The brightest realization of all was that no one could save me from anything. Not lost, how could I be saved? No longer could I fool myself that someone else might appease the burden of my mistakes through a propitious atonement. The reason was simple: Soul is created out of the substance of God and cannot be eternally lost. No savior could shoulder my burdens, for God-Realization brought with it a full responsibility for everything I ever set into motion.
We imagine that hardship precedes the God State and complete serenity follows after. Fortunately, life has more dimensions than that, for it requires all beings to continually reach for the stars. As I learned for myself, there is always another step in consciousness, always a higher heaven to attain.
1 Was This an ECK Master?
2 A Question of Salvation
3 Fate’s Unseen Hand
I later wondered whether that part of my life was a design of destiny or of my own free will. In other words, how much of one’s course in life is personal choice and how much of it is controlled by the unseen hand of fate?
People enter this world at birth at widely different levels of consciousness. Contrary to the laudable ideal of the American Declaration of Independence, all people are not created equal. Not in the United States nor anywhere else. A study of ancient or modern history gives ample proof of inequality the world over.
Soul enters this world to accomplish a collection of tasks. Taken as a whole, these assignments make up Its destiny. To set the tone for Its mission, Soul may come into either a healthy body or a sickly one; into comfortable means or poverty; with great intellect or a simple mind; with the favored color of skin for that era or not; once a male, again a female.
he arranges for Soul to join a family which offers the best prospect for spiritual unfoldment.
These are the individuals near the top of the scale, who are always creative in some way—usually cheerful, upbeat people. Because of gains made in past-life unfoldment, they have won a say in choosing their present incarnation. Destiny can be thought of as the equipment, talents, or gifts which a person brings to this life. It remains for each to use them wisely.
To sum up, fate governs the conditions at a person’s birth; free will allows a choice as to how he will move within and beyond them.
4 The Silver Cord
Later I surmised that this out-of-body experience had started with the sound of buzzing bees and continued even as I rolled out onto the floor. Everything was so natural that it never dawned on me that as Soul, I had escaped the physical body and slipped into the next highest one, the Astral body. In The Spiritual Notebook, Paul Twitchell identifies the buzzing of bees as one of the sounds of the ECK, or Divine Spirit, on a certain inner plane.
Then I knew that the physical body slept while I observed it from the vantage point of Soul that had now clothed Itself in the astral form. This enlightenment amused me as I curiously studied the rumpled, sleeping body.
The physical body continued to sleep soundly with me outside it; the glowing lifeline still joined the two bodies, the physical and the astral.
The only proof that something unusual had happened came the next morning when Sam dropped in before breakfast. He took me aside and confided that last night shortly after ten o’clock, a mysterious light had shone about him while he read in his room. Sam claimed that he was shown a prophecy about his immediate future. When I told him my story, we were both deeply mystified.
Here was proof to me that I could survive outside my physical body and conquer the fear instilled by that haunting bugaboo called death. In the Soul body, I am free!
5 Barriers to God
Early in my instruction, Paul Twitchell addressed a fear put in me long ago by religion—the fear of hell for sins unknown, a barrier too great for one to overcome alone on his ascent to God. Paul began to make me face this fear and so weaken its hold.
The play of Satan is therefore not evil for its own sake, but is God’s way to fortify Soul.
In the same way, the Spiritual Exercises of ECK are our way to build spiritual endurance and frustrate the wiles of this negative power, which wants to catch us in its karmic traps. Freedom is for the strong. Raw courage must exist to safeguard hard-won freedom—be it personal, political, or spiritual.
Inner strength comes when there is no place left to turn. Although resigned to a beating, I had no plans for being a full-time doormat. My inner resolve to fight back was a danger signal that warned Red, “Don’t tread on me.”
One can mock up energy to divert the danger. Paul Twitchell covers these techniques in The Flute of God.
I learned that a real Master lets no one lean on him for long. Courage is the raw stuff Soul must have if It would see God. To be fully in ECK, a chela (spiritual student) puts complete faith in It. He is then beyond fear, and all life reaches out to him.
But better is the inscription on the mantel of Hinds’ Head Hotel in England: “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there.”
He was like the flight instructor who makes sure his student does not fly beyond the immediate vicinity of the airfield and get lost. All that Soul Travel is, is the skill of shifting into a higher state of consciousness. This often gives one the sensation of traveling swiftly through a comfortable blackness.
In time I was to learn that this was one of the many sounds of ECK, the Holy Spirit. The humming tone lifted me upward; then, in full awareness, I—as Soul—slipped from the body as easily as one would squeeze a banana from its peel.
