It’s sad and very unfortunate, but we’ve had to stop the downloads of our free eBooks as they are being plagiarized on a huge scale. This has meant that our publisher Mystical Life Publications has had to spend more than a year trying to stop hundreds of plagiarizers. That’s time they could have spent towards more constructive things and that in turn has meant a loss of new activities.
Here’s what Jenny and Priya from the Mystical Life Publications team have to say:
It’s wrong to continue simply being an anonymous and unwilling supplier of other people’s work and being left with an awful task of trying to chase up unscrupulous people, some of them who have been difficult and threatening to deal with. This can’t go on.
Plagiarism of my work has been going on for a long time and I believe that many aspects of my work are more widely known through plagiarism than they are by me.
My motivation in teaching is to let people know of the spiritual things I’ve discovered, so that they can freely have them too. And yet between the theft of my work and the abuse and harassment I’ve had to endure, I have effectively been silenced as a spiritual teacher. It’s a loss to me, but it’s also a loss to all those who could have benefited from this work and who won’t even have the opportunity to find it.
It takes a huge amount of work to do the spiritual practice to acquire spiritual experience, and so people who are talented authors, bloggers or public speakers, find it much easier to simply take the results of someone else’s spiritual work and re-present it in a more alluring way.
My work is not presented professionally; I’m neither a talented speaker nor a talented author – I just write from what I’ve experienced and I have turned down commercial offers to publish my work, as I want to keep my integrity and not sell myself as a product.
It’s not possible to function as a teacher in a society where people take my knowledge and present it in a far better way than I can, presenting it in a way the public can assimilate and enjoy and, in so doing, becoming popular. Of course they do this without attributing the original source so that they are seen as the source of the knowledge.
When charlatans become society’s spiritual teachers
When spiritual teachers covertly use the spiritual practice of others as a source of their “teachings”, society then has charlatans as its spiritual teachers, who are just ordinary people with charisma and a talent for writing or speaking.
I believe there is one ‘spiritual’ teacher today who has used my work for many years, who has never credited me and has made a fortune based on what I have given away for free.
A person who plagiarizes another cannot be interested in genuine spirituality, at least not in a sense that I understand it to be. What surely motivates them would be money, fame, pride, a lavish lifestyle, followers, the love of praise, and narcissism. They often encourage personality worship and I’m sure many would come to believe the praise which they attract. In the long run, they do themselves a lot of harm as they live a life of deceit, both towards others and towards themselves.
Some plagiarizers use different terminology to mask the differences from the original and strip out everything controversial, such as the more esoteric subjects, to make it look appealing. And so people who are interested in spiritual things will go to the plagiarizer and not get the full information to be able to do what they need to in order to bring true and lasting change and reach their own path to liberation.
Thus they take people who would be interested in a more substantial spiritual work and lead them to a dead end.
Some plagiarizers having stripped away the controversial esoteric content present what’s left in a captivating way, covering it in a misleading sugar coating to appeal to the masses of people, who, not knowing its source, will take it as true, and will believe that they are the source. This is even more compelling when they are supported by the media, not least because many have come to trust that what the media tells them is true.
Esoteric subjects generally get shunned in the mainstream and it would be relatively easy to plagiarize someone who is quite unknown. So some probably think it’s easier to plagiarize such a person without being caught than it would to do it to a famous author who has commercial backing. This is one of the problems you face when you try to give everything for free or at cost.
Belsebuub (in the light colored top) at Brockwood Park listening to Krishnamurti talk in 1983
I have spent virtually a lifetime of study only for the results of it to be attributed to others and have devoted a life to spiritual practice and helping people only to be robbed by moneymakers and seekers of fame.
Just take a look at the picture on the right, – that’s me at the front of the audience as I was for all Krishnamurti’s talks in his school at Brockwood park in the UK between 1982 and 1983. And I created my first esoteric ceremony in 1971. As you can see, I’ve been practicing spirituality for a long time.
Those who charge money and are successful often have people and corporations around them who also make money out of the product and who want to support and promote it. When you don’t charge money, you rely upon people’s goodwill, and you are easily pushed aside and taken advantage of by those with power and influence.
When a plagiarizer is popular people usually find their work first and think the original is derived from it. And when people out of principle don’t pursue spirituality for commercial purposes and give away their work for free or at cost, people then assume that their work is of lesser value compared to a popular person who charges money and who has the backing of the media.
If a person takes someone else’s spiritual teachings and passes them off as their own, what is that person’s motivation for teaching spirituality? Why would they do it? And what would they gain from it?
To take a person’s work and to pass it off as your own is to take part of their identity and part of their place in society. It’s a form of theft and anyone with a conscience knows it’s wrong.
This is a sad reflection of the society in which we live
How has spirituality become a business worth billions of dollars?
To me, spirituality is about our relationship with divinity, and that’s how it’s been for most of the spiritual teachers of the distant past.
But today it’s a sickening distortion of its root values.
The conditions of plagiarism and profiteering exist because of the values of today’s Western society, where people value products, corporations, and the media. They want to feel good and spirituality has become about making them feel that.
All this is a result of the choices people have made; they desire celebrity and entertainment and look to the providers of it to direct them in their spiritual life.
Celebrities and entertainers, it seems, present spirituality best for the general public, conveying the message in ways that are supported by all the technology and know-how that corporations can buy. Their professional ways of packaging spirituality take money to produce and therefore money is charged for it.
It’s not only money driving plagiarism, it’s also the desire to be liked and known. To fulfill this authors, bloggers, and speakers repeat and reuse whatever they can find, to package it in an alluring way, to say what everyone wants to hear, to be accepted by a segment of society and in this way simple slogans become repeated as truths, but devoid of the harsher realities of existence and the actual process of spiritual awakening.
Society gets what it wants and in spirituality it has created illusions for itself.
Society has turned spirituality into product-making, entertainment and feel good words, the merchants have taken over the temple once again and have once more turned it into a den of thieves.
Some interesting comments recently made regarding free versus nearly free.
I recall some organizations printing and posting out their hard copy book/s for free to anyone who wished to order them. Requests were queued, the amount posted dependent on the amount available, which was dependent on the amount of donations received for such.
I wonder if similar type of setup could work here? Not sure exactly how.. but for those who really cannot afford to purchase a book, it may be a way to cater for them. $8 for some is a cup of coffee, for others it might be a weekly wage. Any donation toward a book/s could be received. Receiving any donation may also be a way of verifying authenticity of requests and possibly prioritizing send outs. So if someone can’t afford the full amount, they could donate one dollar, and still receive a copy, they might just need to be notified of wait time. Free books could be posted when available. Such system wouldn’t eradicate plagiarism, but would slow it down and reduce internet opportunism by the unscrupulous.
There is a large amount of valuable information on this site, and plenty for someone to read before deciding to purchase or donate toward a book. I don’t think a serious reader would feel disgruntled to purchase or donate, as they would have read sufficient on the site to determine if the author’s writing is substantial and worth acquiring for their own self development. The system previously mentioned may help clarify confusion around free (no author profit) versus ‘why do I have to pay anything for it’? If, however, the confusion is simply a disgruntled attitude borne after reading half of this website, it may be the individual’s interest in the topics is very low and they don’t value, nor respect the author or author writings beyond a few mouse clicks. Consequently bitterness may occur when internet freebies are inaccessible.
