Daniel Entin

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Dear Andrej,

1. Your question reveals a lack of understanding about copyright. If you create something, if for example you write a book, you immediately have copyright, whether you put a notice in the book or not. Now, regarding the Russian books of the Teaching, they are all now in the public domain in Russia, no matter what is said in the book itself. There was a Soviet law that put everything published outside the Soviet Union into the public domain inside the Soviet Union, and since the Agni Yoga books were published in New York, Paris, Riga, and Ulan Bataar, the law applies to the first editions of the Agni Yoga books in Russian. But, if a translation is made of a book, no matter who holds the copyright to the original text, the copyright to the translation is held by the translator and/or the publisher. So all books of the Teaching published in many languages all over the world were put under copyright in the countries in which they were published.

Also, if new editions of the Russian books are produced, those new books are also under copyright, held by the people who produced the books. But only the new material in the new books is copyrighted, not the material that is identical to the earlier edition that is now in the public domain. Again, the new material is copyrighted automatically.

I hope that answers the question to your satisfaction. If it is not clear, ask again.

You should also know that in 1948, EI wrote a letter to Sina Fosdick, in which she gave Sina the rights to translate and publish the books "in the Americas and Europe". ICR rejects that letter, because it was a letter, not a legal document, even though EI's intentions are clear.

2. This is a big question, and you will probably not accept the answer. The Teaching is a living thing. EI exercised the right all her life to make changes in the books, to send new materials to be included in them, to change wording, to take out things. There are many hundreds of letters from her to Sina Fosdick dealing exactly with that question. She also made her wishes clear about the changes she wanted in the future. (One example: that is why in our edition of the first book, The Call, the first line says "Into the New World", rather than "Into the New Russia". It was EI who made that change.)

In our website, we use the Uguns editions of the Teaching in Russian because those books most fully incorporate all of EI's changes and wishes. Gvido Trepsa and his co-workers had full access to the archives, and made all their changes with full understanding of the responsibility they were assuming. They were meticulous in their research. Many of the additions and changes that EI sent to us, here in New York, for the books, years after the Russian editions had been published, were included by Uguns. In our website, there is a full explanation of all this. Did you read it? By the way, the notice put on this forum yesterday about the new editions from ICR of The Call and Illumination quotes material from the books showing that they have the same attitude, though they will present it a little differently.

3. Nothing prevents us from publishing images of the first editions. Actually, nothing prevents you, or anyone else, from publishing them. As I said, they are in the public domain, and are not under anyone's control. Just think that, in just a couple of years, in 2005, fifty years after EI's passing, everything she wrote will be in the public domain, even the notebooks, and anyone who wishes will be able to publish them with no objection possible from anyone.

Now you will ask again why we choose not to publish them. That is because they were EI's first compilations from her notebooks, but not her final thoughts about them. In the archive of M. Ts. R., there are all of EI's own copies of the first editions of the Agni Yoga books, with her notations and changes. You have seen published pages from those books, so you know that her final thoughts about the text were quite different from her first thoughts. We want to be as close as possible to her final thoughts.

You might also ask why we don't want to put more than one version of the Teaching on the website. We do not because the site is not designed for researchers who care about those things, but for people who simply want to study the Teaching. For them, there is no benefit to presenting the confusion of varying versions of the books.

However, for you and your fellow members of the committee, we will be happy to provide the files you ask for. Not all at once, because as a very small organization we do not have the means to scan everything immediately, but we already do have some scans and will send them to you, for you to distribute to the others.

I will respond more fully to your questions sent yesterday, explaining more about how the material was written down, assembled, and copied into notebooks, and only then was some of what is in the notebooks chosen by EI to produce the Russian texts of the Agni Yoga books themselves.

If you have further questions, please ask. I feel that you want to prove that only the first editions are valid, and I have to say that that feeling keeps you from having an open mind about this problem. And also, I disagree with you about that. These are arguments that continue forever. Are an author's first thoughts more valid than his or her final thoughts?

Best wishes,
Daniel