15. How Much Does Plagiarism Matter ? © 2016 – Matt Sharpe

 

    15. How Much Does Plagiarism Matter ? © 2016 – Matt Sharpe

  

Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.

 

~ Wilson Mizner

 

 

   Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

 

~ Guy Debord

 

 

   Art is either plagiarism or revolution

 

~ Paul Gauguin

 

 

   Using a big word like ‘plagiarism’… always causes some damage. It will always do lasting damage, like accusations of racism.

 

~ Michel Houellebecq

 

 

   Originality is undetected plagiarism.

 

~ William Ralph Inge

 

 

   Once you get into the world of dystopia, it’s hard to avoid plagiarism, because other people have had such powerful visions.

 

~ Anthony Horowitz

 

 

   Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that ‘plagiarism’ farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources,

(…)

   He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple;

 

~ Mark Twain

 

 

   Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

 

~ Salvador Dalí

 

 

      The first law regarding copyright protection was the Statute of Anne, passed in Great Britain in 1710. Several decades later and acting under the newly adopted Constitution, Congress in the United States passed an act that was almost verbatim of the Statute of Anne, passed in 1790. This was soon followed by the Berne Convention, a treaty that gave a specific minimum of legal protection among the Western nations regarding initially books and other forms of print, that had become not only more important, but far more widespread after the invention of the printing press. Soon after works of art and music came to be protected by these copyright laws. For the purpose here, we only need consider forms of writing and the laws that govern them as well as the various ways these ideas are interpreted by the public at large. In life upon the Physical Plane, the purposes of copyright are generally recognized as needed protections for artists in all forms of media. As for print, copyrights serve the publishers of works as well as the promotion of them, even more than they do the actual authors, that being the area that brings in financial profits.

 

 

   Back in history, most writings were ghost-written, which allowed the authors of ideas that did not fit within the realm of the acceptable to continue living despite their work and any controversy it caused. While the Catholic Church is not the sole proprietor of judgment, it had been the main source for judgment and enforcing those judgments against humanity, followed by the royalty within the various nations in Europe and North Africa. This is one reason that the Christian disciples of Jesus are given the credit for having written the gospels that are included in the Bible today. Whomever may have actually written any of them, as well as the many apocryphal texts that were left out of the Bible at the Council of Nicea, is a thing that has been long lost to the mists of history but that also serves to clearly demonstrate the reasons that anyone would refuse to take claim for a writing that they produced and would name another more well-known person.

 

 

   This became something of a standard for many centuries. A way to write and to remain alive. This behavior is almost directly opposed to the idea of owning ideas and/or writings about them, whereby claiming them to have been written by a saint spares the individual the danger of having to be responsible for giving out ideas that those in power might not approve of as well as garnering support from any who considered the saint in question to be a significant spiritual figure. In that time period the majority was unable to read, much less to write, so those that had the education to do so were either royalty, were monks or friars within the church, or just plain wealthy. Education was for centuries held within church organizations. Monks within Christianity had the education to read and write, and taught those skills to others within their monasteries. This is just one way that the ruling religion of any given time in any given culture group held and retained ownership of ideas and their ability to be communicated. The same patterns happened in various locations around the globe long before the advent of Christianity. The same patterns happened both in ancient India as well as throughout ancient China and Tibet, not to mention the areas of the Near East such as Persia, Turkey and Sumeria.

  

   Ownership of ideas is a thing that was once considered impossible but has recently been gaining much support. It must also be stated that two individuals in separate areas of the world can and have had the same ideas although never having been exposed to the other person or the idea in question. This has also been known to happen concerning copyrighted items and is far from impossible. The actual ownership of ideas and concepts as opposed to actual physical items, is the subject of continued disagreement and controversy around the world. Artists, musicians, authors and the publishers of these items have typically held ownership, except under certain specific criteria such as contributions to a collective work in the case of writing, and the work-for-hire rules that make an employer the owner of a written work that they paid another to write. The thing we are concerned with here are spiritual maxims and laws that have been held and practiced across many traditions and philosophical stylings over eons, and whether any human being can claim ownership of those ideas, which is a new concept that is heavily based on the instantaneous communications we have via the internet, with people and cultures around the globe.