THE NOT TOTALLY FREE ‘FREE eBOOK’
First of all I wanted to say that I find it good that you don’t want to make money with your teachings and that you don’t want any royalties from your books but you cannot tell people its FREE when its not, it costs 8$.
After reading half of your website and finding all this remarks about a free book I could read I was eager to download it, but it turned out that I still have to order and buy a paperback-book which needs to be printed and shipped to my location which uses resources of our world we could safe. Also it doesn’t send to my location cause here there is no amazon.
Is it really so important that everything written by you has to have your name on it?
In my opinion if you want to provide a free eBook/Book just do it. What the person does with it when they download it should be there responsibility. If it helps 1 person to get there and find its way it was already a good book and even if 1.000 people used it to make money from it.
I know a few teachers who give away there books for free as a pdf download and they never cared what people did with it as long as it helped people they were happy.
You already experienced that all this knowledge is not really yours it is given from the universe to you. The universe also doesn’t say all this stupid people sell my knowledge and make money from it from now on I’m only gonna give it to people who will credit me for what I did. No it gives its knowledge unconditionally which I would also think of an ‘FREE’ eBook like yours.
I’m a bit disappointing here.
Sorry if I offended you in any way I just wanted to state my point. Of course you can do with your creation as you wish….
Hello David,
The ebooks on this website have always been completely free. What you bought for $8 is a paperback edition of the book, which is being sold for a ridiculously low price as you can see, especially considering the depth of the content. The author does not earn any money from it, all the money go to covering the costs and taxes associated with printing and a small amount goes towards publishing costs for future titles.
The ebooks, as I said, have always been free, but they stopped being available due to being immensely plagiarized (https://belsebuub.com/the-plagiarism-of-this-work-is-too-extensive). Basically, people take bits and pieces of Belsebuub’s and Lara’s work, and post it as it suits them, as a part of their own articles and ideas, or even for profit (as an advertising for paid holidays), effectively dilluting and even changing the original message in the teachiongs. If you are wondering why plagiarizing of spiritual teachings is dangerous, you can read a deeper explanation here: https://belsebuub.com/articles/plagiarism-as-a-threat-to-higher-knowledge-and-spiritual-awakening
Hope it helps
Hi David,
Yes it looks like there is quite a room for improvement on this website, I can definitely relate to how it can be confusing to see free e-books on the front page, but they are not available, and people are directed to buy the books instead.
That being said, I practice these teachings from the year 2003 and have faith in Mark and Lara, I think they should be very aware of this confusion for the people new to this work and look for the ways to correct it. They could be busy with other projects now…This change with making e-books unavailable and printing books is relatively recent.
In regards to plagiarism – the way it works now in the world, I believe some form of plagiarism became a powerful instrument of the dark forces and asleep pseudo-gurus to mislead people.
There are spiritual principles which need to be respected: one of them is freely sharing, another one is defending the light, and there are other principles too, and there must be a way found to reconcile it all…and what currently happens on the operational level, might look quite different from the tactical and the strategical ones.
Hope it makes sense 🙂 I am sure that there are other people here who can provide a better explanation.
I think its not so confusing considering the home page says “All eBooks are currently unavailable due to
too much plagiarization. Learn more HERE” and it links to the explanation of why in this article. It is disappointing but not confusing that they can’t be available and hopefully the free ebooks can be made available again sometime somehow.
I agree, David. I don’t see it as confusing either, especially with a couple articles and several videos addressing it and going more in depth. I suppose it might be the frustration of not being able to have the book right away. That could be disappointing. Plus with many bait and switch type of sites out there, I can see how someone might feel they’ve been deceived. But with a little bit of reading and investigation, the answers are all there. I also hope this is temporary and people will once again have faster/easier access to the books.
hi david, like Lucia said, its the printed book that is available for a very cheap price of $8. Hopefully the free ebooks can be made available again sometime in the future.
I can understand it is disappointing that they are not currently available but I understand there is a responsibility to protect the integrity of the information and where it is coming from, so people don’t get only a piece of it out of context and can’t track back to the source to get more. Mark had to go through a lot to be able to write from experience what he does. If you’d like to read his inspiring story you can do so (for free!) at his biography site: http://belsebuubbiography.com/
There is also loads of free content on this site to peruse!
Maybe there is another bookseller you can get the book from?
Hi David
We all do understand that it is a very difficult time for people who want to download the eBooks for free and aren’t able to, buy weighing up the matter, its also incredibly important to bear in mind the vast problem we face and the future integrity of this powerful information for people now and for all those who are sincerely looking to find it in the years to come.
The work that Belsebuub has done has a right to be protected and he’s work to be known by he’s name. It’s he’s basic right that he is entitled to, as is are the works by Lara.
While all that Belsebuub does he does free of charge, including he’s printed books which he doesn’t receive a single cent for, this shouldn’t mean he should be robbed of he’s work. We talk about our right to this information but we miss seeing our part to also protect it. We don’t have to look far to see that anything that is not protected is lost, no matter what it is.
While I do understand that we are fortunate to have the right to learn spiritually this doesn’t mean that it includes the right to steal it and do with it as one pleases because we think its a way to keep the information ‘flowing’. This approach is the very thing by which true spirituality is almost lost in this world, being fragmented, diluted and unrecognizable by those who come across it through plagiarized sources.
When the idea of a ‘free universe’ comes up to legitimate plagiarism, I wonder how is it possible for Spirituality to be known in this world, if our principles accept stealing and condone it in the name of Spirituality or for the sake of Spirituality? What would spirituality come to mean if that was how all of us came to define it? It reminded me about this really valuable point in this article https://belsebuub.com/the-paradox-of-the-do-gooder-feeling-good-but-doing-evil written by Lara, “We can destroy so much actual good when we think we’re doing good. Sounds like a paradox—how could doing “good” ever be a bad thing?” – A very eye opening article to how so much harm can be done with the seemingly ‘good’.
I do sincerely appreciate that you may feel upset that you cannot download the eBooks at this moment, and that Amazon may not deliver a printed version to your area but if you contact us at Mystical Life Publications I’m sure we’d be able to help you get a copy closer to your home as the book is distributed to many more retailers other than Amazon around the world, although it may be at a different price to Amazon, as each retailer can set their own price for the book.
So please feel free to contact us here http://www.mysticallifepublications.org/contact-us/, to help you source a copy if it is one that we have available in print at the moment.
Wishing you all the best,
Hi David,
I think the others made good points about the distinction between the books and the ebooks. It’s a very sad situation that the ebooks have had to be taken offline because, as you’ve said yourself, they can have a very far reach and are easily accessible to people. I know you made some points about the universe providing knowledge freely, and while there’s some truth in that, my view is that the means for that knowledge to reach the world comes through those who are practicing it, and that brings a pretty high level of responsibility towards how this knowledge is shared.
Belsebuub has reached a point where he can present on the back of his own experience the information a person needs to reach enlightenment. The problem is that with people taking bits and pieces, often altering even them to make them more marketable, the message that gets presented to people is distorted and not one that can really help people in a true and lasting way. I think any true spiritual teacher would unfortunately be put in a position where they would need to stop facilitating that process, however much it isn’t their fault it’s happening in the first place.
The printed books at least provide some protection against the message being distorted. It’s very unfortunate that the ebooks have had to be pulled though. In regards to the website, I think the authors have gone to pretty big lengths to explain their position and as David H pointed out have tried to leave links to their explanations on any page showcasing the books. My understanding from reading through the MLP site isn’t that the concept of providing ebooks has been left behind, but that a means of providing them with the necessary protection to keep the integrity of their message needs to be found first, which I also hope will come about in the future.
