Paul Twitchell: Liar, Con Artist & Thief: Great Beginnings for Eckankar

verbatim from: http://www.stormpages.com/truthbeknown66/eckankar6.html

Eckankar was hastily cobbled together by a small-time newspaper and pulp science fiction writer named John Paul Twitchell in 1965. It's a mind-numbing hodgepodge of eastern thought, the Bible, Sufi teachings, mystery school practices and just about anything else you can think of. He used to claim he routinely read thousands of books per year, and it's certainly evident he took whatever interested him from them. Everything is jammed together in a confusing mishmash that's almost impossible to clearly understand. In many instances, the material flat out contradicts itself. In one book, the sky is blue; in the next book, the sky is green. Up becomes down and left becomes right. Such was the skewed world of Twitchell.
Twitchell was an ordinary man with an interest in religions and spirituality but possessed little in the way of talents or abilities. What he DID have though, was a fierce ambition to get somewhere and a tireless knack for promoting himself. In fact, anyone reading enough of his writings gets the clear impression that his very favorite topic was himself.

Of course, he was often lying.

His lies began back at an early age and he lied his way throughout adulthood. He lied to get into the book of Who's Who in America, lied about his military service, lied to his wives about his age, lied about his birth, lied about his family, lied about his "spiritual" teachers, lied to his biographer and lied to his students. Many people who knew him in those years agreed that the words braggart and pathological liar just about summed up his character.

And he wasn't any better in the ethics department. Fancying himself a writer, he's been proven to be a first class plagiarist and had no reservations about stealing the efforts and words of other writers and claiming them as his own. All in all, this isn't the kind of man anyone would want to see their daughter bring home to meet her parents!

Even Harold Klemp, the current leader, has grudgingly admitted as much about Twitchell's character, although, understandably, he uses milder words. Since he couldn't very well inform the flock that its founder was a pathological liar, in Eckankar, Twitchell becomes merely a lover of tall tales, a fellow who always enjoyed a good yarn. Spin, spin, spin. Notice in Twitchell's quote below, he freely admits being a lifelong layabout and conveniently forgets that he indeed DID have a wife to support - Camille.




"Y'know, the real reason why I was such a failure in the sense of being unable to make any sort of a living was because I was really not motivated. I had no motivation. If the motivation was only to make a salary, since I was the only one to keep up, I had no wife, no children or anything, then money meant nothing. It only meant clothes on my back and possibly an automobile and a few of the luxuries which weren't all that necessary. But as long as the motivation wasn't there, I didn't particularly care about a job; I didn't particularly care about an income, making somebody else a living off of my efforts as I was doing most of the time in growing up."

-Paul Twitchell in
Difficulties of Becoming the Living Eck Master-


"The Mahanta is always born on or near a large body of water. His birth is always mysterious and men of ordinary birth do not know his origin. Nor does any man know who his sires might be, their true names or their true origin."
-Shariyat Book 1-

(Twitchell was born in Paducah, Kentucky. Klemp was born in the midwest)