 

 

   For as long as humanity has been able to have ideas, they have also been able to take any newer ideas and appropriate them into the time and place that they were. It is hard to find a single religious path that can say to have been independent of all others that came before it, and just as ideas and concepts were given in one religion or another, the same ideas could be communicated across large areas where at times they would take root and spring up as a seedling in a given time and place. The names and languages changed constantly over time and throughout the various cultures, but often the same ideas and concepts were repeated in various spiritual groups. It is difficult to compare the spirituality of one group against that of another without finding that many of the same ideas can be found in both. No group has any more of a right to a particular teaching or facets found within any of the religious systems than any other group that might arise, despite the claims often made that a particular way is the only valid way. For this to be true it requires that the Godhead be limited by the mental concept of intelligence.

 

 

   Many Shamans, spiritualists, Saints, Sants, Gurus and Masters have found the ways to be able to access the inner states to interact with the Divine. And each time this occurs, there are always others who feel unable to access IT without the use of that other who has clear skill and ability to commune with IT and to reveal the things expressed by IT to the world, whether that be a native tribe somewhere, or an entire religious path. There is always one who can go within to perform spiritual services to those without that need the help, and such figures have always existed, although called by many names, and never accepted by the entire world in the same way at the same time. In Eckankar this is the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master, and the subject I am speaking of is one that specifically relates to a former Living ECK Master, he who was known as Sri Paul Twitchell, and who is now Peddar Zaskq.

 

 

   He was a person that read a great many books within any given week of his life, so this tendency played a large part in his spiritual life as it developed throughout his life. He studied a great many religions and mystical paths beginning many of those from reading books on the subject. Some originated in ancient Egypt and can be recognized as an interest that mankind had held to for innumerable centuries, most often being referred to as Alchemy, which was an out-of-body way to have direct experience with spiritual principles to transform the “lead” of the individual that was as yet unaware of Soul into the “gold” that was a Self-Realized Soul. For many centuries the secrets of initiation and enlightenment were kept hidden from the church, and for this reason many of these teachings were disguised in code and were passed around to certain individuals and groups of individuals that existed outside of the Catholic Church. These ideas about personal enlightenment existed in every area of the world and did not even belong solely to Europe or the Middle East.

 

 

   As time wore on, many of these secret groupings attempting to work the true Alchemy of the inner work, were not able to keep these things clearly defined, and so it came to pass that there were ever less people moving forward spiritually and ever more going after power and powers. To put it plainly, magic began to be used with the mistaken assumption that this was the true way to power. As may be obvious there is little within what was called Alchemy that had anything to do with surrendering of the will, an aspect of mind, to the Divine and because of this there was ever less interest in serving life that was replaced with attempts to control life to make others serve the magicians. This is of course a natural cycle of experience within the lower planes. Spiritual experience and upliftment are considered of the greatest import for a time, and then the reverse has its place at the top of the most desired list.

 

 

   Some of the earliest known works plagiarized by Sri Paul Twitchell happened to be English Sant Mat books, which caused many to have the belief that Sant Mat was stolen from to create Eckankar, the two being so similar in many ways. Julian Johnson was the name of the author whose book was plagiarized. This man was, like Sri Paul Twitchell, born in Kentucky, though he was born in 1873 as opposed to Sri Paul Twitchell’s 1908. Johnson had traveled to India to be initiated into Sant Mat by Sawan Singh, who was initiated under the parent faith at Agra by the Sants in Shiv Dayal Singh’s line. At some point Sawan fell in with Jaimal Singh, who claimed to have been initiated by Soamiji Maharaj, as Shiv Dayal Singh had come to be known. Jaimal Singh started the Beas satsang which at its beginning was second to the satsang at Agra, but which eventually began to change the writings of Soamiji Maharaj, which in effect changed the teachings. Days before his death Jaimal Singh was called to Agra to answer charges of falsely claiming to be a Guru and was excommunicated completely from Sant Mat in the eyes of the Agra satsang. After he died, Sawan Singh continued to initiate under the auspices of Agra, and he ran the satsang at Beas, but he never once claimed himself to be a Sant or the Guru. It was always others who gave him that title, it was never actually claimed by him.