When he finally receives the Crown of Life, the reward for all his past endeavors is self-determination of the highest order. This is God-Realization.
In my early days as a student of Eckankar, I often visited the Temples of Golden Wisdom, including the one on Venus. This temple is called the House of Moksha, which means “house of liberation.” It is invisible to human eyes because its vibrations are at the peak of the spectrum of physical matter. The ECK Master in charge there is Rami Nuri, who is aided by other ECK Masters in teaching the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, the ECK holy book.
Paul also took me to other Temples of Golden Wisdom, such as the temple of Askleposis in the city of Sahasra-dal-Kanwal, on the Astral Plane; the Sakapori wisdom temple in the city of Honu, on the Causal Plane; the Namayatan temple in Mer Kailash, on the Mental Plane; and the temple of Dayaka in the city of Arhirit, on the Etheric Plane. These are some of the main temples; there are also hundreds of branch temples of all sizes on every plane of God.
Going to these far places was like riding a comet to the stars, but the return was quicker than the snap of a finger. One minute I would be in a temple, lost in thought over some statement by Paul, and then my body would be stirring in bed, in Japan.
Paul stood alongside the dais and rested his foot on it. Leaning forward to face the class, he said, “The history of mankind is contained in the sacred books of the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, whose volumes are kept in halls of wisdom on many planes. Sometimes the words are set on paper, but they often appear in a hologram. The words of the Shariyat may also be transmitted to an individual by the Light of God, in a blinding sheet or on a golden scroll.
“The Sugmad’s displeasure opened the windows of heaven, and Soul was dropped into these worlds of dark misery to learn perfect love through the sensations of sorrow and pain. One commandment did Sugmad give Soul: ‘Love me and keep my ways!’ The round of births and deaths were to endure until all of Soul’s imperfections were gone. Only then could It return to heaven as a Co-worker with God.”
“A region of deep darkness guards the Soul Plane,” he continued. “Those with the pure Light of God can cross it, but only with the Light, for this coal black wasteland swallows and loses all but the most spirited. Now and then a daring explorer might find this place on his own, but it is unlikely, because the negative power has a network of deceit in place to garble knowledge about the Soul Plane. The Mental Plane, he is told, is the apex of heaven and nothing lies beyond it. But this is not so. No matter how far one travels into the Far Country, he finds there is always one more heaven to explore.
“Godlike, but not God,” he replied. “Every Soul traces Its origin to God, the Creator. The difference between people is simply the degree to which they realize the God state within themselves.” “Who were the sons of God who came unto the daughters of men after the time of Noah?” I said. “They were of the Seres race, a civilization of giants from the Astral Plane that sent explorers to many planets of our solar system, including earth. Colonizers of planets, they founded settlements practically everywhere. They were ancestors of the Lemurian and Atlantean races who grew to a remarkable eleven feet in height.”
The ECK Master took me aside to a garden near the temple and said, “The Angel of Death is really an underling in the spiritual order whose duty it is to take uninitiated Souls to the Astral Plane at the time of death. The deceased goes immediately to the Dharam Raya, the judge who reviews the merits of his past life and passes sentence on it. When the account is settled to everyone’s satisfaction, the individual is led to his new home. At the reunion with old friends and family members, he is greeted with joy and open arms.
Karma is a use tax that must be paid without complaint or bargaining. The sentence is just in all cases, and the individual accepts it without argument. Everything in the worlds of causality is run according to this system that is regulated by appointed governors.
How strong must be our urge to reach God? Very strong. But at first we don’t care much about lofty spiritual goals because they are immaterial to us. So the ECK Masters lead us slowly toward the higher visions. After all, how many of us want spiritual freedom so much that we will fix our full attention upon God in every waking moment? Not many. Accordingly, we start at the lower end of awareness and move into the full consciousness of God a little at a time.
But Paul’s writings carried the high vibrations of the living power of ECK. Misfortune strikes any who take a stand against It; and Ron certainly had. He was secretly smoking marijuana, a habit that clashes entirely with the Holy ECK. The drug is spiritually fatal. When a drug user approaches the works of ECK, even by accident, a raging storm will sooner or later tear him to ribbons. It is a primeval conflict between the ECK and the Kal, and the individual who won’t let go of his narcotic habits will lose everything in life worth having.
This story shows the cleansing power of ECK. Spirit and drugs do not mix. I grew to love Paul beyond words, but he made sure I kept up my inner disciplines. After all, this was not a popularity contest; he was helping me reach ECK Mastership. Other ECK initiates found him to be a warm and chummy Inner and Outer Master, but he kept me stepping along.
