When one continues to take courses, which are more and more expensive, you get to the second stage of the gradient, which is the Scientologist belief in souls, engrams, auditing, and various concepts about the human soul. To explain briefly auditing, it is a practice in which the "patient" holds in his hands the two "cans" of an "e-meter", which instrument is supposed to detect a person's feelings (but is really nothing more than a galvanometer). By this means, the "auditor" - that is, the person which controls the e-meter - is supposed to probe the patient's mind in order to remove engrams. On levels further up, the e-meter is used to examine past lives, and many other things. I apologize for the technical terms, but Scientology has a language of its own, which I will discuss briefly in a moment.
Auditing can also be helpful to a certain extent, as the person discusses his problems in life and the auditor has to listen. However, auditing has been proposed by some as having an addictive quality, and this is particular to Scientology. Because it is composed of repetition after repetition of questions and processes, it may create a dependance in the individual. I have never heard of any studies done on this though, for obvious reasons.
You could compare an auditing session to a confessional, with the exception that one's auditing file is not secret, and can be used against you if you leave the cult. And since the person has been convinced that the e-meter may really be able to read his feelings, he is not prone to lying. This makes the person less likely to leave, especially if the cult has pushed him into committing crimes, which is not unheard of.
All the while this auditing is going on, the person is also indoctrinated about many things. The most important is memetic isolation. You learn that Scientology is the only means to help people and rid the world of its problems, and that the exterior world needs Scientology. Therefore, negative information from newspapers, television or the Internet is considered to be a bad influence. The person then restricts his sources of information to Scientology. Also, the notion "sacred science" - that is, that the technology of the belief system is based on experience and cannot fail - is present here. Nobody may question the doctrine : if you fail to understand or succeed with it, it is strictly your fault, and you need more courses to improve yourself.