 

 

   There are a number of other authors whose works were taken from and added into what became Eckankar. Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi Mursheed was one of these influences. He had also written quite a lot about HU. While he was never what we would consider an ECKist, he was in fact being trained by the very same ECK Masters, which is how he came to know about HU, and the Vairagi Mystics whom he wrote a bit about. Another notable author and mystic whose writings added as a piece of the whole that came to be known as Eckankar is Neville Goddard. His theory and teachings that he gave to the world were that the human imagination is God, so by using it in the proper way, we could manifest the realities we desired into our lives. He called this the Law of Assumption, but many others who came to take something away from him that they learned have been recently calling it the Law of Attraction. In Eckankar we know this as the As If principle. Sri Paul Twitchell refined what Neville taught and developed it to reveal and even greater Truth. Not that we or our imagination are literally God, but that Soul, the True Self, is an “atom” of the being of God, and is therefore Godlike, which is exactly how It is able to so easily manifest since creation is literally already finished. There is no creation now, there is only the manifestation of things that are already created. It takes the awareness of the individual to put in place the things that bring a desired state into the beingness of physical reality.

 

 

   Sri Paul Twitchell did take things from many previously existing writings. I am not interested to state any percentage, nor to claim to know the specific reasons that he did so. Everyone has their own opinion about that, but I consider that a very small question in the regard to which spiritual experience, initiation and progress are concerned, for the individual regardless of the chosen spiritual or religious path. All paths lead to the same end, only some may be perhaps more direct than others. This is the Sufi view of spirituality, and it must be noted that in many ways Sufism comes much closer to what Eckankar is than do any of the three religions he was known to have “borrowed from.” God has no religion, speaks no language, has no skin color and no sexual preference, and yet so many religious systems claim to be the one and only authentic one that can lead the individual to direct spiritual experiences on one hand, and a potential of eternal punishment on the other, both of which are ideas that are firmly within the limitations of the dualistic planes of the lower worlds.

 

 

   There are many who find fault with Sri Paul Twitchell and with Eckankar, and usually this is based upon the incidences of plagiarism. This is a false argument and one that fails to recognize the important factors within the whole. If the path that Sri Paul Twitchell created by taking parts of various teachings and sewing them together into a single path, is faulty or unreal because of that, then that would also require each of those previous writings to have been false or unworkable. On the other hand, if these various teachings were valid, and the way he indicated that the individual could learn to have personal experience with them to prove their reality to themselves, what is the problem? Why the criticism? The copyright laws are things that exist in, and are valued by, the physical world of mankind. They are important only here. They hold no power over the higher regions, and absolutely none over the Absolute, the Sugmad. Each person interested in these teachings can learn how to experience them for themselves, and if they come to decide that these teachings are not for them, that is fine. That is a choice that only an individual can make for themselves. There is no judgment about it, every individual has the specific right to choose their own way.

 

 

   It is thought by some that the reason Sri Paul Twitchell plagiarized an English book about Sant Mat was for some of the followers of it that he met while he was involved with it. That it would provide a bridge to what was going to be coming next. He plagiarized the Path of the Masters, which lists in its index Ekankar. This is the term that he spelled differently and became what we know today as Eckankar. The origin of that term is within Sikhism from Guru Nanak’s Mool Mantra. That connection must be noted as are the surnames of some of these figures in Sant mat I mentioned before. It is a Sikh custom that a married man takes the surname Singh which means lion. Some of Sant Mat is more heavily influenced by Sikhism, and other branches of it have a greater Sufi influence. Kabir is named as the one who began what would later be known as Sant Mat, and he was an earlier born contemporary of Guru Nanak. Both were given inner initiation by Rebezar Tarzs whom we know in Eckankar. It must also be mentioned that Sikhism considers Kabir to also have been a true Guru and they include his writings in the Guru Granth Sahib. Both Kabir and Nanak were able to see beyond the borders of culture and language, and to recognize that the same Divinity was present in all religions.