Near the foot of this hierarchy is the angel, an astral go-between for minor deities who want a message delivered to someone in the human race. An angel knows astral travel, and goes between the Astral and Physical Planes, but has no knowledge of Soul Travel.
During the whole trip the divine power was trying to tell Balaam not to go on this mission against the Israelites; It had used the angel and the ass as channels. Balaam’s Spiritual Eye had opened just in time to save him.
6 The Face of the Master
Immediately, I shut my eyes and put my attention on a blank imaginary screen in the area of the Spiritual Eye, a point just above the eyebrows in the center of the forehead. Gently, then, I started to chant the word HU, one of the ancient names for God. It sounds like the name Hugh, except that it is chanted softly in a long, drawn-out breath.
Paul suggested that I could not even withstand the burden of foreseeing merely the good fortune to come my way. What a riddle! “When you are ready,” he added, “you’ll see the beginning stages of the ECK-Vidya. You will start to learn the ancient science gradually, step-by-step, so as to maintain a balance in your daily affairs.”
8 Past-Life Adventures Soon after learning of Soul Travel, I dreamed of a past life in about 10,000 B.C., after the last of that all-but-forgotten continent of Lemuria had succumbed to earthquakes and volcanoes, and had sunk into the Pacific. My reincarnation was a century after the final disaster, and my hunting range was on the West Coast of America, in what is today southern California. This dream explained my strong urge in the early 1970s to move back to the same area.
Soul is drawn again to the people and places of Its past. And not surprisingly, the karmic group It rejoins repeats the same old errors in a new setting, for history repeats itself due to a human mind that is a clean slate upon rebirth and does not remember past mistakes.
When I had absorbed the spiritual impact of seeing this past life, Paul Twitchell showed me an even earlier one. It involved my Lemurian family, which also became my family in this current lifetime. “Your problem then,” said Paul in contemplation, “was too much honesty.” It was news to hear that there could be such a thing as too much honesty. After thinking it over, the problem seemed rather to be one of ignorance—of the Law of Silence.
When we strike out in anger against some supposed injustice, we must answer to the divine law for our acts, no matter what the provocation.”
God. Another feature of Rebazar worth noting is his eyes. Like two dark pools in a bottomless sea, they seem to see all, know all. They are eyes of compassion and mercy, all-seeing eyes that serve both as a mirror of Soul and a microscope to the universe. To look into them is to become lost in the Sound and Light of God, the ECK. The liquid of God pours from them like a sweet nectar to fill the emptiness of the heart, and I drank deeply when we met in the spiritual worlds. This is a fair description of Rebazar Tarzs. He and all the other ECK Masters are Co-workers with the Living ECK Master, who during my term as an ECK novice was Paul Twitchell.
My mind was free of worry, open to receive any vision from the inner planes.
It was like flying into the sun, passing through a curtain of light, and coming out on the other side to a world of gorgeous colors. I hung suspended in space, a splendid light (the glorious Soul body) of seeing, knowing, and being.
“This warm light that bathes us is from the Ocean of Love and Mercy. It is the Holy Spirit and is a reflection of the light from the atoms of God.”
“This sphere of golden light is the Soul body,” he said, “the highest of the forms of man.”
Everyone who goes to sleep is out of the body. A dream is nothing more than one’s experience beyond the physical plane, and even those who claim not to dream are really out of the body when asleep. Soul Travel, then, is the conscious movement of Soul between the outer and inner selves, and gives one the ability to remember what the average person does not. Stop and think about it: In sleep, you are naturally out of the body.
The Spiritual Exercises of ECK help us have spiritual experiences in the sleeping hours. Many Higher Initiates in Eckankar have learned the art of being aware during most of a twenty-four-hour day, because they know how to use the periods of normal sleep for unfoldment.
Then watch carefully as your mate steps free of the physical body and enters the spiritual one in a burst of radiant light. One always goes out of the body when he falls asleep, but it is an unconscious act. In Soul Travel, the only difference is that we are trying to get out of the body in full awareness.
