Editing Auditing (Scientology) (section)

=== Incidents and implants ===

"Incidents" are events that happened to a person which continue to have a grip on their mind or spirit, and negatively affects them. It could be an accident or traumatic event that includes pain and subconscious commands, whether from this life or in a past life. Auditing procedures locate incidents in the person and relieve or erase them from the person's mind.{{r|lewishandbook|p=3-4}}{{Efn|Quotation: "The invention of language and the entrance of language into the [[Engram (Dianetics)|engram bank]] of the reactive mind seriously complicates the mechanistic reactions. The engrams containing language impinge themselves upon the conscious mind as commands." —L. Ron Hubbard {{r|hubbard-dmsmh|p=xiii}} }}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=207}}

"Implants" are an element of some incidents involving externally-imposed memories that contain commands and fictitious events. Hubbard alleges that the person will believe the implanted incident actually existed, and the commands in the implant make the person act strangely. A contemporary analogy would be the installing of a [[Hypnosis|hypnotic]] command. However, the implants Hubbard presents in his lectures and writings are characterized by past-life incidents set in technologically advanced, [[space opera]] scenarios. Typically, these implants involve electronic fields entrapping and zapping a [[thetan]] (the being), installing commands, and showing cinema-like moving pictures to install false memories.{{Efn|Glossary entry in Corydon (1987): "IMPLANT: Fundamentally any hypnotic suggestion. Hubbard defined it in terms of "space opera": a highly technical and complex system of mass hypnosis inflicted on populations by evil rulers. He claims that these implants have been inflicted upon everyone on the planet. An example of the "most devastating" of these are in the "Wall of Fire" chapter.{{r|corydon}} }}{{r|atack|p=30}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|p=206}}{{r|lewis-ch4|p=91}} Such incidents are alleged to have occurred millions or trillions of years ago.{{efn|name=scale|L. Ron Hubbard used the [[Long and short scales|short scale]] numbering system where a ''billion'' is 1,000,000,000, a ''trillion'' is 1,000,000,000,000, a ''quadrillion'' is 1,000,000,000,000,000, and a ''trillion trillion'' is "1" followed by 24 zeroes.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Book of E-Meter Drills |year=1968 |first=L. Ron |last=Hubbard |author-link=L. Ron Hubbard |editor-first=Mary Sue |editor-last=Hubbard |editor-link=Mary Sue Hubbard |at=E-Meter Drill 25}}</ref>}} However, Hubbard believed that implantation is being performed in contemporary times by psychiatrists and priests.{{r|kent1999|p=104,106}}{{r|atack|p=344}} 

Methods of trapping and implanting a thetan might include blasts of raw electricity, explosions, fantastic motion, or white energy. Hubbard named his implants based on elements in the narratives—like aircraft door, gorilla, hoipolloi, bear, black thetan, and invisible picture.{{r|malko|pp=111-3}}

Hubbard wrote extensively about specific incidents and implants he alleged are common to all beings on earth, and which should be "audited out" (removed) in order to help a person become more sane or spiritually free. The incidents that have most been covered in media, scholarly works, and books include the between-lives implants,{{r|miller|p=206}} Christian-story implants, and the OT III implants known as the [[Xenu|Xenu story]].

Jon Atack wrote that "implants are [considered] the true foundation of the Reactive Mind" and specific implants are addressed by auditing on [[Operating Thetan#OTII|OT levels II and III]].{{r|atack|pp=30, 32}} Hubbard names the earliest implant on the whole track as "Facsimile One", and describes the "Between-lives implants" as forgetter implants that cause humans to not remember their past lives.{{r|atack|p=133}}{{r|hubbard-techdict|pp=43, 154}}

Hubbard's incidents and implants are unique to Scientology beliefs and have not been proven to exist or to have happened. Critics have noted many scientific implausibilities connected with the OT III incidents. Peter Forde's paper "A Scientific Scrutiny of OT III" analyzes the matter in detail,{{r|forde}} and the placement of events trillions of years ago contradicts the currently accepted [[age of the Universe]] as 13.8 billion years.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html |website=space.com |title=How Old is the Universe |first=Keith |last=Cooper |date=August 28, 2023}}</ref>

Some examples of Hubbard's incidents and implants include the following.

{{Anchor|Helatrobus}}
;Helatrobus implants
: Hubbard describes the [[Helatrobus]] implants as occurring 52 to 382 trillion years ago by an alien nation called the Helatrobans, who sought to restrain minds by capturing and brainwashing thetans; these implants are said to be responsible for the concept of [[Heaven]].{{r|hcob19630511|helatrobus}}

; Heaven implants
: The Heaven Implants were dated at "43,891,832,611,177&nbsp;years, 344&nbsp;days, 10&nbsp;hours, 20&nbsp;minutes and 40&nbsp;seconds ago from 10:{{frac|02|1|2}}&nbsp;P.M. Daylight [[Greenwich Mean Time|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#Pasadena (1906–1937)|Busch Gardens in Pasadena]]". In the second series, Heaven had become a lot shabbier:
: {{blockquote|text=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".{{r|hcob19630511}}}}
: After being ridiculed in the [[Anderson Report]] (a 1960s Australian public inquiry into Scientology), this bulletin was withdrawn from circulation.

; Incident I
: Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago,{{efn|name=scale}} wherein an 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 the present universe, separating thetans from their ''static'' (natural/godlike) state. The incident is described in [[Operating Thetan]] level III (OT III), written in 1967.{{r|wright|p=104}}

; R6 implants (Incident II)
: The R6 Implants were the work of the Galactic Confederacy's tyrannical leader, [[Xenu]], 75 million years ago. According to Hubbard, Xenu destroyed billions of captured subjects during Incident II by dropping them into volcanoes and attacking them with [[nuclear weapon]]s.<ref>{{Cite news|author= Jamie Doward |title= Lure of the celebrity sect|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/may/16/religion.world |work=The Guardian |date= 2004-05-16 |access-date=2008-02-12}}</ref> The subjects, once disembodied, were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for thirty-six days. This implanted pictures "contain[ing] [[God]], [[the Devil]], Angels, [[space opera]], theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England."<ref>Hubbard, Assists, Class VIII Course, October 3, 1968</ref>

; Bodies in pawn
: One of the more gruesome incidents is "Bodies in pawn":{{r|SHOM|pages=80–81}}
: {{blockquote|text=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 [physical] 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 [being] through it. If the [being] 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. —L. Ron Hubbard <ref>{{Cite magazine |magazine=[[Bibliography of Scientology#Periodicals|Source]] |issue=105 |page=39 |year=1997 |title=Bodies in Pawn}}</ref><ref>Hubbard, ''Research and Discovery Series'' vol. 10</ref>}}