It would seem that Corky Ra has been caught with a hand in the cookie jar of plagiarism.
Take the webpage entitled “SUMMUMand The Kybalion,” which is attributed to Corky under his venerable name, Summum Bonum Amen Ra. Here we find what amounts to a case for his innocence: “Summum… rewrites the information found in The Kybalionin a manner more appropriate for our modern era. It also presents new material not found in The Kybalion, thus giving a complete and more indepth outline of an age-old philosophy. The US Copyright Office considers Summum … a ‘derivative work,’ while from a broader perspective, it is a continuation of a neverending story.”
In addition to this defense, there was, on the former webpage “The Pendulum of Pleasure and Pain,” a transcription tape of one of Corky’s informal talks. Among other things, he says that “in The Kybalion, there is a little comment, and … it doesn’t belong in the book at all … these guys did their own interpretation of it … and in one paragraph they say something like, we cannot have any immorality in society like if you saw some frontal nudity on cable TV and stuff it would be the worst thing you could do, and to condone anything like that would be a person not on the path and stuff like that. I thought, ‘Jesus! These guys really got a lot of balls to put something like that in this kind of book!’ It came from nowhere … and they are personal opinions from the commentator, and you sort of have to look over them and look for the deep truth that is in the book that has been passed down for thousands of years.”
Take the webpage entitled “SUMMUMand The Kybalion,” which is attributed to Corky under his venerable name, Summum Bonum Amen Ra. Here we find what amounts to a case for his innocence: “Summum… rewrites the information found in The Kybalionin a manner more appropriate for our modern era. It also presents new material not found in The Kybalion, thus giving a complete and more indepth outline of an age-old philosophy. The US Copyright Office considers Summum … a ‘derivative work,’ while from a broader perspective, it is a continuation of a neverending story.”
In addition to this defense, there was, on the former webpage “The Pendulum of Pleasure and Pain,” a transcription tape of one of Corky’s informal talks. Among other things, he says that “in The Kybalion, there is a little comment, and … it doesn’t belong in the book at all … these guys did their own interpretation of it … and in one paragraph they say something like, we cannot have any immorality in society like if you saw some frontal nudity on cable TV and stuff it would be the worst thing you could do, and to condone anything like that would be a person not on the path and stuff like that. I thought, ‘Jesus! These guys really got a lot of balls to put something like that in this kind of book!’ It came from nowhere … and they are personal opinions from the commentator, and you sort of have to look over them and look for the deep truth that is in the book that has been passed down for thousands of years.”
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