The moment Soul leaves the body, It finds Itself in a blue-grey zone near the Physical Plane. This zone is an approach to the Astral Plane. The sensation of moving from the Physical to the Astral body is like slipping through a large iris of mild wind currents; this iris is the Spiritual Eye. Soul enters this neutral zone of blue-grey tones in Its Astral form, a sheath which looks like a thousand sparkling stars. This buffer zone, or corridor, between the Physical and lower Astral Planes, resembles an enormous underground rocket silo that is perhaps two hundred feet in diameter and more than two thousand feet deep. The ceiling of this circular pocket is open and may display a brilliant canopy of white light, or you may see a night sky sprinkled with specks of twinkling stars. There may even be a pastoral scene by a river, whose waters murmur their pleasure at life.
One person’s quest for God-Realization will touch many people he has never met, because, as a pathfinder, his discoveries in ECK are a light to the world.
“All life is from ECK,” said Rebazar. “This Word, or Spirit, is in all living things, even in the steadfast rock formation of this hill. The ECK is the Audible Life Stream that descends through all planes unto the far end of creation.”
“Soul’s single purpose in life is to come into harmony with Spirit,” he added. “Life’s school of hardship buffs smooth the sharp edges of bitterness, anger, passion, miserliness, pettiness, scorn, dishonesty, small-mindedness, perversion, lust, meanness, poverty of Spirit, corruption, vanity—and every other negative trait that comes to mind.
“Harmony is love, and love brings joy, understanding, wisdom, goodness, generosity, charity, goodwill—but more than anything else, it brings spiritual freedom. Soul wants to be free. To have freedom, It must become a God-Realized being. Experience in the Sound and Light of God is the most direct way to wisdom, power, and freedom. The way, the truth, and the light is via the Spiritual Exercises of ECK.”
10 A Short Spiritual Exercise to Try
The ECK (Holy Spirit) is the Light and Sound. God speaks to mankind—indeed, to all living creatures—through this Light and Sound. We could not live without the divine Light any more than we could without sunlight; or without the vibration of Sound, whether or not it is consciously heard or felt. The Sound, like the Light, is always present with us. To reach the height of spiritual unfoldment, we must become aware of both the Sound and Light. This is a technique of imagination. To do this spiritual exercise, find a quiet room in your home where no one will disturb you for ten or fifteen minutes. Then shut your eyes and look at a place just above and between your eyebrows. That is the location of your Spiritual Eye. Now imagine you are climbing to the top of a broad green mountain. Follow the brown dirt path to a meadow of colorful flowers. Powder white clouds near the summit of the mountain give a feeling of great joy, wonder, and freedom. This is the Mountain of God. When you reach the top, lie down upon the thick, soft carpet of grass. Feel the sunshine warm your face, arms, and body. Shut your eyes there too, as you did when you began this contemplation exercise in your room. For the moment, expect complete darkness in your inner vision. Now look gently for the Light of God to appear in your Spiritual Eye. It may appear in a number of ways. It may come as a soft field of light, similar to the fluffy white clouds near the mountaintop. Again, it may be a pinpoint of light: blue, white, yellow, purple, or even green or pink. While looking for the Light, softly sing HU over and over again. It is Soul’s love song to God. Without staring, keep watching for the Light within your Spiritual Eye. Listen also for the Sound. The Sound of God is the vibration of Spirit moving the atoms of life. You may hear the sound of a flute, a rushing wind, the chirping of birds, a waterfall, bells, or the buzzing of bees. These are actual, not imaginary, sounds.
The ECK, or the Holy Spirit, is the clean, life-giving force from the Mountain of God that sweeps into the valleys of mankind to purify all spiritual stagnation. This is the heavenly wind of God. It began to uproot my old life of discontent and direct me toward spiritual liberation. This ultimately meant a freedom from myself. In my case, it was necessary first to overcome the social pressures of church and family before the way was clear to move onward to a new life in ECK.
Paul asked all Second Initiates and above to fast on Fridays. He suggested three kinds of fasts and left it up to each person to choose the one best for him. First was the mental fast. With it, one would center his thoughts upon holy and good things all day. Second, the partial fast. This could either be one meal that day or else fruit and fruit juices. Third, the water fast. Light fasting, he said, helped to work off karma and quicken spiritual unfoldment. I chose the water fast, which meant only water for twenty-four hours. It is understandable how this might have upset my family, because of the empty chair at mealtime.
All I knew for certain was that a feeling of great love now sometimes filled me. This indefinable feeling of love had grown until it was no longer just a feeling, but a force as real as water rushing down a river. It was simply the divine energy of life. I knew it mentally, but now I had to learn to accept this Spirit of Love in every waking moment.
18 The Experience of God What is life without the experience of God? There are many misconceptions about God-Realization, and I had most of them. One is that the individual who has been to the Sugmad sees all, knows all. While this is true in part, he sees and knows only what he must in order to survive, in any world, at any time.
