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Members of the organisation calling itself the church of scientology both staff and public subscribers, independent scientologists and Freezoners all use the "e-meter" at some point as part of their scientology practices.
What follows is their understanding of how it works, which is followed by the pitfalls and how the organisation calling itself the church of scientology abuses the e-meter in ritualised confessionals and security checks and how it abuses the auditing practice to its own ends.
The e-meter basically measures the resistance of the body by passing a low voltage current through the body via 2 tin cans, one held in each hand of the subject.
The resistance of an individual's body is related to the condition of the body however resistance is also caused by mental masses in and around the body. These mental masses cause the resistance to increase, making the needle on the e-meter rise.
Mental masses result from trauma in the subject's past which form engrams, a kind of mental scar. By finding and facing the trauma the subject can blow the charge on the mental mass.
The process of finding the mental masses and blowing the charge is known as auditing and is the main process the e-meter is used for by all practitioners of scientology.
The e-meter helps in this process by detecting the increase in resistance as a mental mass is found and by monitoring the charge on the mental mass as the subject blows it by repeatedly facing it and understanding it.
First the subject is asked to hold a tin can in each hand which is connected to the e-meter. The e-meter passes a small current (2V) through the subject via the tin cans. The operator of the e-meter, known as the auditor, adjusts a knob known as the Tone Arm until the e-meter needle is at the set position on the e-meter's dial.
The subject is then asked to think back to a past trauma; this can have occurred any time since the beginning of the Universe since the meat body is just a vessel for the thetan (the spirit if you will) that has existed forever and it is actually the mental masses of the thetan being addressed.
As the subject finds a trauma the increase in resistance is detected by the e-meter and indicated by a rise in the needle. The auditor adjusts the tone arm knob to bring the needle back to the set position.
The tone arm knob has a scale and the difference between the original position of the tone arm knob and the new position on detecting a mental mass determines the charge on that mental mass.
The subject must then address the trauma. When they address it properly some of the mental mass charge is blown off; a blowdown occurs. This results in a drop in the needle and a re-adjustment of the tone arm to get the needle back to the set position. The difference between the peak position and the new position of the needle determines the charge blown off.
The subject must then approach the trauma again to see if there is any more charge left on the mental mass. If the needle rises again the process is repeated. The process is repeated until the needle no longer moves as the subject address the trauma; this indicates all the charge on the mental mass has been blown, clearing the mental mass.
This is a very intense ritual and having successfully blown a mental mass to pieces the subject experiences some intense emotions resulting in crying, laughing etc.
At the end of a session the auditor adds up all the Tone Arm blowdown differences and divides it by the duration of the session in hours to derive the Tone Arm Action for the session; this is expressed as units of Tone Arm motion per hour.
Auditors have to be very skilled as the job is not as simple as the above explanation suggests. The auditor must monitor the subject's physically manifest condition - blushing, sweating, happy, sullen, expressive, quiet etc. and take this in to account, along with delays in answering (Com lag) when translating the movements of the needle. The e-meter requires great skill to operate effectively and for a session to be effective there needs to be live ARC between auditor and subject.
Practitioners of scientology outside the organisation calling itself the church of scientology find it hard to get hold of e-meters produced by the organisation; the organisation is very protective of what it sees as its propitiatory equipment. Never the less they can be gotten hold of although many independent scientologist auditors use e-meters built independently based on research performed independently and it is believe that this new innovative research has produced a better product that produced by the organisation. Legally the e-meter was only protected by patent which has now expired.
The organisation calling itself the church of scientology also uses the e-meter during what it refers to as sec checks (security checks). Depending on where they work sec checking is a routine part of a staff member's life in the organisation.
Just as the e-meter detects mental mass related to past traumas that need to be addressed so it detects mental mass caused by ill intent and the subject being in one of the lower conditions, such as doubt.
Sec checking is ritualised interrogation. It is performed ostensibly to determine if the subject is suitable for a particular task or role within the organisation or to determine why the subject's performance as dropped off. It can be performed any time as required by an appropriate senior member of staff or Office of Special Affairs member.
During Sec checking the subject is asked a series of questions and the movement of the needle is monitored. Any change in resistance is explored with further questioning. Sec checking may involve questions being asked of the subject by multiple people, a practice known as gang bang sec checking. Questions may be asked without emotion or with intense emotion.
Unlike during auditing where the subject ultimately becomes more relaxed, attaining an improved state of emotion, during sec checking the subject can become incredibly stressed. Sec checking can go on for hours or even days which can result in the subject suffering a break down.
