So how many more levels of Thetan Operation are there? Won't ol' Tom eventually max out his level of enlightenment? Can you skip levels if you get that special powerup that opens the portal on the side of the screen like in Arkanoid?

(I love debating theology).

an excellent question. It will probably not surprise you to learn that once you become OT-3, you can't actually control matter, energy, space and time (a phrase so common in Scientology literature that it gets its own acronym). The reason? Why, more alien ghosts infesting your body, of course! Also, minor sins you committed earlier in the process. You may either a) repeat previous levels or b) continue on, up to OT-8. Incidentally, the debut of the OT-8 course and its graduates' resulting powers are credited by the church with the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that you slowly sink into an elite world of scientology, where everyone else seems to be having a great time, so you feel compelled to do the same. Gaining OT levels slows. You're supposed to be ready for "auditing" (playing with a galvanic skin response meter) 365 days a year, and to self-audit (with records) 5 hours a day. All the while money is being siphoned from you, of course. Any failure is attributed to the individual.

Anyway, you can eventually reach OT-8, at which point the NOT levels become available (of course!). That's "new operating thetan", btw. Turns out all those alien ghosts you got rid of? Yeah, there are more. Some were drug addicts, and others are asleep, and others are hypnotized. So you repeat what happened at earlier OT levels -- basically, you try to telekinetically detect and then shoo away the spirits haunting various parts of your body. Success is determined by the actions of the previously mentioned GSR meter (I bet you didn't know Ohms can be converted into n(thetans), but there you have it!).

Eventually people either a) are absorbed into the corrupt church hierarchy b) suffer a mental breakdown c) go bankrupt or d) realize it's a huge scam, say to "hell with it", and start complaining on the internet about the years of their lives that they've wasted.

Gah, I'm choking on my own rage here!

How do you know so much about it?

xenu.net is an impressive clearinghouse for anti-CoS material. The church keeps as much stuff as possible copyrighted, claiming that they're "trade secrets", and is *very* quick to bring lawyers. But dissatisfied former church members continue to leak the material to the internet, where the alt.religion.scientology people pore over it, then aggregate it at xenu.net.

The various websites memorializing Lisa McPherson (the most obviously tragic example of what happens when the church's nonsense is applied to a genuinely sick person) are also a good resource.

Basically whenever I get really incensed about the evil these people are committing, I head over to xenu.net and learn a little bit more about it.

This is all really interesting, but I wish that whenever you get really incensed about the evil these people are committing, that you would instead head over to your kitchen and start frying up some more yucca. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm