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Second Open letter to Harold Klemp First Open letter to Harold Klemp
THE TRUTH REVEALED
Frequently Asked Questions Copyright © 2002-2004 Friends of Truth. All rights reserved.
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Reproduced from: Confessions of a God Seeker: A Journey to Higher Consciousness By, Ford Johnson Chapter 7 — Twitchellian Techniques of Spiritual Creativity: The Ten Devices Device One: Factual and Historical Inaccuracies Device Two: A Failure of Attribution
Device Three: Substitution and Association Device Four: Name Reversal, Letter Transposition, and Adoption — The Creation of the Vairagi Masters Device Seven: The Techniques of Fear and Deception Device Eight: Verbal Slight of Hand Device Nine: The Many Faces of Eckankar
Device Ten: The Land of Contradictions
Footnotes with source documents available at www.thetruth-seeker.com Footnotes (all) Chapter 7- Twitchellian Techniques of Spiritual Creativity: The Ten Devices Paul Twitchell systematically used ten devices to weave the history of Eckankar. Some are easily discernible; others are subtle, if not diabolical. Together, they create an elaborate fiction that will be laid bare using the facts and the paper trail he left behind. When the truth is revealed, Eckankar will be seen for the magical, mystical creation that it is. A creation that is reinforced by the inner and outer experiences of its members, which transform its myth into reality. We will view Paul’s actions by the standard he himself espoused, and return to this standard from time to time to underscore his pattern of deception: Refuse to see Truth, pretend that it is impossible to know what is true and what is not, distort Truth, seek to mix it with Untruth, attempt to deceive both ourselves and others, give Truth in an unattractive manner, then chaos will reign in our lives.1 Device One: Factual and Historical Inaccuracies When Was Paul Born? Discourse and controversy about something as simple as Paul’s date of birth have filled gigabytes of space on the Internet and reams of paper. Paul has claimed or been ascribed no fewer than four different dates of birth. Arguments over his birth date would be irrelevant if not for important aspects of the history of Eckankar tied to it. Aside from the glaring disparities in the ages that Paul created or allowed to circulate, the validity of many of his claims is anchored by that date. It constitutes a “time line” from which the veracity of other claims can be judged. The date of birth on Paul’s death certificate2, provided by his second wife, Gail, was October 22, 1922. It would be hard to imagine any reason for Gail to provide the medical examiner with anything other than what she believed to be the truth. Whatever the reason, it does appear that the 1922 date was no typo, as some have argued, since other parts of the death certificate show that Gail recorded his age at the time of his death as forty-eight years old, consistent with the 1922 date. Beyond this, the marriage certificate3 signed by J. PaulTwitchell and Gail A. Atkinson clearly shows that Paul gave his date of birth as October 22, 1922, consistent with the date Gail had recorded on his death certificate. There was no typo and no mistake. This is what Paul wanted Gail to believe and this is what she believed. Why Paul told his much younger wife that he was a decade younger than he actually was, is open to easy speculation. On his marriage certificate to his first wife, Paul entered his date of birth as October 22, 1912.4 The weight of the evidence and the findings of Harold would place his birth date on or about October 22, between 1908 and 1910.5 But the best evidence is a copy of a census form completed by a census taker in 1910 on which Paul’s age was listed as six months.6 It can be presumed that the parents of a six-month-old child would have truthfully responded to an official U.S. Government census taker visiting the home of a U.S. citizen, especially in 1910. Further, the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that the 1910 census was begun on April 15, 1910 and was concluded on May 15, 1910. Six months prior to this period would place Paul’s birth date in October of 1909. However, discrepancies in Paul Twitchell’s age would not
be significant except that similar incongruities recur, in ways small
and large, throughout his life. The date of Paul’s birth is the first
major thread that begins to unravel the carefully woven stories Paul
used to fashion the fabulous and intriguing history of Eckankar. Paul
fabricated a myth about himself that would dovetail nicely with the
dissolution of his relationship with Sri Kirpal Singh. He told the story
of his early contact with Sudar Singh — first in Paris, This story worked well in explaining where and from whom he had received his early spiritual training. It also established an early marker for the existence of and his association with the Vairagi Eck Masters. But there are substantial problems here. Once again, Paul seemed oblivious to the fact that his life left a paper trail. Of course, Paul could not have foreseen the information revolution of the Internet and the rising skepticism of a “duped-too-often” public. Unfortunately, for Paul and his many ardent followers (I certainly once counted myself among them), the facts do not support his story. Here is what we know: Paul was born in 1909.8 He graduated from Tilghman High School in Paducah, Kentucky, in May 1931.9 He entered Murray State College (Murray, Kentucky) in September 1931, remaining a full-time student until March 1933. He concentrated in General Education but did not earn a degree.10 He attended Western Kentucky University from 1933-1935 but received no degree.11 His mother died on April 26, 1940.12 His father died on March 24, 1961.13 His sister died on March 11, 1959.14 His brother died on October 20, 1964.15 If Paul’s mother died in 1940 and Paul was born in 1909,
Paul was around thirty at her death. Paul’s account, as written
by his official biographer, Brad Steiger, has him fifteen at
the time of his first visit to France and therefore on his return to
America at the time of his mother’s death. Paul and his sister, according
to the Steiger account, returned to In fact, Paul did not finish high school at age fifteen, as he told Steiger. Records from his school reveal that he graduated in 1931. Thus, Paul was twenty-one years of age at graduation. 16 Paul’s education proceeded without interruption, laying fallow his claim that he had journeyed to Paris with his sister, and later to India to meet the Eck Master Sudar Singh. His attempt to lay an early marker for the existence of the Vairagi Masters and his involvement with them is just one of many Twitchellian inventions. As to Steiger’s, (read Paul’s) assertion that Paul graduated at age fifteen, Harold writes: But in those days high school was the way college is today — you could quit for a while and then go back. So Paul probably graduated from high school between age 18 and age 23.17 I commend Harold for his efforts to set some of the record straight. In this regard, he certainly did more than his predecessor, Darwin Gross, who appears to have fallen for all of Paul’s claims. Harold tried to fill the time warp created by Paul’s invention by asserting it was common back then for high school students to take time off for various reasons. Though Harold concedes that Paul graduated at a later age (thereby disputing Paul’s account), he attempted to create a scenario that leaves room for and suggests the possibility of Paul’s trip to France and India. In keeping with Steiger’s account, Harold allows for the all-important meeting with Sri Sudar Singh. When I heard this explanation, my first reaction was that Steiger could have made a simple mistake in recording what Paul said. As I was anxious to believe Paul, Harold’s “added insight” was a straw that, at the time, I was happy to accept. I was thankful to Harold for restoring credibility to Paul’s story and for dealing with the accusations of that David Lane fellow, who had so impolitely averred that Eckankar was riddled with lies. However, it was not to be so simple. The facts, as I learned, did not support Harold’s spin, leaving the unpleasant conclusion that Paul did not “tell it like it was.” Steiger wrote that Paul and his sister, Kay Dee, went to France after his
graduation from high school and then to India — staying for about one
year — after his mother’s death. Yet the registrar from Paul’s high
school indicated that there was no break in his education, and that
he was a student at Murray State from the end of high school in 1931
until he left Murray in 1933. There appears to be no period when Paul
was out of the c ountry, much less in [H]is wife never left the
Conversations with Paul Twitchell’s first wife, Camille Ballowe, whom he married in 1942, are insightful. Her knowledge of Paul’s travels from 1933 to 1942 was not unqualified, though she herself was a native of Paducah and knew him for some time before they were married. Ballowe insists that Paul took no trips abroad.19 Paul’s official biography has him meeting Sudar Singh in Paul mentioned that he [Sudar Singh] died around the 1940s [Paul had actually said 1935-1939], but it seems to have been around 1955.22 Harold’s stretching of his cover story by another fifteen years provided an even wider margin for error and was quite helpful, since Paul purportedly went to France and then to India to study under Singh after his mother’s death. It corrects Paul’s mistake of “killing off” Sudar Singh by 1939. Harold’s attempts at obfuscation appear throughout his writings. But even Harold does not attempt to explain the discrepancy in Paul’s alleged age of sixteen in 1940, when he was supposed to have met Sudar Singh, and the census record that demonstrates Paul was about thirty years old in 1940. A final note about Harold’s revision of the date of Sudar Singh’s death to 1955 versus the — at the latest — 1939 date Paul had asserted.23 It is hard to imagine how even Paul could have gotten the death of Sudar Singh wrong by fifteen years. But since Paul did not begin his study under Kirpal Singh (his real master) until 1955, the new date given by Harold for the death of Sudar Singh (also 1955) is a bit too convenient. Harold seems to be constructing a story that would support an unbroken chain of study under some master — even if not an Eck Master. Even if Harold is correct, this convenient new date for the demise of Sudar Singh and the known commencement of Paul’s study with Kirpal Singh in 1955, raises another question. Why didn’t Paul begin his 1955 study under Eck Master Rebazar Tarzs rather than non-Eck Master Kirpal Singh? Inasmuch as Tarzs was supposedly on the scene and functioning as the Living Eck Master he would have been the obvious choice as Paul’s master. Harold had pointed out that Rebazar Tarzs, who as we shall see was one of Paul’s created Eck Masters, had taken over from Sudar Singh (another of Paul’s created Eck Masters) after his death — either in 1939, the 1940s or 1955: If a Living ECK Master translated before his successor was ready, as with Sudar Singh, Rebazar took the Rod of ECK Power in the meantime.24 Harold specifically points out that Tarzs was giving initiations prior to 1965.25 However, Paul Twitchell, the future Mahanta, the Living Eck Master was actually initiated by Kirpal Singh — the non-Eck Master — in 1955, rather than by the Living Eck Master holding the Rod of Eck Power, Rebazar Tarzs, who was presumably also giving initiations in 1955. It should be abundantly clear that some ferocious storytelling and revisionism is going on. None of it is ultimately successful and all of it simply adds velocity to this crumbling house of cards. Where Was Paul Born? Paul describes the line of succession of Eck Masters preceding him (the last being Rebazar Tarzs) when he writes: Following him is Peddar Zaskq, who was born on a packetboat in the midst of the Mississippi River, a few minutes after a great earthquake shook the mid-South and formed a great lake in this region.26 Since Paul had assumed “Peddar Zaskq” as his spiritual name, he was clearly talking about himself, in his present life, in this passage. However, this conflicts with previous statements about his birth, written in his biography. Paul said in his biography that he was born in China Point (no state given), not on a Mississippi packet boat. Darwin and his staff tried to fix the problem by claiming that he was actually born (in this lifetime) around 1812. Records indicate there was an earthquake in 1812 that resulted in the formation of a lake, but of course the rest of the story has no corroboration.27 Darwin went further to assert that Paul had been born, not in China Point, as Paul’s biography had claimed, but on the Mississippi River on a packet boat as alleged in the Spiritual Notebook.28 However, Darwin’s version of this birth tale would result in a claim that Paul was a hundred years older than he actually was. Such a claim was a little hard to sell, even in Eckankar. Recognizing the quagmire into which Darwin had walked, and attempting to reconcile Paul’s various accounts of his birthplace, Harold created yet another scenario that he thought better fit the facts.29 Harold attempts to salvage the Mississippi River account of Paul’s birth by averring that it actually describes his birth in a previous life. Harold reaches this conclusion by combining a statement from The Spiritual Notebook30 with parts of Paul’s historical novel, The Drums of Eck.31 By identifying an earthquake that occurred in 1812 and a lake that formed from it in northern Tennessee, Harold endeavors to breathe life into Paul’s Mississippi packet boat story. A problem remains: the Spiritual Notebook speaks of Peddar Zaskq in this lifetime, not a person in a previous one. For there is no indication, as Harold would suggest, that a Peddar Zaskq was born in a prior lifetime (in 1812) who was an Eck Master in training during that life. Harold deftly bridges lifetimes in an effort to tie an earthquake in one century to a living master (with the same spiritual name) in the next. However, everything, including Eck writings, points to this 1812 person as a pure fiction, certainly not one of Paul’s Vairagi Masters or a master in training. This is nothing more than an effort by Harold to keep the fabric from unraveling by stitching it with a yarn that might hold it together, at least for a while. Paul himself contradicts Harold’s story. In a little-read book published by Eckankar’s Illuminated Way Publishing Company in 1980, based on transcribed interviews with Paul, he describes his past life: Now there are many things that I had to do, and it can go all the way back into the lifetime before this, in which I was born in the Caucasian [sic] Mountains and had to go through a series of trainings there, even to the extent of keeping myself inside. . . . Then I was trained in order to eventually come into this position as Living ECK Master.32 To call this unbelievable would be an understatement. The
Caucasus Mountains (we can only assume he meant the Caucasus Mountains,
as the “Caucasian Mountains” do not exist) are a great mountain range
in While blindsided by Paul’s account of his birth in a prior lifetime, Harold was convinced of the authenticity of Paul’s account in The Drums of ECK, mainly because of statements such as this: The narrative which is laid down in this book, The Drums of ECK, may appear to the reader to be fiction but it is a true story. It is taken from my personal memories of what happened during the stirring times of the American-Mexican War [sic] which was fought in the years 1846-1848. . . . The characters who appear in this story, including myself as Peddar Zaskq, which is my real name, were actual people living in those times.33 From accounts such as this, we can understand the confusion that Darwin and Harold must have felt in trying to interpret what Paul meant by “characters who appear in this story, including myself as Peddar Zaskq . . . were actual people living in those times.” Darwin, of course, interpreted this passage literally and maintained that this described Paul in this life, making him over 140 years old.34 Harold interpreted it to mean Paul’s immediate past life, in which he used the name Peddar Zaskq. Both were wrong! Holding this issue in abeyance, we learn other fascinating things about the history and origins of Eckankar in this “true story . . . taken from my personal memories.” According to this account, Eckankar was on the scene much sooner than Paul’s earlier pronouncements on the matter: He thought of what Peddar Zaskq, that strange man who was acting as a scout for Blake’s patrol, said about ECKANKAR, the Ancient Science of Soul Travel.35 These events supposedly took place on March 26, 1846. Contrary to the facts of Eckankar’s creation in 1965, we appear to have a mid-nineteenth-century account of Eckankar in its present-day form, that is, the Ancient Science of Soul Travel. Apparently unaware of this 1846 reference to today’s Eckankar, not to mention Paul’s alleged study under Sudar Singh in the 1940s, and his assertion that it is the precursor of all known religions, Harold describes a Paul Twitchell in training, who may have been oblivious to the existence of Eckankar when he writes: Someday he would have a chance to take this teaching called ECKANKAR — maybe he didn’t even know the name then — and put it in front of people.36 Why would Harold even suggest that Paul might not have known the name Eckankar when he has Paul’s written historical record that, if true, would make this supposition impossible? How could Paul not have known, unless, of course, this history was not true and Paul actually hadn’t heard of the name Eckankar before? Harold is trying, with subtlety and stealth, to lay a foundation of truth without destroying the fiction that is indispensable to the survival of Eckankar as a religion and the “Ancient Science of Soul Travel.” Paul did not make his task easy; he left a trail that, despite heroic efforts, Harold could not cover up. For Paul clearly asserts that he knew about Eckankar and that it was an ancient path as early as 1846. As if this were not enough trouble, Paul contributes yet more confusion. In this account of Peddar Zaskq from The Drums of Eck, which Harold asserts placed his birth date at 1812, Paul is again less than helpful: He [Peddar Zaskq] was in some way associated with the strange religion called ECKANKAR. Somehow, Blake had heard that he was an American over one hundred years old.37 One hundred years old in 1846 would place the birth of this Peddar Zaskq at 1746, a full sixty-five years before Harold claims he was born in the “previous life” account. So much for the earthquake and the lake. Had Paul simply called The Drums of Eck an historical fiction, which it was, rather than to declare it true, his accounts would not be held to a different standard. However, his decision, and Harold’s acceptance of this decision, to treat the book as a true story subjects both their statements to the much different and higher standard of truth. It shows how difficult, if not absurd, it is to attempt to turn fiction into truth and to weave conflicting fictional tales into a rational narrative. In his inimitable way, Paul doesn’t stop here with his Drums of Eck “true story.” He lays even more land mines for Harold and his successors to defuse or step on: With the exception of a few, all had left their homes for gold, liquor and lust in this exotic land where the SUGMAD [God], the deity of that strange religion called ECKANKAR, would await ITS retribution for being aroused from a deep slumber over the centuries.38 The Sugmad asleep? The Sugmad awaiting ITS retribution? What are we to do with these assertions? And these gems go on and on. Harold accepts this account as true, since Paul has declared as much. Yet, our investigation reveals that it is simply an enormous fiction. In this and numerous other instances, Paul has created reams of fabrications that Harold must explicate to prevent this tightly woven fabric of fact and falsehood called Eckankar from completely unraveling. Let us return to Paul’s account of his place of birth in the “Caucasian Mountains” in his last lifetime. If Harold asserts that Paul was born on a Mississippi packet boat, he must now explain this second place of birth in his prior lifetime in order to salvage the cover that he attempted but was vitiated by Paul’s own words. The Spiritual Notebook account of the birth of Peddar Zaskq has another problem. The history and genealogy of the Twitchell family demonstrate that he was born neither on a packet boat nor on the Mississippi; nor did a lake form following an earthquake at the time of his birth. Instead, Paul was born on the Westside of Paducah, Kentucky to Jacob and Effie Twitchell.39 Paul adds to the confusion by allowing Brad Steiger to write that he was born and lived his early years in China Point. This, too, was not true. As Harold points out: There is no such town as China Point in Kentucky. He [Paul] constructed the story to protect his family, so that later on, when people sought him out to learn about ECKANKAR, his family wouldn’t be pestered by well-meaning people intruding in their lives.40 While well-intended, Harold’s attempt to explain this yarn is dubious. At the time of the publication of In My Soul I Am Free (1968), Paul’s immediate family (all of them) was dead, and so a case for family protection cannot reasonably be made. An alternative is that Paul preferred to add to his legend or to put people on a false trail so that they would not discover the truth. The Real Paul Twitchell Revealed Harold admits to Paul’s self-promotional puffery in his attempts to get himself written about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It seems that Paul took on a pseudonym “Carl Sn yder” and wrote Ripley’s spinning an impressive yarn about his life. On this episode, Harold writes: In this particular letter to Ripley’s, Carl Snyder spoke about the things this Paul Twitchell had accomplished. Paul had a punchy style of writing. It was alive; it just glowed with life. He was drawing on his creativity to survive, so he wrote this promotional stuff. Snyder expanded on all of this talent: “College athletic trainer, swimming coach, track team” and embellished it even more by adding things like, “prizefighter” and “promoter of fights.” He worked every angle on every job he ever held, giving each position all different titles. In addition, he said, “Paul Twitchell reads all the time. He reads a book a night, and sometimes doesn’t even get a wink of sleep.”41 Harold notes a few other examples of Paul’s penchant for embellishment that will become important in later chapters. Paul also used the pseudony m, “Charles Daniel.” Harold notes that if one finds any Eckankar-related materials by this author, or by other names along with the word “wink,” then it’s a pretty good bet that Paul was behind the pen.42 In another account of Paul’s early exploits, Harold describes a young Paul Twitchell interested in making a name for himself while still in Kentucky. To accomplish this, Paul selected Who’s Who in Kentucky as a vehicle for self-promotion. Harold writes: At 27 years of age, the most Paul had ever done was to teach physical education. But by the time he wrote it all up, exaggerating and twisting the facts, he had worked up a nice little paragraph about all the grand achievements of one Paul Twitchell. He made it sound quite impressive.43 Another charming story to be sure, but Harold seems to miss the point in his attempt to soften acts that we would never counsel our children, acts that could cost a person his job. This is lying, and it is universally detested. And especially in a twenty-seven year old “God-man to be,” it cannot be condoned. Yet Harold justifies Paul’s promotional prevarications in Machiavellian terms: I saw an article in the obituary column in one of the West Coast newspapers a few weeks ago about a seventy-seven-year-old lady who had founded a certain church many years ago. But who ever heard of it? This talent of self-promotion was necessary for Paul’s mission.44 I did a double-take when I first read this, and I continue to be shocked with every rereading. Harold is not only excusing Paul’s lying but actually declares it as “necessary for Paul’s mission.” I have to wonder just what was Paul’s mission. Is the art of lying and gross exaggeration a necessary talent and training for a true God-man or for a true con-man? Surely, no one can begrudge a young and ambitious writer certain excesses in representing himself and his accomplishments. But Paul’s exaggerations went far beyond this and approached the territory of misrepresentation. Thus, while the episode depicting Paul’s early years in some ways describes the actions of “quite a rascal,” as Harold had described him,45 it is also deeply disturbing. Indeed, these would remain just charming stories if it were not for what Harold euphemizes as Paul’s “creativity to survive.” It is likely that this finely-honed talent led to Paul’s creation of Eckankar in the first place. The need for finance was cited by those who knew Paul as one of his key motivations for starting Eckankar: Problems between him and his wife Gail led him to believe she was going to leave him and he desperately wanted to keep her. So when she demanded more money and better living, he started to write things and copy from other books.46 This creativity to survive also reveals itself in his writing
of the Eckankar works. He created a teaching that maintained a loyal
following and revenue base for him and his successors. During the period
of my research for this book, I traveled to Lakemont, Davis is an internationally respected teacher and lecturer of the spiritual growth processes in the Kriya Yoga tradition and the author of numerous books on the subject. A contemporary of Paul Twitchell, he wrote of his association: I met Paul Twitchell during the early 1960’s in Washington, D.C. At that time Paul lived in an apartment owned by, and on the grounds of the Self-Revelation Church of Absolute Monism of which the late Swami Premananda, one of my brother disciples, was the founder and minister. Paul contacted me after seeing a notice of my public lectures and after our initial conversation we continued to meet at his apartment from time to time. Unmarried at that time, Paul lived alone. . . . He told me that he had been initiated by Kirpal Singh but was no longer affiliated with him. During one of my visits Paul pointed to some notebooks and binders on a shelf by his writing desk and said, “One day those are going to make me rich.” At a later meeting he said, “To be successful in a big way, you have to have your own movement. Paramahansa Yogananda had his Self-Realization Fellowship; L. Ron Hubbard has his Scientology; Eckankar is my thing.” Paul moved from Washington, D.C. and later wrote me from Seattle, Washington. . . . After his move to San Diego, I began to see his articles . . . about Eckankar. . . . Some . . . featured testimonials from his students who claimed that Paul had appeared to them in dreams and visions. When I next visited San Diego, Paul and I had lunch. . . . I asked him about the claims of various people that he visited them in dreams and by astral projection. He chuckled, and said, “You know, if you tell people something long enough they’ll start to believe it!” Since we were casual friends,
Paul shared with me the progress of Eckankar and his plans for the future.
Although some of the material he wrote is valid, he borrowed heavily
from the writings of Kirpal Singh and from other sources. In the late
1960s a series of Paul’s articles appeared in Orion Magazine, published
by Christian Spiritual Alliance, based in Lakemont, Paul’s claim that he was representative of a line of enlightened spiritual masters was fiction. My impression of him was that he had a deep psychological need for recognition and to accomplish something that would impress others. During our private conversations he was friendly, likable and somewhat shy.47 Harold looked at Paul’s history and his acts of exaggeration, fact twisting, cover-up, and distortion and did what he could to rationalize them. He wrote about these questionable tendencies: But without realizing it, he was just practicing. Someday he would have a chance to take this teaching called Eckankar — maybe he didn’t even know the name then — and put it in front of people. . .48 As discussed earlier, Harold’s assertion that Paul perhaps
didn’t even know the name of Eckankar during these early years flies
in the face of Paul’s account of his history and Harold’s confirmation
of it. Paul had written that he studied under Eck Master Sudar Singh
from age sixteen in The ECK [spirit] teachings have been here from the earliest times, but they haven’t carried the name of ECKANKAR. They have been brought out under different names at different times. . . .49 Yet, Paul, without qualification, had written definitively about Eckankar’s history. He left no room for doubt that he was speaking about Eckankar as a teaching that has existed from the dawn of time, not in the pale and placid terms by which Harold was prepared to acknowledge its history. Further, Paul made no reference to any other teaching by any other name that had been used as a channel to transmit the Eck teachings, as Harold had suggested when he wrote, “They have been brought out under different names at different times.”50 Thus, without any such reference, Paul wrote: ECKANKAR, which is the mainstream for all religions, philosophies and doctrines, was the first to show the people of the earth, through appointed saviors, that. . . .51 ECKANKAR created and comprises all the religious ideas of the lower worlds. Art, writing, music, and sculpture are only developments of the higher ideals of ECKANKAR.52 There are no qualifications here! Harold’s spin of Paul’s version of history runs into problem after problem. This is what happens when attempts are made to reconcile fiction and fantasy with fact and verity: the pieces do not fit. The apologist is left to create one implausible story after another or to subtly admit exaggeration and fabrication. In essence, this is what Harold was forced to do. In so doing, he was admitting that the founder of Eckankar had not told the truth. As we shall see, Paul’s tendency to “embellish it even more” seems to have found its way into the writings that make up the bulk of early Eckankar manuscripts. Paul’s skill as he “worked every angle on every job” is especially evident in his role as the creator and originator of the Ancient Science of Soul Travel. It cannot escape the reader that Harold’s exquisite use of euphemism only clumsily obscures what would otherwise simply be called untruth. The Mysterious Paul Twitchell Paul had a special ability to create small historical falsehoods to chronicle his own life and add a note of mystery into the saga of the Vairagi Masters. Why would Paul spin such a yarn about himself? The answer seems to flow from his own description of his lineage. In describing the origins of one of his Eck Masters, Paul writes that he was born . . . in the usual manner of the ECK Masters — very mysteriously. Few know how they are born, but some family often adopts them during their infancy and while raising them, one member of the family, who is adept at Soul Travel, teaches them at an early age. Most ECK Masters are born either in the high mountains or on some body of water.53 Paul’s lineage of Eck Masters was indeed mysterious. He was forced to construct a history for himself worthy of the standard he had set. Paul’s great misfortune was that he wrote his numerous books at the dawn of the computer age. How could he have known the ease with which information could be checked and challenged, and the truth disseminated to millions at the push of a button? Most religions, as we will see in Chapter 12, have hundreds if not thousands of years to create and bury the truth of their origins. In time, myth circulates as truth, and there is little opportunity to challenge it. This is not the case for Paul Twitchell and Eckankar. To some, these revelations are just a picaresque tale of a creative individual who wanted to add interest and mystery to his writings. They would argue that Paul should not be taken too seriously. Harol d, in his defense of Paul, simply called him a “rascal,” a quaint term that glosses over behavior that would more rightly be described with a harsher word . The yarn that Paul spun was far more extensive than Harold was prepared to reveal to the faithful. However, before we euphemize Paul’s writings as sales puffery, we must return to the standard by which Paul Twitchell and the works of Eckankar are to be viewed: Refuse to see Truth, pretend that it is impossible to know what is true and what is not, distort Truth, seek to mix it with Untruth, attempt to deceive both ourselves and others, give Truth in an unattractive manner, then chaos will reign in our lives.54 The chaos that will follow the revelations in this book will not be of my making. Instead, it will follow the pattern that Paul so accurately predicts in his pronouncement on truth. Unfortunately, Paul did not heed his own advice. His reckless disregard for truth created an unstable foundation that will prevent Eckankar from reaching the heights he envisioned. The result will instead be ongoing chaos and tension in the ranks, which can only be ended by seeing the truth and moving on. As the real Paul Twitchell is revealed, a foundation will be constructed that will enable Eckists and non-Eckists alike to fathom the extent of what he did. Without this foundation, it will be virtually impossible to even conceive, much less comprehend, the extent of Paul’s deception and fabrication. Device Two: A Failure of Attribution Plagiarize: To steal and pass off [the ideas or words of another] as one’s own: use [a created production] without crediting the source: to commit literary theft: present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source. Plagiarist: One who engages in an act of plagiarizing.55 Plagiarism has both legal and moral aspects. The legal part involves the protection of a person’s creative work so that another cannot take credit for and or financially benefit from it under false pretenses without violating the law. This is the purpose of copyright laws. There is an exception called “reasonable use,” which permits an individual, under specified circumstances, to quote an author without requesting or receiving his or her permission. Even in this exception, the writer must acknowledge the source and give credit to the author. Apart from the legal component of plagiarism, there is also a moral one. Such acts are dishonest, for they seek to mislead the reader into believing that the plagiarist is responsible for something that he is not. Acts of plagiarism can range from the purely accidental to the blatant lifting of paragraphs and pages, which cannot be construed as accidental. In the case of Paul Twitchell, plagiarism reaches such a level as to legitimately get him into Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Indeed, I would venture that his plagiarisms are among the most widespread and systematic in the history of literature. In referring to Paul’s book, The Far Country, David Lane writes: The work, amazingly, contains well over four-hundred paragraphs from Johnson’s two books, The Path of the Masters and With a Great Master in India, without so much as a single reference note to them. It is likely that almost one-half of The Far Country is not of Twitchell’s pen.56 Thomas Mallon in his book Stolen Words summed up my own reaction to the plagiarist: I was, through my research, eventually, and much more than I expected to be, appalled: by the victims I learned of, by the audacity of their predators, by the excuses made for the latter.57 Mallon relates a particularly interesting story of one Charles Reade who: Like the thundering evangelist who dallies with the devil, he managed in one pugilistic lifetime to be both a loud champion of international copyright and a shameless smuggler of work penned on the other side of the English Channel.58 Charles Reade was part of a tradition among English playwrights
in the 1850s, who anglicized popular French
plays and staged them in English theaters. This was made possible by
a loophole in the 1851 copyright agreement between Venturing a final hypothesis on the case of Reade, Mallon asks: Was he one of those people who just can’t get it? Was he like the schoolchild who submits a published poem to a contest as her own and when caught is baffled, since she thought her discovery of it in a book made it her own? Reade was capable of making such bizarre statements about plagiarism — “A book-pirate may often escape by re-wording the matter, because in many books an essential feature is the language” — that one sometimes wonders whether parts of his mind were quite right. . . . The truth is that he can be explained in the algebra of most compulsions. He stole because he hated stealing and he hated stealing because he stole.60 Twitchell and Reade are remarkably similar. For example, Paul castigated the “fakers” who would enhance their standing by “thieving” the works of others: All philosophers, preachers and sages who have the odor of philosophy, religion and knowledge are not any of these. They are pretenders, those who have pretended to have undergone the profound experiences of God; the faker drawing on experiences of real mystics, and the thieving of turns of speech and materials in hope of conveying a conviction of genuineness.61 To label these words ironic is an understatement. The extent of Paul’s plagiarism is so great that a web site called the Center for Twitchellian Plagiarism is devoted to finding new instances of his literary piracy.62 Early members of Eckankar had an idea, from their own studies or their direct work with Paul, that the writings of others appeared, without attribution, in some of Paul’s manuscripts. Dr. Louis Bluth, the first President of Eckankar, says that he specifically pointed this out to Paul, who gave a glib response and moved right along doing the same thing: He borrowed my books of Radha Soami and copied a large share from them. I helped him write the Herb book. . . . I confronted him with what he had done and his answer was “since the author of the book said it better than I could, I copied it.” The trouble is that he never gave anyone credit as to where he got it.63 Public revelations of plagiarism in Paul’s writings started more than twenty years ago, when the then student David Lane, in a college term paper, first levelled the charge. That document evoked a threatening letter from Eckankar’s attorneys, promising a lawsuit if Lane published his work.64 Sensing that the threat meant he was on to something, Lane redoubled his efforts. In time, Lane wrote a second paper that bears the name of his eventual book, The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar.65 His book and a similar work (based on Lane’s book) by a Christian organization called the Spiritual Counterfeits Project created a storm throughout the Eckankar movement. I remember students of Eckankar from all over the world seeking my opinion about these books and their significance to Eckankar. Both works were and are taboo subjects in Eckankar. The unwritten motto is: “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t read.” When I first read Lane’s book, I was upset to say the least. Though many of his conclusions and inferences were questionable, his evidence seemed unimpeachable. The valiant efforts of Eckists over the Internet to defend the faith were feeble and sometimes embarrassing. However, as Lane was an outsider, I knew that he could not know the whole story. After a long, tortuous, and silent struggle with Lane’s revelations, I emerged with a renewed sense of dedication. In spite of the facts presented, Lane’s work never undermined the core truths and principles that Paul had espoused, even if they were plagiarized. At that time, I had not made the connection between the standards of truth to which I personally adhered and those to which my “hero,” Paul Twitchell, seemed oblivious. In addition, I had no idea of the extent of Paul’s deception. It was beyond my comprehension that anyone could do such things. At the time, I reasoned that Paul was dealing at such a high level of spirituality that he did not have time to adhere to, or was even above, the standards of truth by which we mortals had to live. Indeed, all truth is from spirit, I reasoned, and Paul probably tapped into the same source as the original author — perhaps even from the same inner location. This would be a simple feat for one who claimed to be “God made flesh on earth.”66 All manner of explication is marshaled to preserve the sanctity of cherished heroes and dreams. Besides, my inner spiritual experiences confirmed the validity of the spiritual works; nothing, not even the writings of a detractor like Lane, could take these away from me. The events of November of 2001, when I brought Graham Forsyth’s journal to the attention of Harold, set all this on its head. They also reopened suspicions that had first appeared when I initially read Lane’s exposé. I reread his extensive account of Paul’s deceptions, but this time without the blinders of a true believer. Lane’s work greatly aided my examination of plagiarism in the writings of Paul Twitchell. So too was the laborious research of Eckists and former Eckists, displayed all over the Internet. They obviously felt a commitment, as did I, to find the truth, and make it available to those still trapped by the doctrines of deception throughout Eckankar. I thank each of them for his or her extraordinary work without which my efforts would have been far more difficult. Examples, taken from a variety of Eckankar books show Paul’s remarkable talents as a plagiarist. Plagiarized segments abound in practically every Eckankar book published under the Paul Twitchell name. Comparisons of Paul’s The Far Country, which appears to be the most extensively plagiarized of all of his works, with passages from earlier writings by Julian Johnson demonstrate systematic theft. Let us compare passages from the two writers: Johnson: We ought to remember the words of Vivekananda about churches, and religions in general. We could not say it better, so let us quote him: “. . . A man may believe in all the churches in the world; he may carry in his head all the sacred books ever written; he may baptize himself in all the rivers of the earth — still if he has no perception of God, I would class him with the rankest atheist. And a man may have never entered a church or a mosque, nor performed any ceremony; but if he realizes God within himself, and is thereby lifted above the vanities of the world, that man is a holy man, a saint, call him what you will. . . .”67
This is a remarkable example of plagiarism — though a careless one, for several reasons. First, note that Julian Johnson is quoting (appropriately) the words of Vivekananda. Yet Paul, recreating the scene as another drop-in by Rebazar Tarzs, pretends that Tarzs is uttering Vivekananda’s words. This is a common device used by Paul to take the words of others and attribute them to one or more of his created line of Eck Masters. This clever example of plagiarism is particularly revealing because, on the very next page of Johnson’s book, Johnson continues with words of his own composition, having ended his quote from Vivekananda. Yet, Paul continues to attribute the words to Rebazar Tarzs, as if he is giving an uninterrupted discourse. Paul has thus combined the words and ideas of two people and placed them in the mouth of his presumed master without regard for who is uttering them. Here is another example: Johnson: First of all, it is not a feeling. Secondly it is not a metaphysical speculation nor a logical syllogism. It is neither a conclusion based upon reasoning nor upon the evidence of books or persons. The basic idea is that God must become real to the individual, not a mental concept, but a living reality. And that can never be so until the individual sees Him. Personal sight and hearing are necessary before anything or anybody becomes real to us.69 Twitchell: First of all, it is not a feeling. Secondly, it is not a meta-physical speculation, nor a logical syllogism. It is not a conclusion based upon reasoning, nor upon the evidence of books or persons. The basic idea is that the SUGMAD must become real to the individual. Not a mental concept of IT, but a living reality. This can never be until the individual sees IT. Personal sight and hearing are necessary, before anything or anybody becomes real to us.70 This example puts to the lie Eckankar’s continuing claim that Paul “got it on the inner,” where such wisdom is available to everyone and, presumably, in the same words. Even if one is gullible enough to buy this argument — supported by Harold’s “astral library theory” (discussed below) — it stretches mystical credulity. To suggest that the same quotes from Vivekananda would be on the same pages as the writings of Johnson, in an astral library copy, virtually word for word, is simply beyond belief. Of course, there is the additional matter of Paul’s assertion that he was told this — quotes and all — by Rebazar Tarzs. The King James Version Lives! Another classic example of Twitchellian plagiarism is this much quoted passage in the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad attributed to Eck Master Lai Tsi. Paul writes (Lai Tsi speaking): Here is a short contemplation seed which I found in myself upon returning from the heavenly worlds: “Show me thy ways, O SUGMAD; Teach me thy path. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me; On thee do I wait all day. Remember, O Beloved, thy guiding light And thy loving care. For it has been ever thy will, To lead the least of thy servants to Thee!”71 The origins of this contemplation seed are from a source familiar to most. It seems that Paul was not above plagiarizing from the Bible either. The King James Version reads: Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the GOD of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses; for they have been ever of old.72 Paul had to work harder on this one, but the flow and tenor of the two passages are virtually the same. In the search for plagiarisms, this constitutes a find. The Toothless Tiger One of the most revered books in Eckankar is Paul’s The Tiger’s Fang, an account of his spiritual travels into the inner worlds and his eventual ascension to the God-Realization experience. It is regarded as a road map of the inner journey that all souls will take to reach the highest plane in the region of Sugmad (God). Aside from changing the name of the master, Kirpal Singh (whom he acknowledged actually accompaned him on these inner journeys), to his averred master, Rebazar Tarzs, Paul plagiarized extensively from the spiritual works of others. Here are examples of critical passages that he lifted from Walter Russell’s, The Secret of Light.73 These passages are integrated into a description of Paul’s excursion into the “world of Soul, that of pure light and so brilliant. . . . The king of this mystical world lives in a temple . . . overlooking his worlds.”74 Having set this magical scene, Paul falsely attributes the words of Russell to the “God” of this plane, whom he called Omkar or Parabrahm. Russell: God is consciousness. Consciousness is static.75 Twitchell: Know this that God is consciousness and consciousness is static. . . .76 Russell: Consciousness is the spiritual awareness of Being, of all-knowing, all-power and all-presence. . . . Thinking is the motionless principle in light which creates the illusion of motion.77 Twitchell: Consciousness is the spiritual awareness of Being, of all-knowing, all-power, and all-presence. Thinking is the motionless principle in light and sound which creates the illusion of motion. . . .78 Russell: The Self of man belongs to the static, invisible, conscious, unconditioned universe of KNOWING. We express knowing in the dynamic, visible, electrically conditioned universe of sensation.79 Twitchell: The Soul of man belongs to the static, invisible, conscious, unconditioned world of knowing. You express knowing in the dynamic, visible, electrically conditioned universe of perception.80 Russell: Sensation is the electrical awareness of motion simulating the spiritual QUALITIES of the One Idea by creating imaged QUANTITIES of separate forms which seem to have substance.81 Twitchell: Perception is the electrical awareness of motion simulating the spiritual qualities of God, who creates imaged qualities of separate forms which seem to have material substance.82 Russell: Consciousness is real. Sensation simulates reality through motion of interchanging lights, but the mirage of a city is not the city it reflects. . . . Man is the only unit in Creation who has conscious awareness of the spirit within him and electrical awareness of dually conditioned light acting upon his senses. All other units of Creation have electrical awareness only.83 Twitchell: Consciousness is real and perception simulates reality through motion of interchanging lights, but the mirage of a city is not the city it reflects. So man is the only unit in creation which has conscious awareness of spirit within him and electrical awareness of dually conditioned light acting upon his physical senses. All other units of creation has [sic] electrical awareness only.84 Other parts of The Tiger’s Fang abound with stolen sections he attributes to Rebazar Tarzs or the ruler of some higher plane. While this book is both lyrical and profound in many respects, it is nonetheless a deception, for it portrays Paul and his encounters with higher beings in a manner that is not true. However lofty, inspiring, and enlightening this work may be, once the truth is known, it leaves the reader with a sense of betrayal, because Paul has mixed spiritual ideals with lies and deceit. The Source of Eckankar Writings on the HU From Paul’s writings and the emphasis placed on it by Harold, most Eckists believe that the HU originated with Eckankar and the Masters of the Vairagi Order. This is not so. The HU features prominently in Sant Mat and is believed to have derived from Sufi teachings. Paul’s source was Hazrat Inayat Khan’s book, The Mysticism of Sound and Music. Here is a comparison: Hazrat Khan: The Supreme Being has been called by various names in different languages, but the mystics have known him as Hu . . . the only name of the nameless. . . . The word Hu is the spirit of all sounds and of all words, and is hidden under them all, as the spirit in the body. It does not belong to any language, but no language can help belonging to it. This alone is the true name of God, a name that no people and no religion can claim as their own.85 Twitchell: The Supreme has been called various names in different languages, but it is known to those who recognize the real wisdom as HU, the name of the nameless one. The word HU is the Spirit of all sounds and of all words, and is hidden under them all as the Spirit of Soul. It does not belong to any language; no language can help belonging to it. This alone is the true name of God, a name that no people and no religion can claim as their own.86 Paul chose a powerful concept to incorporate into Eckankar. No one can criticize him for that. All who have used this word and chanted it regularly will attest to the impact that it has had in their lives. Some Eckists distribute small cards containing the word HU with instructions on how to use it. Paul’s decision to incorporate the HU into Eckankar was an important one. However, Eckankar, contrary to the admonition “no religion can claim ( Hu) as its own,” has virtually kidnapped the word, making all who hear it think that its origin is in Eckankar and that it is Eckankar’s gift to the world. With such good intentions for the whole, why does Eckankar keep the origins
of the HU a secret? Why kidnap the word and pretend that the Eckankar
Masters originated it and passed it down to Paul Twitchell? What is
wrong with telling the truth and honestly attributing the source of
this insight? The answer is simple. The HU is one of the lock stitches
in the fabric that Eckankar has woven about its origins and history.
If Eckankar acknowledges that the HU came from somewhere else, the primacy
of Eckankar as the source of all religions on earth begins to fall apart.
However, as we shall see when tracing the origins of the HU itself,
it is not as Hazrat Inayat Khan proclaimed it. Rather, he took this
Islamic word, which actually translates as the male pronoun “he,” and
embellished it far beyond anything in Islamic scholarship. This, of
course, does not make it effective or ineffective, but simply begins
to place it in its proper historic perspective. However, the real origin
of the word HU appears to be in ancient Paul and Harold perpetuated Kahn’s embellishment and then usurped it by not revealing the origins of the HU (and countless other aspects of the Eckankar teaching). The dilemma Harold faces is that if he makes a concession to truth, a bit of the Eckankar dogma unravels. If he were to reveal the distortions, the truths would still remain to contribute to the spiritual consciousness of humankind. The difficulty in untangling Eckankar is that truth and distortion are so tightly interwoven that separating them is nearly impossible. Paul has created such a mythical, mystical mix (espoused most prominently in the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad) that, even forewarned of fabrications, the reader is still drawn ever so seductively into his mythology and mysticism. I struggled with this problem as the truth about Eckankar revealed itself to me. In time, I was able to distinguish between myth and core beliefs still helpful in spiritual unfolding. I will share some of these insights in later chapters in the hope that they might be helpful to those who will face the same struggles I faced. “In My Father’s House There Are Many Mansions” Eckankar’s cosmology, or structure, of the inner worlds is also heavily plagiarized. Comparisons are again called for: Johnson: Next above Anda lies Brahmanda, the third grand division. This term means ‘the egg of Brahm.’ It is egg-shaped, like Anda, but is much vaster in extent. It is also more refined and full of light, markedly more than the physical universe. . . . In fact, spirit predominates in Brahmanda just as matter predominates in Pinda, while Anda is rather on the dividing line between the two.88 Twitchell: Above the Anda world lies that which we call the Brahmanda, the third grand division, the “Egg of Brahm.” It is like the Anda world, but greater in scope and immensity of space. It is also more refined and more full of light than any of the worlds below it. In fact, Spirit predominates the Brahmanda Plane, just as matter dominates the Pinda, while the Anda is in between.89 Comparing the sources of these two quotes, we learn that they share considerably more in common than this one selection. I was struck by how much Paul took from Johnson’s book: changing some paragraphs enough that they appear dissimilar at first glance, yet express the same thoughts with many of the same words, though often in a different order. It amazes me how Eckankar can claim, in spite of extensive evidence to the contrary, that Paul did not plagiarize. It is like a jury that is shown the smoking gun, the bullet from the victim, a videotape of the shooting, the victim’s death proclamation naming the accused, and a motive of jealousy, and yet is still not convinced of the defendant’s guilt. The cosmology in Eckankar’s God Worlds Chart,90 is taken from the cosmologies of Sant Mat and Theosophy. A reading of Johnson’s Path of The Masters demonstrates this conclusively. In examples such as this, Paul generally places his Eck Masters in a plausible historical context. Yet, he makes them, especially Rebazar Tarzs, the original thinkers, the “pioneers,”91 of various spiritual ideas, and the authentic masters become mere epigones of his fanciful creations.92 This is a good illustration of Paul’s art of weaving known spiritual history with his mythical history of the Eck Masters in a manner that deceives the unwary. In acknowledging some connection with the cosmology of the Theosophical Society, Paul writes: What the Theosophical Society calls their planes, or what we know of them through the Vedanta group, never particularly bothered me, for they are all the same and we are not troubled with making comparisons. All we wish to do is to keep straight in our minds those various planes and the governments on each. I have used the names given by the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad which is the holy book of the ECK Masters of the ancient Vairagi Order.93 Paul concedes that there are other paths with names similar to those found in Eckankar. Yet, he claims that none of them is his source, and that he got the names of the planes from the holy book of Eckankar, not from these other paths. However, a reading of Johnson’s Path of the Masters alongside Twitchell’s Eckankar: Key to Secret Worlds reveals that the former is the real source of the names of planes and much of the text of the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad. Paul contradicts or at least greatly revises without explanation Eckankar’s cosmology by arbitrarily changing it from one with eight planes to one with twelve. Somehow, over a short period, coinciding with the publication of the 1970 edition of the God Worlds Chart, heaven added four planes, four gods, and four sounds. In addition to changing the names of the planes, Paul added the Alaya Lok, the Hukikat Lok, and two others. The differences in Paul’s two cosmologies are very significant. First, it shows that Paul originally copied the Sant Mat cosmology plane for plane, building the heavenly structure that he credited the Vairagi Masters with pioneering. However, around 1970, Eckankar’s vision of the inner worlds changed. What happened? Did heaven go through remodeling? Did someone sneak in and edit the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad that Paul claimed was his actual source? We also have another problem: the sounds. The 1970 edition of the God Worlds Chart drastically altered the
landscape Paul had previously outlined. The sound of thunder was a sign
to Eckists that they were on the Brahm Lok (Trikuti), but the sound
seems to have shifted to the physical plane ( One final note on Paul’s dishonesty is in order. His deceptions were not limited to his published books but extended also to correspondence with his wife, Gail. In a series of letters written to her before their marriage, Paul expounded on various esoteric matters in order to instruct and educate her. She obviously believed that this insight was coming from Paul and was apparently quite impressed. Everyone who read these letters was equally impressed. They were eventually published in several volumes called Letters To Gail. Unknown to Gail and the original publishers, Paul had copied a large portion of the content from a variety of published sources.94 He apparently never told her the real source, since they were later published with Gail’s permission. (One of the volumes of Letters to Gail was eventually discontinued.) This is part of the pattern of the plagiarist. Deception became a habit until it is quite possible that Paul no longer considered that he was involved in it. He made it his by copying and transmitting it, and apparently for him that was enough. Eventually, word came to the Eckankar office that the books contained copyrighted materials, many taken from the works of Paul’s early mentor, L. Ron Hubbard, of Scientology fame.95 The last irony in the saga is Paul’s reaction when a former Eckankar student, John-Roger Hinkins, decided to start his own equally dubious path (the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, MSIA) and “borrowed” heavily from Paul’s “writings.” Paul hit the roof and threatened Hinkins with a lawsuit.96 From all accounts, Hinkins and MSIA have followed in the tradition of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar and have even added to the scandal associated with some of Eckankar’s progeny. 