Hi David,
I understand you say you are new to this website, the authors and the information that is being presented here, so perhaps I can help you out understand things a bit better.
In this post, Mark himself writes and starts with “It’s sad and very unfortunate, but we’ve had to stop the download of our free ebooks as they are being plagiarized on a huge scale”.
For the last 24 years, Mark has been teaching and writing and giving everything he does for free – the eBooks have just been part of it. His whole work he passed on freely in courses, in PDFs, lectures, videos and audios and so forth.
The eBooks are only a tiny part of all of this. The first one came out about 4 years ago – they have always been free and over 140,000 people have downloaded them for free.
The paperbacks edition of the eBooks have always been on the cards to make them happen – Mystical Life Publications (Mark’s non-profit publisher) mentioned them several times over the years on their websites but priority was given to the eBooks as they could reach everyone with an internet connection for free.
However, last year, it became apparent that the eBooks were being completely ripped off by unscrupulous and unethical people, and their message altered.
A few of the people who comment here started looking into it on their own and found more than a thousand cases of plagiarism! That’s pretty extreme to say the least.
At the crux of the problem is that not only were people being misled from the plagiarized content because the content was being altered, but then this also meant that they only got part of the message they were interested in, so people are being conned by these plagiarisers without realizing this who are making a profit out of selling Mark’s work which has always been for free. In turn, Mark could not teach people the original truth as they have already been misled. Thus even his role as a teacher was just stolen from him.
Now put yourself in Mark’s shoes – he has dedicated his life to teach people without ever charging a fee out of principle. He has gone through extreme hardships to go through his spiritual journey yet he never ever tried to use what he uncovered for his own gain but always to pass it on and share it freely with others, always.
New technologies like eBooks were an amazing answer to being able to continue to do this but the lack of integrity in people has ruined this.
Can you imagine how Mark must feel that he is unable to do this because of crooks, unethical people?
Can you imagine how sad he is that such low levels in people are affecting the rest of people who are looking for this information and who will now miss out?
None of this is Mark’s fault. How can the situation be reversed on him in such a manner? How can he be blamed for trying to keep the integrity of his message? How can he be insulted in such a low way?
Personally I was really saddened by most of what you wrote but I also did also find some of what you said insulting and offensive.
For example: “Is it really so important that everything written by you has to have your name on it”
Have you ever wondered what you would know of Jesus, Krishna, Lao Tzu and so forth if their teachings were not accredited? They taught about the universe from their own spiritual journey, Mark is just doing the same.
The truth is for all of us to find out but without any teacher or guidance, well that’s pretty impossible.
And how we reach to that truth and how we understand it is from our own experiences which becomes our own knowledge and that belongs to Mark which is what is written on this website, and in his works.
So yes, Mark is free to do what he wants with his knowledge and he’s chosen to share it with others freely but to keep his message with integrity and there is absolutely no fault in that.
(Also, just to add, everyone working at Mystical Life Publications are volunteers who dedicate hours of work to enable all this to happen – Mark & Lara do not get any money from the sold books – the $8 cost per book is set by Amazon not even by Mystical Life Publications and that is the lowest price Amazon will accept to sell a book).
Some valuable insights Geraldine and worth noting – thank you!.
Just on the note about the book prices, as the Publisher we do set the price for all the printed books, however the majority of the cost is in the actual book production and associated charges and taxes and a very small amount that is left over goes back into the book publishing and production costs. Retailers like Amazon use our recommended sale price, however other book sellers set their own price, which we do not receive any extra profits from.
hi Layla – thx for clarifying 🙂
Well said Geraldine.
Belsebuub has spent decades sharing teachings for free in many ways, and this website has so much free content on it — dozens of articles, hours and hours of video, audio, etc. It should be noted how extremely atypical that is, when most spiritual authors today treat it as a business and reap enormous financial gain from their work.
I personally am grateful for all that has been given so freely and support the authors on this site in trying to protect what is rightfully theirs.
I find it very unjust to criticize an author protecting themselves against massive and rampant copyright infringement and then to implicitly excuse those doing the infringing. That’s totally backwards. I also find it quite unfair to suggest that the eBooks not being available is merely because Belsebuub has some personal need to have his name on them.
That incorrect assumption seems to basically ignore everything said in this article, which explains very powerfully that preventing these teachings from being plagiarized is about so much more than that.
Hi David,
Belsebuub and Mystical Life Publications had offered the eBooks for free for 4 years, so the offering of the eBooks was very much a part of the site.
Updating the site has been a work in progress since the eBooks were taken offline. We still have a ways to go to get everything fully updated,however we have tried to make it clear in key areas of the site what the situation is with the eBooks.
MLP is run by a small group of volunteers and we need to divide our time between administration for the organisation, answering the many emails that come in, updating and maintaining all the websites and YouTube channels, and working to get our authors’ books out in print. Mark and Lara have been focusing their time on writing and updating their books.
Right now we are focusing on getting The Path of the Spiritual Sun out in print, which has a lot of updated content from the eBook.
My name is Amber A. I’m new to the website. I was given The Peace of The Spirit Within in December when I met a guy who saw I was losing a war inside myself. I was battling severe depression and almost lost my life. I knew things started to change with who I was for the past year or so but I couldn’t make any sense of what was going on. I’ve never been the type to follow the crowd and have always been open minded to all things. I literally just started the book today. I haven’t even made a dent in the first chapter and I know this book is going to help me develop the tools I need to gain knowledge of self. It’s sad to hear that the course downloads had to stop but what must be done must be done. So I hope that I can come to this website and seek answers for questions I may not be able to grasp mentally because of where I am in my journey. I already know there will be subjects that I won’t be able to comprehend correctly.
Hi Amber,
Reading your message just put a smile on my face :-).
For me, it’s really been an incredible thing to be so fortunate as to be given the information and tools whereby we can understand how we ‘work’ and how we can completely change for the better. From living an aimless quite miserable life in a daydream…..to being able to be alive!, aware of the beauty around us and able to see and understand the things within us that make us miserable, even get rid of those ways of living.
I could go on and on, but I just wanted to say that— yes that knowledge you seem to be looking for, I found it in that book.
Wishing you all the best in your journey.
Hello Amber, just wanted to say hi and welcome and that probably you will find many here who share with you a common interest of ”having enough” with the endless inner turmoil of depressive and destructive emotional states. Life can be hard, but I know that sometimes, and more often then not, at the right time, there is a way out, an insight, a friend, a paragraph, a moment of silence, and the answers start rolling in. I couldn’t be more grateful for this website, and the teachings in the book you mentioned. For me, they are at the source of overcoming many challenges I have had to face over the years. Although life can sometimes feel like one of the scariest roller coasters you can ever imagine, the advice in that book is like a force that will ground you back to a sense of control, purpose and understanding. But at the end of the day, the most amazing gift is what you can achieve yourself and what you do with the information and insight you uncover.
And of course, wouldn’t it be nice to have events in the future to have the chance to meet and group together 🙂
Wishing you everything you need for the times ahead, love, light and guidance.
Hi Amber, welcome! Glad you accepted the help and are now discovering yourself. The Peace of the Spirit Within is definitely a great place to start in order to get introduced to these teachings. The material in that book used to be taught in a great online course that’s not available anymore, but still there is this online community where you can get support and share things.