Sec checking is a harmful and abusive use of the e-meter. Anecdotal testimony says that sec checks have been used to mentally break a subject down completely.
Staff members who fail a sec check are usually subject to discipline often in the form of assignment to Rehabilitation Project Force. When assigned to RPF the subject must wear dirty clothes, eat 3rd rate food (rice and beans and scraps), sleep in 3rd rate mass accommodation (or outside) and do long hours of physical and often demeaning and dirty work.
The organisation calling itself the church of scientology always records what is revealed during auditing and sec checks. Both often result in the subject revealing intimate details about their desires and feelings. Such records are meant to be kept private between auditor and subject, just as church confessionals are considered privileged however the organisation observes this privilege as it chooses.
Recently two apostates of the organisaion, Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbone openly accused the organisation of knowingly allowing serious physical abuses to occur. They specifically accused the leader of committing multiple acts of serious assault as well as other verbal and physical abuse.
The organisation immediately started to open up the files they'd kept on these two from their auditing and sec check sessions and revealed the contents to the media. The Catholic church only ever allows confessionals, which are not recorded, to be reported to the appropriate authorities as required by the laws of the land and even then grudgingly - they are never used against the subjects under any other circumstances.
The recording of auditing and sec check sessions and the use of the content by the organisation to exert influence or to attack the subject is an abuse of auditing.
It should be noted that the organisation's spokesperson, Tommy Davis, admitted the organisation had known and by virtue of inaction allowed verbal and extreme physical abuse to occur. Tommy Davis describe the abuses in detail and reported the organisation had witnesses that this abuse had occurred multiple (50+) times over a long period of time. The only thing he contradicted with respect to the reports of Mike Rinder and Marty Rathburn was while they said David Miscavige, the organisations' de facto leader did it Tommy said they'd done it, sometimes to each other.
While auditing is fairly benign it can become quite addictive because of the intensity of feelings experience during and especially just after auditing. Auditing is very expensive, both the organisation and independent auditors charge by the hour for their services; generally the organisation charges a lot more, sometimes $100's an hour. This makes it quite an expensive habit. Some people indulge perhaps too much for their own financial good and within the organisation people are encouraged to do so unless they are staff; staff are meant to receive such services for free.
Auditing may be thought of as harmless however it can result in harmful delusions because it involves uninhibited demands for memories from past lives. Further more no one, not even the auditor, is allowed to question the validity of any memory, so there is no critical evaluation of what is recalled.
The problem with regression as occurs during auditing is that when you demand the brain come up with memories it will eventually find them to satisfy the demand, especially when it is allowed free reign to delve in to past lives.
Mostly these memories are harmless but there are accounts such as the 10 year old who remembered being a Roman tax collector who bashed in people's skulls for the fun of it. As a late teenager this child experienced serious emotional problems resulting from this memory discovered during auditing.
It should be noted that as subjects attain higher levels of understanding within the organisation, known as the OT levels, body thetans are introduced.
Like mental masses body thetans also have charge. Body thetans are other spirits that hang on to the subjects' thetan and inhibit it.
To blow the charge on a body thetan or cluster of body thetans is much more complex than dealing with engrams. Body thetans also have traumas and it is these traumas that cause them to cluster on the subjects thetan. By locating and addressing the body thetan's trauma, running it down, one can cause the body thetan to blow its charge and depart.
The trauma's on the body thetan center around 2 main events known as incident 1 and incident 2. Incident one is essentially the beginning of the known Universe which was created by the thetans. This occurred 4 Quadrillion years ago.
Incident 2 is more complex and involves a period around 75 million years ago. At this time the Universe consisted of a space confederacy ruled over by Overlord Xenu (Xemu). There was a problem of over population and Overlord Xenu decided to solve this by tricking the population in to coming in for tax auditing, where upon he froze them in alcohol and glycol. He did this to prevent the thetans from exteriorising. He shipped the bodies to Teegeak (the name for Earth in those days) in space ships that looked like DC8's. Once there he deposited them in and around volcanoes in Hawaii and Japan and blew them all up with hydrogen bombs. This forced the thetans to exteriorise and Overlord Xenu caught them all in a thetan trap.
If this wasn't traumatic enough he subjected the Thetan's to 30 days of memory implanting in a kind of 3D cinema. The implants included all human history. This confused the thetans so when he let them go they just hung around until eventually humans came along and they started to cluster on them.
Body thetans are removed by identifying and addressing the traumas from incident 1 and 2. A subject will have thousands of body thetans on them and these can occur in clusters too.