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]