Wishing you all the strength in fighting the internal enemies and inspiration in discovering this new area of life!
Hi Amber, welcome, it’s really great to hear from you. Wishing you lots of guidance, answers, and love in your journey.
Hello Amber, it’s been very nice to read your feedback and well done for pushing through your difficult times.
The book that you’ve been given is certainly the way forward, I found it to be full incredible information to help me experience real peace and happiness in my life.
Best wishers for the times ahead and welcome to Belsebuub’s teachings.
Hi Amber
The Peace of the Spirit Within resonated with me as well, especially during times of internal hardships. Wishing you lots strength and courage on your journey to gaining self-knowledge and welcome 🙂
Hi Amber,
Thanks for posting the story of how you came to be given The Peace of the Spirit Within. I can relate to your experience of going through severe difficulties and looking for a way of overcoming the suffering to find peace. The book you have is definitely a good place to start and has some useful techniques you can apply straight away to your life. It’s also wonderful that in these teachings as a whole, there are further techniques we can apply, in order to remove our psychological defects permanently.
Even though the other e-books are not currently downloadable, there is a wealth of knowledge to be found in this site, which I’m sure will answer many of the questions you have been contemplating over the years. If some things seem obscure at first, they may begin to make more sense as you go further into your spiritual search. I would particularly recommend the audio talks, which I listen to every day and which have given me a huge boost during very difficult circumstances.
It sounds like you have gone through a very testing time, which could have had devastating consequences. And yet it’s wonderful that at the right time, you found the tools that can enable you to change the course of your life. I wish you a lot of strength in your spiritual journey and hope you will be able to find the answers you are looking for, through your own experience of inner change.
Hi Amber nice to hear from you and I wish you all the strength and insights, I hope your in a better place now
It’s mind boggling that people think it’s okay to do this. Even if they were ripping off other people’s recipes it would be wrong, but to do it to spiritual work – is the irony lost on them?
It’s sad these works won’t be able to reach people seeking true spiritual work – but it makes total sense to protect them from false prophets.
Well done MLP and everyone involved in weeding out this injustice.
Have you considered distribution though lulu.com or smashwords.com?
There you can offer the ebooks for free, and next you could do the same at Amazon.
BTW, I just discovered this site and found unfortunate that could not download the ebooks. Hopefully that will be solved soon. In the meanwhile I’m enjoying your Youtube channels. 🙂
Hi VlasRoda, thanks for the ideas, will keep note of them. We’re considering all the options to get the books out there in a more secure way, to prevent the overwhelming amount of copying that’s been happening.
Right now we’re working on getting all the books out there in print, with 2 titles being worked on as we speak, so as soon as they’re ready we’ll release them and move to the next titles.
I too just found this site and would love nothing more than to read this ebook…. Perhaps one day
Thanks Belsebuub for bringing awareness and for advising us of your decision. Sadly, it’s the only way forward.
Also, thanks Jenny and Sabbah for your video which was a great help.
Let me publish what I want to say here in this comment.
Here I want to take full responsibility for what I say, and, according to my level of understanding to me, I say this: With all respect and admiration that I can wear to the works of diffrérents actors in the spiritual environment I claim that the great personalities also restectables that Mathieu Ricard, the venerable Dalai Lama, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, Carl Gustav Jung, Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, Foster Gamble, Nassim Haramein and many, many others, although I wear them a great admiration to all, are not able to teach all of what is taught here on spirituality.
* note from admin: one of the names has been removed from this list
I would add to this little list that will never exostive: the famous Baird T. Spalding, VM Lobsang Rampa, the Honourable tale St-Germain, Marie-Lise Labonte, Anne Givaudan, Daniel Meurois … I would even highlight than other major Gnostic esoteric personalities left behind, as the founder of the contemporary Gnostic lineage did not let the clear explanation of the spiritual tools or with as much simplicity as is done here on the website and in the books of the authors Lara and Belsebuub. It’s my opinion.
Far from me the idea to disappoint or decrease anyone or disrespect to any, which I respect a lot, but in my opinion, from what I studied in the spirituality, Since today, I don’t have not found anything that may be more important than what is explained here in these spiritual teachings on this website. And I think it is necessary to say it.
And I ask all those I have mentioned, those who are alive and those who died, to forgive my insolence.
oh, I would like to add to the list: Our venerable companions full of mystery, Babaji and Edward Leedskalnin.
I read the article you posted of an extract from Return to Source and I found it mesmerizing and incredibly interesting and was very sad to see that you were no longer able to offer it as a free download (for very good reasons). I have been looking everywhere to try and buy it or download somewhere else but I can’t find anything. Can you give me link as to where I can buy either a hard copy or Ebook? I am very excited to read the rest of it. Thank you so much!
Hi Danelle,
It’s in a queue to be put into a hard copy. The next book to be printed will be The Path of the Spiritual Sun or The Astral Codex. We’ll announce whichever is first on the blog once it’s ready. As for the eBook, we’re trying to find other ways to distribute the books for free that are more protected, but we don’t know how we can do that yet.
I saw, since many years, now, you work to sensilibize people for the necessity to keep all information how take the path of the spiritual sun, and according to me, you are the first one, in our time, who explain, around the world, the great importance of this, about the serious debat of what is really the spirituality. I’m sure you going to find the way to distribute your free ebooks with more protection. When people download them, isn’t there an way to request their references (name, etc…) and maybe ask them to sign an agreement with them to respect some conditions? The fact that we have to continue reflecting on the understanding of what this imply, when we download free ebooks like yours, is the simple way to consider that what we obtain as information is considerable and precious. Do you think this is something feasible?
Just an idea I thought I’d mention. I think publishing the books in paper format is a good idea. One way to perhaps still spread this information online would be through a video or documentary. This might not suit all the books, but The Path of the Spiritual Sun could be the source of an absolutely amazing documentary.
However to do it justice would require a big production, for which it’s probably not the time right now, but it has an amazing potential.
Free dose NOT mean free-for-all.
When that happened in Jesus’ day, they were kicked out of the temple at the end of the whip. Is it naive to think some kind of action could be taken that would prevent these people from from continuing this?
I read a little bit about the plagiarism problem on the kindle store (which seems to extend to all genres). It appears that certain pioneers in this area have presented this way of making unlimited passive income by duplicating other’s work, passing them off as new books, and selling them for cheap on the kindle store. If one sells hundreds or thousands, it adds up to a very comfortable living. Presented in this way, people that are unable (unwilling?) to reflect on their actions probably see nothing wrong with what they’re doing. To me, it seems like a lawsuit against amazon that’s just waiting to happen, as they are clearly enabling this behavior by not taking action against people who plagiarize. Even if they made it possible somehow for outside individuals and organizations to identify plagiarism, it could make a huge difference, but as it stands the only way to even check is to read the couple of ‘sample’ pages, one-by-one, across around 150 new astral-projection-themed books that are released per month to Amazon, and text could be copied from multiple sources and not even visible in the preview.
I think you’ve raised some important points and made some very good suggestions Julian. I have started to look into the issue of bringing justice to those who rip off others’ work and feel it’s worthwhile pursuing further.
Fantastic observation,
I love your quote on the Merchants reclaiming the Temple after the Christ cleansed the temple. This off course is the same thread as when Christ tells a man who is demonically possesses to keep his house clean as the demon will return with eight other demons.
Justin, how do Mark and Lara protect their work ? I have seen Mark ripped off since the year 2000. You Tube is the medium that lends itself to plagiarism. I have seem Mark;s talks on the astral, astral projection, dreams etc all copied.
