HollywoodGuy
Patron with Honors
I was in Scientology for decades and reached the level of OT5 and Class 9 C/S. One question I always had while I was a believer was how do you pick up a new body after dropping your current one? What determines who gets it?
If one is to believe Scientology then there are far more thetans in existence than there are available bodies. When one audits on OT 3 - OT 7 you are freeing body thetans and clusters and releasing tens of thousands of these souls into the environment. On OT 3 Hubbard said that billions of thetans were transported to Earth (Teegeeack) and blown to Kingdom Come with Hydrogen Bombs after which they were implanted. If there are a thousand souls for each body available then what determines who gets the body? Do thetans wait in line at the hospital? Do you have to fight to get a certain body that you want? Is there a between lives area where other beings hold onto you until they are ready to insert you into a body? Maybe you enter a body and bring along another thousand entities with you.
My grandmother told me that after she died in her last life, her only instinct was to find another body. She was looking for a male body, and at one point, she fought with another thetan over a body and ended up losing. She flew to the hospital and found a woman in labor. The woman was having trouble delivering, so my grandmother decided to fly in to give the delivery a kickstart. But she ended up getting stuck in the baby's body, and unfortunately, it was a female body.
No implant stations.
I had never really found anything specific about this. Sure, there were a few rare tapes and references where Hubbard mentions between lives areas, implant stations, and so forth but the usual statement after a person passes away is that "They will just go and pick up a new body." What if a thousand or ten thousand thetans want that same body? How does that work?
I have been out of Scientology now for four or five years. I no longer believe in BTs and Clusters. I don't believe that a body is a compaction of other beings. I also don't believe in past lives anymore but I am curious as to how a Scientologist would handle the problem of too many souls and not enough bodies. I don't think that just because you are a Scientologist that you get to go to the front of the line although at one time I believed that was the case.
You know what? Last year, I was e-mailing a longtime Scientologist somewhere in his OTs. While we were actually talking about the Bible, this Scientologist actually originated, "Mythology is true, but true in a different way, not true in the literal sense. Even Scientology has elements of mythology in it, but you'd have to be crazy if you were to believe it in the literal sense. It's just that people can't understand higher truths without myths, but when you use the myth, you get fantastic results," or something to that effect. What I found interesting was that this Scientologist seemed to have a realistic view that OT 3 was common knowledge, and found a way to talk about it without actually talking about it.
I certainly don't believe in body thetans.
However, one idea that I've been seeing in Eastern philosophies as well as neuroscience -- THE SELF IS AN ILLUSION. While you might think that you have some kind essence that's "you", in actuality, you are actually just a collection of thoughts, perceptions, sensations, experiences, memories, that only appear to be a single entity. So, if you view the Xenu incident as a myth as opposed to an actual event, I suppose you could look at body thetans as metaphors for all those different elements that make up the illusion that is the self you think you are.