The experience of God will certainly transform the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of anyone, but weeks or months may pass before he reestablishes himself in society. The individual with true God-Realization is suddenly out of key with social conventions, yet he eventually discovers that to serve the Sugmad may mean enduring life among the spiritually asleep or dead—Souls with darkened lamps. God-Realization may span from a profoundly beautiful experience to the ruthless tearing away of one’s final illusions.
Then a strange thing happened: the ECK-Vidya, or the Golden-tongued Wisdom, came from his lips. This is the God language, the ancient science of prophecy. The bartender was not aware of it, but the Mahanta was using him to give my future by this indirect manner of speech. He said that before the night was out I would face a challenge so dreadful that nothing in my past could compare with it. No matter what was said for me to do, it must be done instantly, with complete faith in the Mahanta. Further, I would ride in an ambulance before the sun rose in the morning.
While he spoke, a high humming sound played at the rim of my con sciousness. A warm blanket of love shielded me from the shivering cold that reached for my bones. Just before midnight, the tone of his voice changed abruptly.
Rebazar Tarzs once said, “Only the bold and adventuresome find God.” Might that include giving up one’s life? I hoped not. The thought of death turned my blood to ice. The stranger broke in on my thoughts. “Look there!” he said. “The Light of God!” From out of the night, as if from a distant lighthouse, came a searing bolt of blue-white light that pierced my heart. He smiled. “The Light of God; It shines for thee.”
All became still. The sound of thunder ceased, but the Light of God poured endlessly into my heart as It swept down from the God planes, from the very center of all creation—the Sugmad. No thoughts stirred inside me. I was at peace, untroubled even by the possible specter of death, and waited quietly—but for what? “Contemplate upon the Sound and Light of God,” said the bridge tender, and he disappeared into his shack.
Finally, the crashing waves from the Ocean of Love and Mercy began to wane. Slowly I straightened up. My sides burned with a stabbing pain, from the screams that came with Soul’s cleansing. But my atoms were pure and light beyond all telling. A disease was now gone, but until its absence, I had not even sensed its presence. “Something’s gone,” I murmured. “Something’s gone.” A heaviness that had been with me all my years was gone.
Freedom. Was this spiritual liberation? If so, to what could it compare? Who else knew of its lightness? Who else could understand this freedom? I was airy in my atoms, like a child afloat on water. Something had gone indeed: my karma, the heavy hand of destiny. The strength of God now rushed through me. I would give up all to serve the Sugmad. What other reason was there for life? The stranger stepped from his shack. “The blessings of the Ancient One be with you.”
Next to learn was that Soul’s service can only be to God alone. Within moments, this stranger was to teach me a harsh lesson of self-reliance. Though having seen the face of God, I, like Paul, still had so much to learn. And was still, a child in the wilderness.
The experience of God was fresh, and my love for the Sugmad all-embracing. Like a bridegroom refreshed by his bride’s adoring love, I wished to bathe forever in the bliss of God.
“There is only the Light and Sound of God,” I replied. A smile traced the corners of his mouth.
The stranger pulled back, scowling. “All who see the Ultimate must serve It evermore. Go now and learn your mission.” My vision of what it meant to serve God was like that of many others: wander at will, shun responsibility, and appear saintly.
The stranger grunted in disgust. “Listen, the road to God never ends. However hard you found it, the easy part is in getting to the Ocean of Love and Mercy. Serving people in all their states of slumber takes more patience than befits a saint. ECK Adepts don’t waste their lives in idle contemplation.” “Teach me the wisdom of God,” I begged. In the snap of a finger, the stranger changed from the noble ECK Master, who had taken me to the Sugmad, to an outraged and spiteful laborer tending a bridge.
The overwhelming encounter with God’s Sound and Light had left me in a daze of rapture that clashed violently with this dark world. The sudden shift in the bridge tender’s posture from inspiration to malice baffled me. First, I was his comrade; then, an outcast. But unknown to me at the time, he was teaching a bitter lesson on self-reliance, a quality that marks every ECK Master.
It was unlike any joy I had ever felt before; therefore, I was hard put to call it “joy.” The Sound and Light had given me a rich, deep happiness that did not depend upon outer conditions. Heaven knows, nothing around me could evoke mirth. Contradictions boiled within me: I was joyous, yet pathetic; light, but melancholy; free, yet not free.
mankind shows a flair for selecting a holy man as a model, then destroying the very spirituality he lived by reducing him to a myth.