The biggest problem is not only that Mark’s work is copied, but, it is deliberately altered to maximise “hits’. People love easy spirituality and we all the know the path and the work is hard. These rip off merchants are deliberately altering Mark’s teachings and adding their own limited perception.
For example, in regards to astral projection some manage to leave their bodies and are now giving advice as they are masters, One actually states that he is a Master …. I asked him a question about the 5th and 6th dimensions and off course he had no idea. Unfortunately, people are easily led and are quickly drawn to these YouTube Masters.
Currently, there’s not much of any protection. Hopefully a solution can be found, because I guess right now it’s just to tempting for people to not take advantage of.
It’s very sad that it has come to this, but I will be pleased to get some books that I don’t already have in print.
It’s really tragic that apparently so many people and organisations are willing to steal something so sacred and use and distort it for their own personal gain. I’ve actually seen ads for training on making money on-line by (essentially) stealing and selling other people’s work.
People who have not actually done this work can never teach this as they do not have the understanding or experience required. So whether they mean to or not, they are simply misleading people and hindering their chances of taking up this work. It seems that they actually don’t care any way as long as they get their accolades and money.
Belsebuub has put more into this work than anyone in these times. It is his real experience and knowledge, gained through enormous efforts and sacrifices, that has allowed him to pass this knowledge on to help others walk the path. He has done this without need for financial gain, admiration, power or accolades.
It is truly tragic that there is so much greed and need for admiration and that society, as a whole, is more interested in the entertainment “value” of this material than searching for and or seeing the real teaching.
Truly sad news for humanity and honestly I had no idea about the extent of the problem – the numbers relating to plagiarism cases that have been stated here are horrifying.
Apart from the reasons for plagiarism that have been already mentioned, I think the problem also to some degree originates from bad education; as Dimi mentioned, people have a tendency to plagiarise others work, not only when it comes to spirituality, but any other topic really. There is generally and globally insufficient emphasis in schools, due to various factors, to properly educate young citizens to respect other’s work and not enough encouragement to present and explore own ideas. In my opinion students are too often taught to memorise and closely follow the works of others, who are deemed wise and intelligent, and that kind of passive following of others gets engrained in human minds as they go through schooling system. No surprise then that there is an army of people who rip other’s work and present it as their own and make living out of it.
Having said that, I hope that we will find the means to effectively pass on spiritual information to humanity.
Yes, I think there’s a truth in that Suavi. I used to think that writing essays at school was about reading and then paraphrasing published work and even got indignant when an essay of mine was failed for its plagiarised content. I don’t think I was alone in that way of thinking, as unfortunately critical thinking at school is often discouraged in favour of memorising information and repeating it.
That’s a really interesting point, Suavi. And like Michael, I can definitely relate to the sentiment. University was all about going to the library, compiling ideas from other sources & repackaging them into an essay. You actually get penalized sometimes for starting an original argument without a specific source to back it up… It’s rare to meet a teacher who encourages originality, creativity, or much critical thinking… No wonder that mentality carries over into life as well.
Yes, I can relate to being penalised for including my own reflections in a university essay too Jenny. I remember a fellow student was told that it’s OK to include original thought at PhD level, but not before then.
I also think you are up to something here Suavi. I even feel like this may be a part of the overall agenda of Dark forces – to silence our creativity, which is in fact – weakening our connection to our Higher selves, where all real creativity comes from. People are not encouraged to listen to the tiny voice within, to trust and follow their inner guidance, because it is believed that nothing like that exists. Then not many works of art have that living spark within them, but are mostly the products of the intellect or copies.
Some people try to break free of this, but don’t do it in the right way (through cultivating their inner connection to the Divine), but instead turn to drugs, unleashing the “inferior creativity” of their egos that we see so much of it today. All the “bloody” paintings that even hang in galleries or serious-looking publications on art, un-listenable music that causes a headache, depressive and over-complicated poetry and so on.
Still, among all this mess, some people do manage to create some original beauty, not everyone’s connection is severed (for example I just found some really nice classical-style interpretive dances lately, more and more mantras being sung by various singers, etc), and I kind of hope in the “critical mass” being achieved eventually, when more and more people turn to the real spirituality, real beauty and a real connection to the Divine.
I remember reading “Corpus Hermeticum” and was amazed to discover the “seeds” of what Physicists know as “Newton’s 3 Laws of Physics”. It’s a dumbed down, nearly word-for-word transliteration (http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/TGH-v2/th205.html). Ironically, it even talks about the edge of the universe (& how the creator is beyond all of that) — which is something that modern physics is still grappling with. The *really* surprising thing is that there is proof that Newton studied these texts and has a published translation of “The Emerald Tablet”…
When studying English Literature there is talk of “intertextuality”. This term is really trying to mention how our brains understand texts by correlating them with what we’ve already read. The obvious outcome of this is a unique Psychological Landscape. That is, once it’s in their brain, they think any idea is “theirs”.Obviously, it is a short step for someone then to “republish” what they think they know… but it’s really just a rehash of existing information (like a cow chewing its cud), coloured by whatever else is lurking in their brains.
That is, Newton seems to have plagiarised spiritual texts for his own ends through this intertextuality/rehashing problem (perhaps it was deliberate, perhaps not). It’s the basis of how marketing works (by blending different ideas to come up with something unique). It’s how new Laws, Movies and Music are written, etc, etc. It’s a very human problem.
Of course, it doesn’t diminish the problem at hand — stopping the blatant ripping off of Belsebuub’s work for selfish purposes, but it also does go to show how unique his information is. The more unique it is, the quicker it is copied, mulled over and regurgitated using whatever method deemed appropriate — because there’s money to be made.
Hi Craig,
Just wanted to comment on what you said that “Newton seems to have plagiarised spiritual texts for his own ends”… It just somehow seemed a bit too presumptive and harsh statement to me, to accuse him of that. Newton, from what I have read about him, was very seriously interested in mysticism, particularly alchemy, and even suggested at a point that there was something more noble to it than a mere transmutation of metals. I can imagine that, rather than “plagiarising”, he just simply realized the interconnectedness of things (as above so below) and applied what he has learned from his occult studies to physics. Or maybe it was the opposite, that his studies of physics ultimately lead him to spiritual studies, who knows.
Here is a nice article on him:
https://5482ff13812fff93b4b0-f30566d4c910ec79e48ff03c503d3718.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/10_newton.pdf
Lucia,
Newton never gave attribution to where his inspiration came from (since his ‘spiritual’ work was done in secret). The effect of this is that others are unaware of the spiritual origin of his findings. Even the article you reference, which starts with “his discoveries regarding the Laws of Motion and the Law of Universal Gravity” prove this. Newton *didn’t* discover a thing — he reworded existing information that had an authentic spiritual source, based upon his understanding at the time.
Isn’t this exactly the problem being done to Belsebuub’s work, and the point of this article?
How different would the world be, if Newton had attributed his findings to it’s source…? His ‘3 Laws’ would be the ‘3 Laws of Hermes’, or such. Yes, he may have been a seeker, but how many seekers have you come across that actually want to walk the Path of the Spiritual Sun? There are many instances where modern day science denigrates its own spiritual origins — thinking that it has eclipsed them. The reality is that science is just now catching up to what Hermes wrote millennia ago. How different the world would be if he had’ve attributed his findings!