 

 

   These concepts of the Light and Sound of God originated well before Sant Mat. The Sufis had the same idea centuries before, and indeed all the way back to at least the reign of Zarathustra, and perhaps back as far as the time of Persia’s first prophet Mahabad, eight thousand years ago. The same concept was already a well-known factor within what came to be known as Hinduism, the world’s oldest and most inclusive religious path. My point in saying this is to show that certain ideas and concepts have existed throughout all of time, regardless of culture, area of the world, or time period. These things predate spirituality while also being the primary point of all spirituality. As far as spiritual ideas and concepts, there is no human owner, and these eternal principles have existed throughout time in every religion, culture and language that the mind of man has ever created, and make no mistake, all religions are indeed created in the minds of humanity.

 

 

   This brings us to the true point of this, the fact that while books and artworks can be copyrighted, the ideas contained therein cannot necessarily be. Therefore, is a human who happened to have plagiarized, by that act alone unable to ever ascend in the spiritual sense to God-Realization and Mastership? Are the higher spiritual entities and the Godhead ITSELF even concerned with such things that exist within the lower realities? There is only one answer, to the first question yes, and to the second a firm no.

 

 

   The Eternal cannot be limited by manmade laws and mental concepts or constructs. A Saint has achieved the Self-Realization necessary to take that Soul beyond the dual into the first of the true spiritual planes that Shamus-i Tabriz called the Real. What this means is that Sri Paul Twitchell not only achieved Self-Realization, which is Santhood within Sant Mat and is a High Initiate within Eckankar, he also went further still, ascending through the Spiritual Realization level, which Sant mat calls a Param Sant, and even further through the states of being into what we in Eckankar call God-Realization, a thing that has several levels within it before one achieves what we know as the Mahanta Consciousness. This occurs on the fourteenth plane, which is the specific cosmology that Param Sant Tulsi Sahib used, he being the Sant that first used the term Sant Mat, as well as being the individual that initiated Soamiji Maharaj.

 

 

   Along with the idea of various spiritual levels and planes and states of consciousness to match them all, there is also a very basic reality that exists over all of the various states and levels, and that is the Reality of the Godhead. IT simply exists, with or without the personal opinions of any humans. Some demand that religions show proof, or they will have nothing to do with them, and they have every right to see things that way, however, the reality is that each individual must do their own work for themselves. There are no free rides within the Worlds of God. One must put forth the effort, as well as to open their mind and heart to whatever will be brought to them in that regard, and that is no small task. Anyone that says otherwise is either ignorant or are lying about it.

 

 

    Each spiritual path that has ever existed on the earth has had some basis within a previous religion or spiritual path, and this is just the most basic form that the idea of copyright infringement springs from. Religious reformations are just one way that religions develop and move forward, and just as often some part of them might move backwards too. That is a basic feature of the dualistic worlds we live in. Many make the claims that the cosmology or plane structure used in one religion, can in no way be compared with those of another, however this is entirely a false notion, and one based firmly within the lower structures of the mind and emotions. Admission of the universal viewpoint, whereby the way is open to one and all regardless of skin color, religion, culture or status of wealth, is one that makes one group the most favored, and another the least favored. This is simply untrue. The Sugmad observes no such things, and all these judgment structures are created within the mind of man. True spiritual egalitarianism suffers and accepts no such limiting conditions, and neither does the Sugmad.

 

 

   Another issue that some make with Eckankar regarding plagiarisms, is that words put in the early books, stated to have been spoken by Rebazar Tarzs, turn out to have been words written by another person who was not an ECKist. While those plagiarisms took place, it must also be recognized that while Sri Paul Twitchell may have put them in the mouths of the ECK Masters, this does not by any means make then non-existent, it does not prove that they are fictional. This is a mere assumption that some make. It is known that in the first draft of Sri Paul Twitchell’s The Tiger’s Fang, as well as in a number of magazine articles he wrote, he spoke of Kirpal Singh appearing in his room at night to teach him. Later on he edited the texts to say Sudar Singh or Rebazar Tarzs. These things have been proven and there still remain the original drafts that show these changes. Some view these as proof that no ECK Masters have ever existed, but again that is pure assumption and has no direct evidence to support that conclusion.

