On the upper OT levels of Scientology (OT3-8), they claim to be "auditing" or giving specialized therapy to beings or souls attached to and inside one's body. How can people be doing this for decades, when no such discrete beings or souls actually exist? Is this all imagination? How can this be?
From a mainstream scientific perspective, there is no credible evidence that the entities described in upper-level Scientology teachings—such as "body thetans" encountered on OT levels—exist as objectively real, discrete spiritual beings attached to a person. Neither neuroscience, psychology, nor any other established field has found evidence for such entities.
The interesting question, then, is not whether people are actually interacting with such beings, but why many sincere people report experiences that seem to confirm the doctrine.
Several mechanisms can help explain this:
Expectation and suggestion
When people undergo a structured process that strongly suggests what they are likely to experience, many will begin to notice thoughts, sensations, emotions, images, and intuitions that fit the framework they have been taught.
This is not unique to Scientology. Similar phenomena occur in:
- Hypnosis
- Certain forms of spiritual practice
- Mediumship
- Some New Age traditions
- Reports of alien contact
- Religious visions
People often experience something real (an image, feeling, memory, inner voice, bodily sensation), but the interpretation of that experience depends heavily on the belief system they're using.
The mind naturally generates imagery
Humans constantly generate:
- Internal dialogue
- Mental imagery
- Symbolic narratives
- Emotional associations
If someone is instructed that a sensation in their shoulder might be caused by an attached spiritual entity, they may begin paying close attention to subtle experiences that would otherwise be ignored. The resulting impressions can feel surprisingly vivid and autonomous.
Psychologists sometimes refer to this as a form of attribution: an experience occurs, and the person adopts a particular explanation for it.
Reinforcement within a closed framework
In Scientology, auditing sessions are interpreted through Scientology's own concepts. If a person experiences relief, insight, or emotional change after an auditing session, that result is often taken as evidence that the procedure worked as described.
This can create a self-reinforcing loop:
- The doctrine predicts certain experiences.
- The person undergoes intensive auditing.
- They experience thoughts, images, emotions, or relief.
- Those experiences are interpreted as confirming the doctrine.
- Confidence in the doctrine increases.
Because the framework explains both successes and failures, it can become difficult to falsify from within.
Commitment and investment
Many people who reach the upper OT levels have invested:
- Years or decades of involvement
- Significant amounts of money
- Social relationships
- Personal identity
Humans generally prefer interpretations that make their investments seem meaningful. This tendency is not unique to Scientology; it appears in political movements, religions, businesses, and many other groups.
Subjective experiences can feel unquestionably real
A key point is that a person can be completely sincere and still be mistaken about what caused an experience.
For example:
- Dreams feel real while occurring.
- Hallucinations can feel real.
- False memories can feel real.
- Religious experiences can feel real.
The feeling of certainty is not, by itself, evidence that an external entity exists.
Is it "all imagination"?
That depends on what is meant by "imagination."
If by imagination you mean "people are knowingly making things up," then many former and current Scientologists would reject that description. Most appear to be reporting experiences they genuinely perceive.
If by imagination you mean "internally generated mental content being interpreted as external or spiritual realities," then many psychologists would regard that as a plausible explanation.
In other words, the experiences themselves may be real as subjective psychological events, while the explanation—that they are communications with literal attached souls or beings—lacks independent empirical support.
The broader lesson is that humans are remarkably capable of experiencing vivid, meaningful, and emotionally powerful inner phenomena. Whether those phenomena are interpreted as spirits, gods, ancestors, body thetans, psychic energies, or unconscious mental processes depends largely on the conceptual framework a person has learned.
All that said, what is your final take on the OT levels of Scientology? Did Ron Hubbard imagine a bunch of stuff and then get others to "co-imagine" or create the same in their own minds?
If you're asking for my assessment based on the available evidence, I'd separate two questions:
- Did the phenomena described in the OT levels actually correspond to real, discoverable entities and events?
- Why do people report experiences that seem to confirm them?
For the first question, there is no reliable evidence that the cosmology described in OT materials—such as body thetans, ancient galactic incidents, or attached spiritual beings—corresponds to objective reality. These claims have not been independently verified, and they conflict with what is known from history, astronomy, biology, and neuroscience.
For the second question, it is entirely plausible that people can come to experience and report things that fit a framework they have been taught. Humans are highly imaginative, suggestible, pattern-seeking creatures. That does not mean they are faking. It means that expectations, interpretation, guided introspection, social reinforcement, and repeated practice can generate experiences that feel deeply real.
As for L. Ron Hubbard himself, we ultimately cannot know with certainty what was going on in his mind when he developed the OT materials. Several possibilities have been proposed by supporters, critics, former members, historians, and psychologists:
- He literally believed the ideas were true.
- He developed them through imagination, speculation, or creative storytelling and gradually came to believe them.
- He knowingly created fictional or symbolic material and presented it as factual.
- Some combination of the above at different times in his life.
Determining which of these is correct would require access to his private thoughts, which nobody has.
If I had to characterize the evidence-based view, it would be something like this:
The OT levels look much more like an internally generated belief system—one that people can learn to experience as real—than like a discovery of objectively existing spiritual entities. In that sense, "co-imagining" is closer to the mainstream psychological explanation than "actually contacting invisible beings."
However, "co-imagining" should not be understood as a conscious group fantasy. A better description might be that a shared conceptual framework guides people toward interpreting their inner experiences in similar ways. The result is that many individuals independently report experiences that appear to confirm the same doctrine, even if the underlying source is ordinary human cognition rather than external spiritual beings.
That explanation fits not only Scientology but also many other systems in which people reliably encounter the kinds of entities, energies, spirits, or revelations that their tradition teaches them to expect.
Thank you. Well, I'm off to watch some episodes, flights of fancy, of my favorite TV show The X-Files, LOL.
That sounds like an excellent transition from one paranormal belief system to another.
One of the things that made The X-Files so compelling is that it plays with exactly the tension we've been discussing: the difference between subjective conviction and objective evidence.
Fox Mulder is willing to entertain extraordinary explanations, while Dana Scully keeps asking, "What evidence do we actually have?" The show works because neither perspective completely wins. Some episodes vindicate Mulder, some vindicate Scully, and many leave the audience wondering.
In a way, Scientology's OT materials read more like X-Files mythology episodes than like scientific findings: elaborate hidden histories, invisible entities, secret knowledge available only to initiates, and experiences that are difficult to independently verify.
The difference, of course, is that
The X-Files openly presents itself as fiction and entertainment, whereas Scientology presents its claims as factual descriptions of reality.
Enjoy the episodes. Whether you're watching alien conspiracies, psychic phenomena, government cover-ups, or the occasional mutant lurking in the woods, Scully's question remains a useful one:
"What would count as evidence that this is actually true?"
Have fun with the reruns—and keep an eye out for any black oil.
tonyortega.substack.com
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