I see it differently in this case, as I think many scientists have been guided in history to discover certain things thanks to their connection the the spiritual. But its the matter of viewpoint, you may disagree with that. What I wanted to say is that I don’t feel entitled to call him a plagiarist at all, since I really don’t know how he discovered things and am not at the level to find out. Maybe an enlightened master who could see how he had done things would be in a better position to judge that.
Hi Suavi, I also think there is a lot of truth in what you have pointed out in the very limiting way the education system works.
Just reading about this, I remembered a time in my early childhood when I struggled to understand what my teacher wanted from me regarding my very first written assignment. Previously, we would be writing about ourselves, in our little journals about things we loved and so on and then we were asked to write about something else and present it as an academic project that we had analyzed and put together with pictures. I remember at the time feeling very distraught and confused about putting together thoughts about a particular subject that were already written in a book, and had asked for help from my teacher, to show me how I was supposed to go about it, and she opened my book on the subject, and pointed out to sentences and told me to reword them. Sometimes she was telling me to simply copy down sentences directly from the book word for word. From then on those very critical and serious assignments in school were to be written by saying things ”in our own words”, based on information we were rewording from various books. It was the strangest feeling. Personally speaking, I was so internally reactionary to the system of memorizing and regurgitating information as I felt I wasn’t learning anything, and underneath it all I felt as though I was living a lie, struggling throughout most of my education until I found creative outlets that allowed my originality (and free thinking) to express itself whether through poetry or art, but I have always felt the rest was quite useless and probably damaging. No doubt this passivity towards academic research played its role to limit new ideas in the world today.
Interesting comments Suavi. I also wondered if such early ‘plagiarist’ programming contributes to the passivity encouraging fanaticism? It’s a lot easier to copy and paste something or someone else, then ‘do it’ ourselves. The intellect seems similar to a computer, information goes in, we can reshuffle it then present ideas as original and new, but are they? How quickly we believe stuff we simply memorize.
If all ‘new ideas’ are really reshuffling of old data, it would seem using the intellect is the wrong tool to use to produce something truly ‘new’, particularly ‘new’ with substance, as opposed to mental fantasy and belief.
I feel you are, Belsebuub, the only one able to impose on others the fight against plaggiat because you are, in my opinion, the only spiritual person in the world to be able to teach all the spiritual path with tools most suitable for our times. You have the credibility to demand to be considered as such. And it’s scary to think that you are the only one who can do that. I recognize your integrity and greatness.
Do I understand that your message is more deep than just an expression of discouragement? Are you declaring, really, to all spiritual people around the world, that they must being correct and responsable? And they have to behave as good spiritual people who do not sell any spiritual books, nor teach just a small part of the spiritual path, but the entyrety of it, isn’t it?
If it’s your message, a lot of people, like Eckart Tolle, Daniel Meurois and most of others, can today be guilty of what they do, spiritually. And maybe, you are right.
If it’s really that, I think you are a big spiritual person and there is a big responsability upon you.
Looks like the anti-plagiarism project is still on and at Belsebuub’s biography article, which revised recently is still keep mentioning that ” My publishers are diligently chasing up plagarisers, and, when enough is achieved I’ll see how I can release new material in a more protected way.”
That’s sound to me like more people are needed to join in the existed group. Or working individually find such occasions of plagiarism and passing the results to MLP for further actions.
Also maybe we can see if it’s possible to set up a legal action group. With volunteers lawyers or with “pay if you win” agreements. We could also start a fund raiser just for that.
What else?
One idea is that people could simply use comment or review sections on pages that contain material that has clearly been copied and pasted, to credit the source where the author of the webpage hasn’t – like when someone has just copied and pasted parts of articles without attributing the source. Anyone could search for copied material, and then credit the source in a comment.
This could be done by attributing the author and providing a link to where the original material came from.
This would actually save Priya and Jenny at MLP a huge amount of time in chasing people up, especially since it seems to be a continuing problem.
That’s a great idea, Lara.
Patricia A and myself were talking about that yesterday, discussing how we could write comments on those websites / blogs, and we thought of writing to MLP to get their opinion. Now, here you are with this suggestion! We won’t need to talk to MLP after all – we know they are really busy to reply to emails…
Anyways, I think we should keep track of every single case just in case something changes in the future in terms of technology or laws.
Hi Daniel,
One thing I just thought to mention, though I’m sure you understand this anyway, is that to anyone thinking of doing this, I wouldn’t go and make accusations or put someone down in any way. I think just a very simple attribution, which gives someone the chance to correct their article if they wish.
Excellent point Lara. I was thinking about this the other day actually, about what we could do to help.
When we come across plagiarized works that are sold through Amazon for instance, we can use the review section to make the public aware that the book in question was derived from another author. And also on blog sites like you mentioned, one can mention these. The difficulty would be to find the ones that have been paraphrased without attribution since there would be less common keywords to find these and won’t come up in the results of a search engine.
I’m pretty sure you guys already know about plagiarism detection tools used in academia, but perhaps we could try these tools ourselves. Universities use special software for plagiarization detection for checking students works in which the program crawls a library of digital books and the entire internet. The software uses a special algorithm that comes up with Plagiarism Probability Score. A Direct Plagiarism for example would give a 100% PPS, whereas other types of plagiarization such as Mosaic Plagiarism will give lesser scores depending on the severity. I haven’t used one of these personally yet, but a quick Google search reveals a few things that might be useful.
I think best to leave the paraphrased ones, as they require more careful looking into, and just attribute the direct, and clear cut, copy and paste cases.
So word-for-word/verbatim cases, where articles have been copied and pasted, can be attributed in comments, but anything paraphrased is best handled by the MLP team – so please continue to report these to MLP for their investigation.
Thank you everyone who has been helping with this.
That’s a very good idea Lara. Hopefully if at least some of those comments are permitted by the site owners, they would then allow many readers to come back here to the original source.
A lot of the sites we have found have copied a few sentences or paragraphs, rather than whole article copying. So although they feature verbatim copy and pasting, it is incorporated into a larger post. These seem slightly trickier cases, as the attribution only relates to a part of the overall text.
Perhaps we could still just comment something along the lines of “this site [insert link] gives more information on [e.g. the Spiritual Sun, or whatever specific text has been copied]”, or “please visit [insert Belsebuub.com page] for more information on [specific topic or concept]”.
It’s good you made the point about being civil in our comments, as we certainly wouldn’t want to spread or provoke any kind of negativity, as that is the complete opposite of what this site stands for. I hope some of the site owners will be able to see past any pride and permit our comments, so that in turn, readers can access the correct source of these teachings.
Thanks wholeheartedly to you and Mark for your continued efforts in getting the message out there, despite these continual obstacles. It shows that with the right persistence, there is hope.
I agree and completely I understand, that it would be best to let MLP take care of the paraphrased ones, as its more difficult to know for sure. Last thing we want is to make accusations and make a bad situation worse.
Thank you Lara and Mark for keeping us informed with what is going on. It’s really unfair what is happening and my heart goes out to both of you.
Not only is it important to attribute the writings to their true author, but also to preserve the teachings and convey it in the way its meant to be conveyed. Look at what the Roman Catholic Church did meddling into the teachings of Jesus and removing the Gnostic Gospels from the Bible. With each meddling, the core value of the teaching was stripped away until confusion and fanaticism was born and the Spiritual Path was lost to us. And now after so much hard work in bringing back the teachings in a clear and precise manner, we don’t want the same thing to happen again.
