0884040372)
• L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology 8-8008 (current edition, Bridge Publications, 1989; ISBN 0884044297)
• Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story Of L. Ron Hubbard (Henry Holt, New York, 1988; ISBN 1550130277)
• Christopher Partridge, UFO Religions (Routledge, 2003; ISBN 0415263247)

Other references

• Church of Scientology, International Scientology News #3 (1997)
• Church of Scientology, The Official Scientology and Dianetics Glossary
• Lure of the celebrity sect (Jamie Doward, The Observer, Sun 16 May 2004)
• Marco Frenschkowski: L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, Marburg Journal of Religion, Volume 4, No. 1 (July 1999)
• Hubbard, "The Story of a Static", Professional Auditor's Bulletin 1 February 1957

• Scientology beliefs and practices
• Space opera