Chapter 18
- The E-meter is never wrong. It sees all; it knows all. It tells everything.
- -- L. Ron Hubbard{1}
An important part of a Scientology auditing session is the
E-meter. It lures people into Scientology and, for some, gives a scientific
basis to the methods used. Scientologists are accepted or expelled according to
its revelations. It helps to extract the Scientologists' most intimate secrets
and confessions, including those of a sexual and criminal nature. It helps to
determine the length, intensity and nature of the auditing session. It helps to
determine the date and details of their present problems and their past lives.
In fact, the E-meter often determines whether they have had past
lives. If someone believes he hasn't lived before, but the E-meter does not
respond to a date in the person's current life, then he is led to believe that
the event must have happened in a past one.
The E-meter or electroencephaloneuromentimograph is about
ten inches by six inches by two inches{2}
and its appearance was described by one reporter as a "cross between a car
speedometer and a practical joker's electric shock machine."{3}
Hubbard usually refers to its inventor as "Mathison" and Scientologists will
tell you it was invented by Olin Mathison;{4}
actually it was invented by Volney Mathison,{5} a
chiropractor.{6}
To buy the machine at an Org costs about $162;
in 1963 the government determined that it cost only $12.50 to make, and that the
Scientology organizations bought it wholesale for $47.{7}
Even at this price, the Scientologists and Hubbard will tell you
that it's infallible. It is said that it never fails to pick out the date on
which an incident occurred. Scientologists will tell you to the exact second
when something happened to them a trillions of years ago.
Apparently, it is less than perfect in picking dates in their
current life. Its failure in this task is what caused author Alan Levy, who
wrote a piece on Scientology for Life magazine, to become disenchanted
with the organization. (Along with the fact that his New York contract said
Grades V-VII would cost him $390 at Saint Hill, but when he got there he
discovered it was $3,150 "plus living expenses.")
Alan Levy's problems in Scientology started when he was told to
use the E-meter to locate the date on which he had a fight with his wife.
(Present one, current life.) Without the meter, he knew the year was 1958, and
that it was a Sunday morning in March.
Although he suggested to his auditor that they consult a
calendar, he was told, "There's no need for that.... The E-meter will find out
for us." The meter "found out" that the fight occurred on March 18. But when
Alan Levy checked an almanac at a bookstore in East Grinstead, he discovered
that March 18, 1958 fell on Tuesday, not Sunday.
It seems pathetic to me still, and terribly precarious, that my
failure to perform so simple a journalistic chore -- under other circumstances
I would have automatically looked up the date -- could have kept me half tied
to Scientology, the deep-probing auditing sessions and the damned E-meter....
I am sure that among the millions of words ... [Hubbard] has written, there
are some to convince me that the engram I unlocked did happen on a
Tuesday -- in another life -- or that March 18 did
fall on a Sunday when I was in the womb. But thankfully it no longer matters.
A number of government witnesses in the Food and Drug
Administration's case against the meter also agreed that its functioning was
considerably less than perfect. George Montgomery, Chief of the Measurement
Engineering Division of the National Bureau of Standards, and Dr. John I. Lacey,
Chairman of the Department of Psychophysiology and Neurophysiology at Fels
Research Institute in Yellow Springs, stated that the E-meter "failed to meet
the commonly accepted criterion by which such an instrument is judged."
These experts also explained that the machine was not really a
measure of skin resistance at all, but partially a reading of how firmly the
individual was grasping the can; if the person squeezed the can, there was more
contact, and apparent skin resistance would drop. If he held the cans loosely,
the apparent skin resistance would simply increase.
Scientologists, on the other hand, claim that the E-meter is so
sensitive that it will react not only when a person is holding onto it, but also
when it is placed on a tomato -- garden variety that is. While some people would
view this as an argument against the meter, Scientologists feel that this
proves its validity and that it also supports their hypothesis that plants have
feelings like humans.{9}
Scientologists have admirably gone to the trouble to research a
number of experiments in this field and have presented them to the public in
their newspapers and press releases.{10}
These experiments were as follows:
The press release contained no information about the statistical
levels of significance of these experiments, or even how the experiments were
carried out (for example, how did they give "love" or a "flow of attention" to a
plant?) nor how the results were analyzed (how does a tomato show "definite
emotional anxiety reactions"? etc.) They simply stated, in a rather unscientific
but sincere manner, that three experiments proved beyond doubt that Hubbard's
theory (and by extension, the E-meter) was valid. "After ten years of ridicule
for his theory ... L. Ron Hubbard has finally been vindicated ... totally
validated ... it was about time."{11}
The reader may decide for himself whether the E-meter proves that
plants feel pain, have emotional anxiety reactions, grow faster when given a
flow of attention by a faith healer, etc., -- or whether to accept the word of
the chairman of the Department of Psychophysiology and Neurophysiology at one
institute and the Chief of the Medical Engineering Division that the E-meter is
not an accurate instrument for measuring the flow of electricity.
But if you choose the latter, just remember that you cannot argue
your position with the Scientologists. They claim that the E-meter registers the
thetan, which they believe may have an electrical voltage,{12}
and since no non-Scientologist has ever seen a thetan, much
less checked it for electricity, how can anyone possibly disprove this theory?
{1} first quote [7]
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{2} size of meter [261]
{3} car speedometer [202]
{4} Olin Mathison [136,
30,
277]
{5} Volney Mathison [254]
{6} chiropractor [277]
{7} cost of meter really [254,
255]
{8} gov & Dr.'s claims against E-meter [254]
{9} plants have feelings [65a]
{10} 3 experiments [166,
57]
{11} Scientology statement about Hubbard validation [66]
{12} electrical flow of thetan [261]