[John O]

and the only way to get to the upper levels of their hierarchy is to pay tens of thousands of dollars?

Which is spent on more and more auditing. Evenetually when the member reaches what are called the OT levels (for operating thetan) they start auditing to rid themselves of these body thetans. But there's a huge catch. You can pick up more body thetans everywheer you go. So you get into an endless cycle of clean and get polluted again. This tends to lead most of them to some major psychosis.

[quidnunc]

John O wrote: (and the only way to get to the upper levels of their hierarchy is to pay tens of thousands of dollars?) Which is spent on more and more auditing. Evenetually when the member reaches what are called the OT levels (for operating thetan) they start auditing to rid themselves of these body thetans. But there's a huge catch. You can pick up more body thetans everywheer you go. So you get into an endless cycle of clean and get polluted again. This tends to lead most of them to some major psychosis.

It also leads many people into bankrupcy unless they are well-heeled like Cruise and his Hollywood cronies.

The auditors hold multiple sessions where the auditee holds the electrodes of a Wheatstone bride — which acts like a simple lie detector — while the auditor interrogates the auditee in order to make him confront and eliminate the ingrams which the body thetans implant.

Reportedly a full course of auditing runs into six figures.