"There are no demons," he had written in 1950. A couple of years later, he spoke of self-generated "thinking entities."
Then, a cluarter of a century later, he was party to the development of procedures with which any medicine man or witch doctor would probably feel at home. These procedures dealt with the eviction of swarms of non-self-generated parasitic beings.
Now, any decent witch doctor "servicing a client" does his thing and a few hours later goes on his way, goat, chicken or pig in hand, in exchange for his services.
In the varied literature regarding "exorcism" and the like -- whether such things are considered self-generated or not -- one sees a regular reference to a relatively small number of "influences,", "thought forms," "obsessions," or whatever, in need of"handling".
Hubbard operated on a much grander scale. From his hypnotic pedestal of "ultimate authority," he stated to his followers that everyone was engulfed in thousands upon thousands of degraded beings.
JOHN AUSLEY (ex-Flagship Class XII):
He talked about how, if you convince a person hard enough and long enough that they're at effect, you'll drive them insane. Then he turns right around and does that: He says, "You're the effect of all these body Thetans!" (beings attached to the body)
"Mystery is the glue that sticks Thetans [spiritual beings] to things," Hubbard once said. He proceeded to use this principle in marketing his OT levels. The secrecy and mystery surrounding these levels pulled people in, bringing in also their wallets and check-books; a major part of it . . . just to discover the answer to the mystery.
While still in the Church, I observed something very odd: The wealthier the Scientologist, the more "body Thetans" he had. Such unfortunate people were being sold seemingly endless auditing for the eradication of their "fleas."
Such auditing costs over $400 per hour. It is quite usual for Scientologists to spend well over $100,000 for this level alone. One man, a geologist, engineer and entrepreneur, spent $450,000.
According to Hubbard, "NOTs handles" are those beings or entities or "body thetans" ("BTs") that are located in the body or around the body. The auditing procedure of NOTs is supposed to locate those en tities, and send them off to do their own thing -- picking up a body of their own or whatever -- but no longer infesting the individual or his body.
The entities are being various things, like a body part (a bone, arm, cell, whatever) or a particular personality, or condition, such as "TV watcher," or "fear," or "worker," or "solitary angry man," and so on.
According to this line of thought, people get confused as to who they are and who they are not. A person hears these voices or feels desires, and so on, and thinks he is the source of them.
Yet, the theory goes, you are not necessarily the originator of these thoughts or impulses. Another may be.
So, by identifying who is the being (who is the source of these vocalizations or impulses) and spotting where it is located, you are freed to think for yourself.
So an auditor has you (the main guy in control) ask each BT, "What are you?" and "Who are you?"
The Body Thetans are then supposed to separate out and realize that they are in fact themselves; that they are not some body part or whatever.
At the same time, you realize that the BTs are different from you; that their mental pictures, ideas, and degraded impulses do not originate from you.
According to Hubbard, these beings are very easily overwhelmable and hypnotic. Because of this, they tend to take on the personality of whatever (or whoever) comes along that gets their attention.
HUBBARD:
You have to actually put some life into them to activate them. They're like pebbles on a beach. . . . But listen, you're living in a universe which is crawling with this type of stuff. And planet Earth was a dumping ground to end all dumping grounds. . . . As NED for OTs is run these cats wake up and get handled. This relieves the Pre-OT of a lot of phenomena which puzzles him and can hold him down. As you go along running it you will find that the material to which NED for OTs is addressed seldom considers itself live beings. It thinks it is MEST (Matter, Energy, Space and Time), body parts, significances, conditions -- anything but a live being.That these "beings" might have been the creation of one's own mind, i.e., "thought forms" or "mock-ups endowed with life which live as long as one feeds them energy," was not considered in Hubbard's writings after 1966.
That "upper level" Scientologists may be locating all these thousands of "Body Thetans" because Hubbard told them they are there, and therefore must be there -- finding them because they know they will -- is of course not even dimly regarded as a possibility by the faithful.
No, such "beings" are the victims of what Hubbard calls the "dwindling spiral." According to him, any spiritual being in the physical universe is inevitably subject to deterioration and degradation.
Beings are (without Scientology processing) not evolving spiritually, but rather are devolving -- heading downward towards "Hubbardian Hell."
In "Ron's Journal 30" Hubbard explains: "But there was one discovery in 1978 that I haven't said very much about and am really not likely to since it is a sad thing. It is what really happens to a thetan who is not salvaged or processed and goes on down the chute. Man, when I saw that and knew it to be true I actually felt sorry for these guys that try to hit at us. Poor devils. Some religious talk about hell. It's an understatement of what really happens."
The message is clear. Throw yourself at the mercy of the Church of Scientology or eventually, some lifetime down the way, become somebody's big toe!