I believe such an invaluable gem is only safe in the hands of those who truly attained it and the way it is passed onto people and the later generations can make the difference between finding the Path and wasting a life.
You’ve made some very good points Beyonder. It’s a very serious issue. As you mentioned: “the way it is passed onto people and the later generations can make the difference between finding the Path and wasting a life”.
Thank you Lara.
Michael mentioned over 1600 sites they found with such cases which is a lot of job to put a comment-reference to each one of it. I will ask him if is possible to have that list instead of looking from the begging to find them by myself.
What you said about how to do that I think is very important so not this activity turn against us.
Btw working together as a community looks great!!
cheers!!
This is a great idea Lara, thanks!
I think this idea emerging of a way forward goes to show what can happen when people are active even if its just commenting on blogs/articles, when they rally together, show they care and are prepared to take action. This is a great way for people to practice sacrifice for humanity at this time when there isn’t much else they can do other than participating in the sites giving the teachings or defending them. If that happens then it seems more things can develop from there.
If many people get behind this idea and take action it can really help turn things around I think in getting the word out about Belsebuub’s life changing information, to those already interested in spiritual things and help take some of the load off MLP from chasing plagiarists up. Assuming such comments get published by those site owners but even if not it will hopefully prompt them to give the proper attribution or remove the plagiarised content.
“If many people get behind this idea and take action it can really help turn things around” — I definitely agree, David. I think Lara’s idea is simple, yet very smart. If, like you say, the site owners allow the comments, this can really improve the situation. I also hope many get behind doing this.
Thanks Lara for the idea. I think it’s a great way to tackle the problem that also takes some pressure off MLP. I am assuming that we can also forward MLP sites we come up across and which don’t allow comments.
Thanks for putting the idea out there Lara! I look forward to working with others in the community on this. I would love to see things turned around 🙂
don’t see how removing the download link will stop your work from being plagiarized. people can easily get the book from somewhere else on the internet if you know how. why make it less accessible and have people read a lesser quality from an outdated source, plagiarism by morons will continue anyways. whats the real deal here? maybe you are actually keeping it offline for a while, so you can sell it in the future? we will see
kind of regret writing that about selling it, clearly you have offered it for free all this time which is a pretty big deal.. sorry about that
Yes, I don’t know a single time from my 10 years + of studying from Belsebuub’s work where he did something for profit. It’s just not in his character. I have done years and years of free courses that were taught in libraries or centres that were based on his work. I was never charged a penny. Even the books that he has published are sold at cost. Typically when I go to a spiritual section in a book shop books are averaging over 20$ or 30$, Belsebuub’s are significantly lower considering what’s involved in publishing a book that can be marketable to a large audience.
I think the aim of removing the ebooks is not to eliminate plagiarism, but to reduce how easy it is to plagiarize with them.
Hi John,
It’s good you realized that it’s got nothing to do with selling it, because like you say Mark has been providing his teachings for free the whole time he’s been teaching. If he was interested in making profit from his work, then all he had to do was accept the offers to make big profits from it that have been put to him over the years. But he’s always said and it has been demonstrated time and again that he’s not interested in going down that route since real spirituality, as he teaches, isn’t a business and isn’t about making money (see here for just one example of the details).
It seems to me that until something better is worked out, the issue is why go on providing things in a medium through which the material is almost exclusively ending up being stolen and misrepresented, and/or attacked in society. Yes it may still be out there in unauthorized places, but that’s being chased up and hopefully will be dealt with – it’s not a reason to keep making it available for more people to misuse it and then have more places to follow up with, especially since very little support in any way to really counter the problems has come as a result of it being available in this way up till now.
So to me it makes good sense to pause and consider why carry on with things as they are. It seems pretty clear that another way has to be found, and hopefully it will be sooner than later, and many more people will have the opportunity to come across these amazing teachings as a result.
Hi John,
We had actually considered putting the eBooks on Amazon a couple of years ago, and did quite a lot of research into it. But we discovered that they couldn’t be on there for free and so decided not to go ahead with it. Instead we decided to just make them completely freely available here on this website in line with our principles, and clearly write an explanation of why so people could see that they were not like other free things, that are often dangled like some gimmick or catch, but were just free – plain and simple.
Sadly though, just a few days ago, we discovered that someone had basically copied and pasted the contents of Mark’s book The Astral Codex, had given it a different title and published it under an assumed name, and put it up for sale on Amazon. We just found out that they had sold about 700 copies in a very short time.
Everything in the universe works on give and receive. This is how entire ecosystems function, so that each plant, insect and animal provides something that sustains their environment, whilst also being provided for. It seems to me that most of humanity lives in violation of this, and just takes and takes and takes from the environment, from each other, from other nations, giving little if anything in return. Nothing in the material world can sustain being taken from in disproportion to being given back to – at some point, whatever it is becomes exhausted and used up. The way we are going for example, eventually planet Earth will become “used up” since our rate of take is outpacing any rate of give.
With so much plagiarism, this law of give and take has been violated; to continue as we are would only mean eventual exhaustion, and we are committed to making sure that this work reaches those who need it and is not squandered by those who take it as just another product to consume and be entertained by. This is a very sad time for us, because Mark only wishes that he could give this message away in free books, and yet he can’t even do that at this point.
I think of it like a fruit tree. It’s like taking all the fruits to eat without watering and nourishing the tree so that it can continue to provide its fruits for us, as well as for others and generations to come. Then, we even hurt the very tree that gives to us and sustains us. It is like this with spirituality, as it is with everything.
I just had a look at Amazon and found all of these free books on Astral Travel (as no doubt many of you are abundantly aware of). Nearly all of them start with “Click here for a free gift”, or other various ponzi limited time offer schemes.
A quick scan shows how much Mark’s work has influenced all of these books, even if it is to have question/answer sections. You can also tell the ones that are just rehashing one another because of the use of the “hypnagogic state”, which is something that was coined back in the 70’s and 80’s (eg. Robert Monroe).
No wonder the sharks have come to feed off Mark’s efforts, with his fresh ideas and unique experiences!
Lara, I guess you know this already, but it is possible to make books permanently free on amazon. I know of people who do this by making them free other places, and then asking amazon to price match.
That’s interesting Anne Linn. I didn’t know that. I wonder if this is a more recent development?
Wow thats terrible Lara I didnt think it was that bad, selling the complete book just renamed, surely legally something can be done there?? Shocking!!!
Lara, I really appreciated your analogy of nature for the give-and-take that’s violated through plagiarism. I’m in the business world a lot these days, and it’s something that I’m very aware of: how some businesses will take only, and doom themselves by karmic law. There are also companies that want to only create and maintain, without destroying, and then fall apart. It’s incredible how these laws are around us in everything we do; in nature, in business, in plagiarizing.
Something else that really struck me about what you said is that our of all the animals, it’s humanity who don’t know how to give back properly, and it’s causing all of these problems with wars, famine, environmental devastation, and more.
Hi John. I have been studying Belsebuub’s teaching since 1999 and I know without a doubt that his teachings have always been free and I have no doubt that this will never change.
Hello John,
This is a big deal in my experience. I’ve met many people who have been ripped off and it has had tragically detrimental affects on their spiritual development. This issue is reflects the times we live in which are dark.
This post and the video from Jenny and Priya make the extent of this problem very clear. But I thought I’d also comment on my own experience of working with a small group over the last year or so, to find plagiarism of Mark and Lara’s work. In one way, we have been fortunate to uncover some major offenders, but in another way, the ease of finding plagiarised material on the internet is shocking.
