Hubbard's e-meter books say something like the meter passes a small current through the body, which measures its resistance. When something charged is encountered, that something has mass, which increases the resistance, which is measured on the meter. When the person does whatever auditing process is involved, the charge is dissipated, and the resistance comes down. There is no metaphor or allegory involved in the "official" explanation — the mass is mass, grams and ounces and pounds. The "Understanding the E-Meter" book says mental image pictures have weight, and there is even a diagram of a person surrounded by lots of heavy-looking (charged) mental image pictures, and a scale showing an increase of 30 lb. because Hubbard [STRIKE]lied about[/STRIKE] said that (the 30 lb. increase) in a lecture once. There's a diagram of a person holding a can in each hand and arrows showing the flow of current up one arm and across the chest and down the other arm and completing the circuit through the meter.
On a cursory not-too-scientific inspection it sounds OK, apart from the 30 lb. thing. The meter measures the resistance in the body, and the resistance observably goes up when one thinks of emotionally-charged stuff and goes down when one discharges that heavy stuff.
The explanation wobbles a bit when one considers that some emotionally-charged thing produces exactly the same meter readings, both as to TA (resistance) and needle reads, when holding a can in each hand and holding solo cans in one hand only, with the cans separated by maybe 2 mm of insulator. At least, the TA is exactly the same if the same amount of skin is on the cans when held solo or in two hands.
Observably, the TA can crash from 6.0 to 2.0 in a few seconds, i.e. the resistance across the body (or across 2 mm of skin) changing from literally 200,000 ohms to 5,000 ohms in a couple of heartbeats. What physical change in the body causes the change in reading? I don't know, although the change in the pc is obvious!
Paul