 

 

   Then there is another matter of whether or not the names given for the various ECK Masters are their actual names. In many cases they are not. There is no good reason that this should be an issue however. While not being actual Gods, they are direct channels for Sugmad, meaning, that a name has so little to do with what they are that they all become irrelevant, just as all names for God do. The difference between one view of this and the opposing view, has a great deal to do with who has the ability to look at it beyond the worlds of duality. Those who attain the state of consciousness of the non-dual, which is the awareness of Soul after one has achieved true Self-Realization, are able to see this matter of names as being unimportant at the very least. The things that exist on the higher planes, must have names of some sort so that we here in the lower planes can speak of them. That is the reason the names exist but is also the reason that which names are used are not important. What is far more important is a person’s ability to recognize similar things regardless of the names used or the language spoken. The various religions have far more in common with each other than they have separating them from one another, but this also is a thing that is not easily seen from the lower viewpoint. In the view of one who has attained true Universalism, this is an immediately obvious fact.

 

 

   Those that speak against Eckankar and its Vairagi Masters make another mistake. This one related to the use of plagiarized quotes by other authors stated as having come from a Master and being spoken to Sri Paul Twitchell. As stated before, some see this having happened as proof that these Masters are fictional, but the fact of the matter is, that they, like the Godhead, are beyond names. No single name for God is the only accurate one, and likewise, the names given to these Vairagi Masters are not necessarily their actual names. What they are, are names that are currently being used by these Masters. They have used other names before this time period. Rebazar Tarzs, the immortal 500 plus year old Master that still exists within the same physical body today is a good example. Over the years many pictures have been found showing what appear to be the same individual. Most of these are drawings and not actual photographs, and each that is found was connected to a different name in an older time period. The view that this proves that he is fictional is merely one way to look at that fact. Another is that he is the very same individual that was previously known by that older name to a group of people, thus the several pictures that all resemble the same individual.

 

 

   If you were over five hundred years old, you would not be able to avoid the necessity of changing your name throughout history. If you did not, someone would eventually notice and would attempt to capture the individual based on a fear of the assumptions made concerning him. People always fear what they do not understand, and this fact alone would require the changing of names many times throughout the successive centuries. This is merely one of the reasons that chelas are told to never worship nor become too attached to the Living ECK Master, because not only would the undue attachment hold them as chains from moving forward, but it would cause them other problems as well. That is why this is stated and often by the Living ECK Master. It is a safeguard that keeps the chela moving forward. It serves no purpose to protect and hide a truth about any Master that appears to have a longer than normal life. It is done to aid the student, to help them stay out of their own way forward. It is just another service that chelas are provided with and one that is beneficial to each of them.

 

 

   So now it is made clearer. Plagiarism is illegal and is not a good idea to utilize. But it is also not a thing that has the ability to prevent a Master in training from making it through all of his training. It is not a recommended way of doing things, but there is no reason to hold prejudice against a Master that at one time did that. It also was at the beginning of the twentieth century, a common practice among newspaper men, simply because there were no forms of knowledge that could be accessed instantaneously around the world the way things can be now. It was taught to journalists in school, so perhaps there is actually a good reason that Sri Paul Twitchell used it the way he did. And in the case of both the Absolute Sugmad, and the Vairagi Masters, names are used for communication, but no Soul is literally their physical name. They all are quite outside of such things, and there is no reason to be too overly attached to a name, or unwilling to let it go so that it can be replaced by another, and that same concept also applies to any and all Living ECK Masters. Never be so attached to one as to refuse to move forward to the next. Vairag means detachment, and there is a reason that these Masters are called the Vairagi Masters, detachment is a literal skill and a form of love. Learn to use it well.

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