To give an idea of how prolific the problem is, we have now found over 1600 sites containing plagiarised material. This gives an average of almost 30 cases of plagiarism per week, or put another way, around one new case of plagiarism every six hours.
Those are just the examples from a small group though and don’t include those cases uncovered by other people. What we’ve found is probably just the tip of the iceberg too, as with each new search, more and more cases keep on cropping up.
Because Mark and Lara’s work is so unique in tying together the threads of spirituality throughout the ages, it’s a goldmine for unscrupulous people who seek to use it for their own gain. It’s a tragic reflection of our society that the keys to enlightenment have been distorted and commercialised in this way, but it’s clear why this situation can’t continue.
Hi Michael, those numbers are really shocking! Thanks for posting this summary, it helps to give a clear picture of just how bad this is. Well done on starting the small group of searchers and on the work you’ve all done to help uncover all this.
What tools are you using to discover these sites? I’m sure we’d love to be able to help — but only if we can find them.
Hi Craig,
So far it’s mainly just been a case of typing a search term into Google and going through the results. We’ve gone through various articles and parts of the ebooks in this way, sentence by sentence.
There are some online comparison tools too, some of which Beyonder mentioned. These are useful in more complex cases, but generally it’s apparent just by looking at the site, as direct copying and pasting is very popular.
The plagiarising sites sometimes promote pseudo-spiritual events or services, as you’d expect. But people use Mark and Lara’s work to promote or sell just about anything really. Some of the things I’ve found include techno music events, skydiving, a gay interest radio show, and online shops selling anything from jewelry and crafts to erotic adventure stories. It seems the merchants have moved in, in every way.
I notice that the music and film studios are very quick to issue DCMA takedowns on copyrighted material.
This got me thinking, what if we had a tool that allowed us to individually do searches, but without treading on each other’s toes, so to speak.
Would it be beneficial to have a central database/list of sites that come up on google, and whether they have been ‘processed’ or not (either by adding attribution in comments as Lara suggests, or part of the work of the MLP team)? We could also coordinate what phrases we’re searching for (rather than random phrases from the website or books).
PS: As a software developer, I’m sure I could write something (eg break sections of text into phrases and auto-searched for them), but perhaps it not need be so. Perhaps something ‘off the shelf’ might suffice (that I am unaware of)?
Hi Craig,
So far we’ve made a database in our group, which we enter our own individual results onto, but share with each other, to avoid duplication. We’ve gone through each given article or chapter in a step-by-step way, checking the results for each sentence, before moving onto the next.
If you like, I can send you some more info on how we’ve been working. It sounds like your software development knowledge could come in very handy too.
The issue of investigating legal options for takedown requests also sounds worthwhile, although of course any formal requests would need to come via MLP. It seems like having more pairs of eyes to look into the details could be a help though.
Hi Craig,
We have something like that. Get in touch with me if you’re interested in helping with development, I’d be interested to know what you can do 🙂
In cases where the plagiarizing website is a repeat offender, before proceeding down the legal route, perhaps it may be beneficial for numerous people to make comments on their website, to show that it is not just the original author that is aware of the situation. That database/list of sites you mentioned, maybe it would be a good idea to share it (or part of the list), with people here, so we can add our comments to their website. Perhaps that would make them think twice, when they see a lot of people are seeing that they are in fact plagiarizing. Just something to consider. Please feel free to send the list or any requests to my email address you see registered to this comment.
Hi Beyonder,
I think you are right about multiple people leaving comments on a website that plagiarises Mark’s work will be a deterrent. I think this is even the case if the comments are not posted – the admin of the site will see that people are seeing the plagiarism and if enough people comment on it the site owner will probably hear as well.
If you want to search for cases of plagiarism you don’t need the database that Michael mentioned. It was collected over the past year with the purpose of not sending MLP the same links multiple times and for us to make sure that we don’t search the same articles twice. None of this is necessary for commenting on websites – it’s fine for multiple people to comment on the same article. Additionally, we now know that plagiarism is an ongoing issue and the same article needs to be searched regularly.
In my opinion, if you (or anyone) want to start searching for plagiarism you can just use Google and search one of Mark’s articles for plagiarism. Any sentence searched in quotation marks (“”) will bring up all exact instances of that sentence that are currently online.
Good points Aleksandr, thanks for making them.
I was wondering if the people doing this are finding that their comments are being published or is a proper attribution then made to the article as a result? Has anyone got any feedback to share on how this going?
Hi David,
I started leaving the attribution comments on the websites/videos, etc… and what I found is that most of the times it is quite easy to leave a comment. Some events/blogs/articles can be old though, and in that case the author may not reply anymore.
Here are some examples where it was quite easy to leave a comment, and it stayed there (so far):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R04N4WhGlb8
https://www.behance.net/gallery/16847469/Equinox
https://m.facebook.com/events/361808043933191?__tn__=C
http://documents.mx/documents/rebirth-of-a-queen.html
Here is one example of a Facebook event organiser, who replied positively:
https://www.facebook.com/events/430236613820038
And here are 2 examples where it was not possible to leave a comment, so I sent the message to the author with the correct attribution, but they didn’t get back to me, possibly because they are not active on those websites anymore, or maybe they just ignored me:
http://yuppyscum.info/2014/03/you-are-all-that-ever-was-is-and-shall-be-you-are-eternal/
http://magdalilly.tumblr.com/post/80204579730/the-first-day-of-spring-vernal-equinox
Hello Lucia,
Your comment is very helpful thank you.
The two websites that didn’t get back to you do seem to link to Belsebuub through this site:
http://www.mysticmamma.com/equinox-march-20th-2014-significance-meaning-and-energy-report/
They send people to that site and they link back to here; so it’s probably okay, although they also discuss channelling on Mystic Mamma which is ironic.
Thanks for sharing that Lucia, it is interesting to see those examples. Any one else got anything to share on how this is going?
Nice work Lucia, thanks for the feedback.
I got a positive response as well – the person who was contacted via email immediately responded to me and stated that they got the excerpt from social media but admitted they didn’t know the original source. They immediately included the authors and name of the book. Still waiting to hear back from the others.
Hey Lucia and Patricia and everyone helping with this,
That’s really great to hear that people are responding, and responding well to you guys. This is such a big help, as there are so many cases of that kind of stuff out there. It’s great that little by little, proper credit is being restored to Mark’s work. Thanks for all your help in this.
We’ve been working diligently on getting the books out in print. It’s a very detailed process which takes a lot of time, as every detail counts 🙂 The Astral Codex should be available in print in the next few weeks, followed by Path of the Spiritual Sun, and then the other books.
Yes, seems like people don’t mind adding the attribution, its just they usually don’t know where the original came from.
In the meantime, I also got a nice response from the first link in my list, where the Youtube video uploader replied that he found that excerpt through Google search when searching for the spiritual meaning of spring, and it resonated deeply with him. This shows how powerful Belsebuub’s words and knowledge is, and how all these people could possibly get more out of these teachings if they knew where the source came from.
Yes Lucia, I agree. I received another positive response. That person also thanked me for contacting them and said they had no problem crediting the authors and stated that the excerpt was so beautifully written that they had to share it.
That’s a great piece of news you snuck in there Jenny 🙂 Really, really cool!
Huh, that’s really interesting. Maybe people are more receptive to fellow readers pointing out the lack of attribution rather than the