Body thetan
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In Scientology, a thetan is the term roughly corresponding to one's "soul", and a Body Thetan is an alien thetan who is 'stuck' in, on or near a human body, and all human bodies are said to be covered in these misplaced thetans, or clusters of them. This information is not divulged until one reaches the third Operating Thetan level (or OT III). [1]
Further still, by the time the subject reaches the level of OT VII, it is revealed to him that his physical body is not just covered with Body Thetans, but is literally composed of them. The ultimate goal of getting rid of one's Body Thetans, then, becomes getting rid of one's body and "exteriorizing" as an all-powerful disembodied spirit that no longer needs a physical body.[2]
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[edit] Free Will
Body Thetans, according to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, cling to a body because they have lost their free will as a result of an event in their past.
There are many types of events which result in a Thetan losing its free will, and they cease being a Body Thetan when free will is restored. There are several Scientology Auditing 'processes' which are believed to help a body thetan restore free will. Upon reaching OT 3, the individual finds Body Thetans by locating any sensation of pressure or mass in his or her body. This is addressed telepathically as a cluster, and taken through the cluster-making incident of 75 million years ago. [3]
A Body Thetan (or group(s) of them) can contribute to a person being sick or having difficulty with a body part. A Thetan who is just 'hanging around' of their own free will, perhaps to become a woman's next child, is not necessarily a Body Thetan.
[edit] Secrecy
Body Thetans are first addressed in Scientology's Operating Thetan level 3 (known as OT III) [4], as part of Hubbard's ongoing series of Space Opera revelations about ancient alien entities and civilizations, such as Xenu and Helatrobus. [5] Upon reaching this level, the Scientologist is told that many Body Thetans are the disembodied souls of the billions of space aliens brought to Earth and blown up by nuclear bombs in volcanos by an evil alien called Xenu, who is said to lead the Galactic Confederacy.
Often members of the Church of Scientology will publicly deny the existence of space opera doctrines, or attempt to minimize their importance. 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 Body Thetan knowledge. [6] It is knowledge so dangerous, members are told, anyone learning this material before he is ready could die.
Despite the Church's efforts to keep the story secret, details have been leaked over the years. OT III was first revealed in Robert Kaufman's 1972 book Inside Scientology: Or How I Found Scientology and Became Super Human, in which Kaufman detailed his own experiences of OT III. It was later described in a 1981 Clearwater Sun article by Richard Leiby, and came to greater public fame in a 1985 court case brought against the Church by Lawrence A. Wollersheim. The Church attempted to keep the case file checked out by a reader at all times, but the story was synopsised in the Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1985 and detailed in William Poundstone's Bigger Secrets (1986) from information presented in the Wollersheim case. Church lawyer Warren McShane later claimed the story had never been secret [7], although maintaining there were nevertheless trade secrets contained in OT III. Notably, McShane discussed the details of the Xenu/Body Thetans story at some length and specifically attributed the authorship of the story to Hubbard [8].
Audio recordings exist of Hubbard lectures that discuss Body Thetans and other Space Opera subjects. [9]
[edit] Removal
In 1978, Hubbard announced a visualization technique to use against one's Body Thetans. The "Thetan Hand Technique" is to "mock up", or create in one's mind, an invisible thetan hand, and to use the edge of it as a knife cutting away the Body Thetans from yourself, literally slicing away with mental energy the "strings or lines or suction cups or beams" that connect your body to the Body Thetans. (HCOB 16, Sep 78, Issue 3) [10]
Scientologist Ralph Hilton describes the Thetan Hand Technique this way:
One can mock up a hand and, using it as an edge, pass it between the body and the mass to separate it off. There are often lines of attachment to the body which can be strings, beams, lines or suction caps. These have to be severed using a suitable mock up. If one uses a hand to throw off a mass then the hand should be thrown off together with the mass to ensure that there are no communication lines left to the body. One can have a phenomena of clusters stuck in layers together in a mass or in superimposed ridges. The thetan hand technique can be used to separate them apart so that they can be addressed separately. In general, difficulty in blowing off masses is caused by lack of sleep, vitamins or calcium. It can also be made harder by carrying on a session too long and over-restimulating the pc. [11]
Hilton also recommends a technique called "Blowing Thetans by Time Track Shifting":
"A bt stuck on the track is stuck in the time flow. Time itself has stuck as a flow and the being is stuck at that point in the past. An effective way of blowing bts is to put an effort-postulate there to move them a little earlier than the stuck point. This jolts them loose on the time track and they come up to present time and blow off." [12]
In HCOB 29, Hubbard vaguely describes another technique whereby one finds a key cluster of Body Thetans holding other clusters of Body Thetans together ("there can be a thousand or two BTs in such a mass"), and if you "handle" this key unit then "sometimes these explode apart as they blow." [13]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links and references
- What is Scientology: OT III Released. A description of the OT III released. Church of Scientology.
- OT III Course, summary and comments
- Margery Wakefield's "The Road to Xenu"
- OT III Scholarship Page (David S. Touretzky)
- The NOTs Scholars Home Page (Scientology) (David S. Touretzky)
- Spaink on the Fishman affadavit
