In Scientology beliefs, the concept of the thetan () is the spiritual being or self that constitutes the true identity of a person, and is distinct from the body and mind it inhabits and controls. Scientology teaches that a thetan is immortal, has lived through many past lives, does not cease to exist at body-death, and is typically reincarnated into a new body. Scientology also teaches that a thetan can temporarily separate from the body in a process known as "exteriorization". The concept forms the basis of Scientology’s understanding of consciousness, personal identity, and spiritual development. The term is derived from the Greek letter Θ, theta, which in Scientology represents "the source of life and life itself."
Origins of the concept The concept for the thetan was first described in the early 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, drawing on reports by Dianetics practitioners, who in session found clients came up with descriptions of past-life experiences. He adopted the Greek letter theta (Θ) to represent "the source of life and life itself". Hubbard once defined a thetan as: "... having no mass, no wave-length, no energy, no measurable qualities and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The spirit is not a thing. It is the creator of things." In a lecture series later published as a book ("The Phoenix Lectures"), he jokingly pointed to a study that implied that a "thetan" manifests a small but measurable amount of mass:
From some experiments conducted about fifteen or twenty years ago—a thetan weighed about 1.5 ounces [45 grams]! Who made these experiments? Well, a doctor made these experiments. He weighed people before and after death, retaining any mass. He weighed the person, bed and all, and he found that the weight dropped at the moment of death about 1.5 ounces [45 grams] and some of them 2 ounces [60 grams]. (Those were super thetans!) Although Hubbard did not name the doctor concerned, there was indeed such an attempt, by Duncan MacDougall, to measure the weight of dying patients to determine the weight of the soul, although MacDougall's experiments took place about fifty years before Hubbard's lectures, not fifteen or twenty, and are generally not regarded as having any scientific validity.
Scientology doctrine Hubbard taught that there were three parts of man: the spirit, mind, and body. The first of these is a person's true inner self, a "thetan". Thetan has been described as:
The thetan is immortal and is possessed of capabilities well in excess of those hitherto predicted for man. "The being who is the individual and who handles and lives in the body." "A thetan is not a thing, a thetan is the creator of things." A thetan is "the person himself—not his body or his name, the physical universe, his mind, or anything else; that which is aware of being aware; the identity which is the individual." The word theta refers to the spiritual life force or energy of which thetans are composed, not part of the physical universe. Theta is associated with constructive qualities such as "reason, serenity, stability, happiness, cheerful emotion, persistence, and the other factors which man ordinarily considers desirable". The related term entheta (short for "enturbulated theta") refers to theta that has become disturbed or degraded, and in humans is associated with feelings of being "downcast, sad, upset or angry." Scientology teaches that a thetan can "exteriorize", meaning it can separate from its human body while retaining awareness and the ability to perceive the environment. Exteriorization is described as a natural ability of the thetan that has been diminished over time, and Scientology auditing techniques aim to restore the ability to exteriorize at will. According to Hubbard's son Ronald DeWolf (born L. Ron Hubbard Jr.), his father stated that thetans are immortal and perpetual, having willed themselves into existence at some point several trillion years ago. After they originated, thetans generated "points to view" or "dimension points", causing space to come into existence. They agreed that other thetans' dimension points existed, thus bringing into existence the entire universe. In the primordial past, according to Scientologist teachings, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure." The universe is thought to have no independent reality, but to derive its apparent reality from the fact that most thetans agree it exists. Scientologists believe that thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity. Eventually, they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings. The Scientological notion of the thetan differs from other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, in three significant ways. While other belief systems "fuse the concept of the body and soul", the thetan is "separate and independent". Also unlike the Judeo-Christian tradition, Scientologists believe that the thetan has "lived through many, perhaps thousands of lifetimes." Third, different from the Christian notion of original sin, Scientology believes that the thetan is basically good, but "has lost touch with its true nature." Religious scholar Richard Holloway writes that thetans were not created, but they created themselves, adopting and creating the human body as a vehicle for existence.
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