97 There are hundreds of examples of Paul’s plagiarism that could be cited. Various web sites and Lane’s book will lead to a treasure trove of additional evidence for those who may need more convincing.98 In Defense of Plagiarism: the Apologists Speak Sensing the damage that the publication of David Lane’s research would have on Eckankar, its lawyer, Alan Nichols, attempted to refute the charge that Paul had plagiarized the works of Julian Johnson. He wrote in a letter to Lane in 1977: With a wide background of study you will find many similarities both approximate and exact in many religious statements, history and myth ology. . . . How did you know Johnson didn’t obtain his information from Twitchell or Rebazar Tarzs [sic] or some other common source? Don’t be surprised that many people find the same truths and even in the same words, commandments, etc., whether they are concepts, stories of events, or levels of God Worlds or consciousness.99 The argument is a stretch to say the least. As an attorney, he would surely not make such an argument in a court of law. At that time, it represented Eckankar’s official position and remains so today. If Eckankar’s argument were accepted, it would stand the entire moral-ethical-legal foundation of creativity on its head. Moreover, the argument fails for one basic reason. Granted, ideas are ubiquitous and are received and expressed by different individuals as original expressions. However, each person’s expression of an idea is unique. No two things in the universe are exactly alike. No cell in our body, no fingerprint, no voiceprint is exactly the same. The proposition that two people would express hundreds of paragraphs in an identical manner is to stretch credulity to the breaking point. And to suggest that Julian Johnson may have copied his book from Paul, who arrived on the scene twenty-four years later, is to extend the argument to the ridiculous. No, there is no plausible explanation but that Paul was one of the most prolific plagiarists of his time. The Master Compiler Theory As the principal defender of the faith, Harold attempted to explain away some of Paul’s idiosyncrasies without referring to the accusations of plagiarism. Harold employed the euphemism of “master compiler:” Paul gathered up the whole teaching and took the best. Though it may be a strange thing to say, in this sense I see him as a master compiler.100 It is true that there is much chaff and little wheat in the vast fields of spiritual writing during both Paul’s day and our own. Yet Paul’s “compiling” seemed to be limited to a single row in a very small field. Paul was fortunate to have hit the jackpot early in his Eckankar book-writing days. Most of his compiling was taken from the books of Julian Johnson, Ruhani Satsang (Kirpal Singh’s path), Hazrat Inayat Khan, H. P. Blavatsky, L. Ron Hubbard, Walter Russell, the Bible, Lama Govinda, and Neville. Visions of Paul, with thousands of books gathered from all over the world and picked through to find the gems that he included in his many books, is what I once imagined. This is the vision that Eckankar would still have its followers believe. If one takes a trip to the Center for Twitchellian Plagiarism101 on the Internet, a distinctly different view is advanced. It is not as altruistic as Harold makes it sound and certainly not the feat of creative culling and benign interpolation that Eckists believe. Instead, one finds evidence of a clever and accomplished plagiarist, who assiduously pilfered the works of a select group of authors. He claims their ideas as his and, through the clever insertion of his own mythology, converts their words into the doctrine and substance of Eckankar. Even books like The Tiger’s Fang, which I had always assumed to be Paul’s actual journey into the God worlds, is so rife with plagiarism that one wonders if or to what extent Paul ever had inner journeys. This is not “compiling” and these “high teachings of ECK” were not “scattered to the four corners of the world.”102 Instead, they were contained in a library 1/100 the size of even my modest library and culled for the nuggets of truth that Paul claimed as his own. The Astral Library Theory Harold’s creativity was at its best when he gave life to the idea of an “ astral library.” In this esoteric locale, presumably, the original versions of spiritual books are there to be copied. In Harold’s view, Paul’s plagiarism becomes merely a visit to an inner library. He wrote: I’d like to conclude by mentioning how the libraries on the inner planes work. On these planes there are main libraries connected to the wisdom temples. But there are also many branch libraries. . . . Most of the writers from earth go to the branch libraries, so they don’t get to use the best sources. But the good researchers—such as Paul, Julian Johnson, Paul Brunton, and others — can come in here and select the paragraphs that suit their audience.. . . In the margin next to the different paragraphs on the manuscript I was reading were notes written in Paul’s hand: “Far Country,” “Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad . . . and so on. Under his notes a librarian researcher had placed the specific page reference where these ideas could be found in current manuscripts.103 It is hard to imagine a dream more ably orchestrated to meet the chorus of accusations about plagiarism that plagued Eckankar before and during the spring of 1984, when this talk was given. But, it is just a little too convenient. A room accessible only to the “good writers” like Paul and those from whom he plagiarized? Please! This explanation is so nonsensical that it betrays desperation. I believe that Harold had a dream. I believe that it may have been exactly as he describes it. But, to write about it as though it is a true and factual description of an actual “ astral library” from which all ideas come, is something else. By failing to label it a dream or even an inner experience, subject to the same subjectivity and personal tailoring of all dreams, is to be disingenuous. Harold rejected seven years of spiritual experiences of a chela as, essentially, the work of the Kal. Yet, he puts this experience forward as a true and factual explanation of how Paul’s writings seem to be identical to those of so many other writers. It is certainly true that everyone receives inspiration and ideas in the dream state, in flashes of insight in the waking state, and in numerous other ways. However, to imply that writers simply go inside with a note pad and copy whatever they need for their next paragraph or book is to trivialize the laborious, iterative process that all writers know. Even if two writers have the same idea at the same time, which is certainly possible, each writer will express that idea in a manner that is his own. The probability of literally thousands of sentences and paragraphs being identical, including quotes and mistakes, is so low as to be impossible. From Sow’s Ear to Silk Purse In spite of the pall that revelations about Paul’s plagiarism cast on the teachings of Eckankar, it is important not to lose sight of a great spiritual principle implicit in the Law of Opposites. This Law postulates that everything contains within it the seeds of its opposite. From this principle, we see good emerging from evil, and evil emerging from good. All things contain their opposites and have both negative and positive aspects existing coterminously. Paul’s plagiarism nevertheless conveyed spiritual truth, for he purloined passages from truly great spiritual works. For that, I remain grateful. This is the reason Eckankar has survived in spite of Paul’s dishonesty. After first learning about Paul’s literary piracy, I was more concerned about the truth contained in his pilfered selections than the fact that they weren’t his. My daughter put it succinctly. She described a hand with fingers curled and index finger pointing, noting the importance of focusing on where the finger was pointing (truth) rather than the shape of the curled fingers (the source of the truth). Her analogy captured the essence of my approach to Paul’s writings. I had learned a great deal from his books — plagiarisms and all. They greatly contributed to my understanding of higher consciousness. However, this does not excuse or exonerate him. Paul’s struggles with truth, from his early years through his last days, bring into question the validity of his mastership and his level of spiritual awareness. But we cannot question his brilliance. However, genius is not spirituality or mastership. The most ironic aspect of this probe into his plagiarism is the sense that he might have been capable of these insights on his own — a curious disposition of many plagiarists. In either misguided haste or covetous thievery, they commit acts that are unnecessary yet, for them, unavoidable. The simple person who speaks “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is the true master. Truth is the quintessential expression of God-love and God-reality. Only a person who can speak the truth is capable of expressing the nature of the divine. Anything less brings chaos, for as Paul instructed: Refu |