how can you
trap a
thetan? By curiosity, by giving him awards and prizes (of an
implant), by
retractor screens, by
mock-ups, by ornate buildings which he will enter unsuspectingly to be electroniced down: by many such means the
thetan is reduced from knowing to a colonist, a slave, a
MEST body. All theta traps have one thing in common: they
use electronic force to
knock the
thetan into
forgetting, into
unknowingness, into
effect. Their
purpose is to rid the
area of those nuisances, the thetans who cannot be
policed, and gain
personnel— always the former, not always the latter.
(HOM, pp. 71-72)