WHAT IS ECKANKAR?
The purpose of Eckankar is to make God an everyday reality in your life. As Soul, you have the God-knowledge within you. The teachings of ECK will awaken the knowledge and love for the divine things that are already in your heart. The road to God is an adventure of a lifetime.
- Harold Klemp
www.eckankar.org

Interesting! What are the basic teachings?

Thank you KAYCEE.
Eckankar teaches these basic beliefs:
• Soul is eternal.
• Soul exists because God loves. It.
• Soul is on a journey of self-and God-Realization.
• Soul unfolds spiritually via Karma and reincarnation.
• Spiritual unfoldment can be accelerated through concious contact with the ECK, Divine Spirit.
• Contact with Divine Spirit can be made via the spiritual Exercises of ECK and the guidance of the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master.
• You can actively explore the spiritual worlds through Soul Travel, dreams, and other spiritual techniques.
• Spiritual experience and libration in this lifetime are available to all.

A SIMPLE SPIRITUAL EXERCISE TO TRY
Try this simple spiritual exercise to help you hear and see the two aspects of God, the Light and Sound.
Go somewhere quiet. Sit or lie down in a comfortable place. Put your attention on your spiritual eye: a point just above and behind your eyebrows. With eyes lightly shut, begin to sing a holy word or phrase, such as HU, God, Holy Spirit, or show me thy ways, O Lord. But fill your heart with love before you approach the altar of God, because only the pure may come. Be patient. Do this exercise daily for several weeks, for a limit of twenty minutes each time. Sit, sing, and wait. God speaks only when you are able to listen.
There more to the pursuit of God than luck.

EXPERIENCE GOD FOR YOURSELF
A cornerstone of Eckankar is the value of personal spiritual experience. Reading a book or listening to a friend will give you only a small understanding of the spiritual worlds and your role in them.
To master your life, you must apply self-discipline and have a true desire to experience God for yourself. Your experience with the spiritual Light and Sound of God will enrich your life and help you put daily problems into loving perspective.

A search for happiness is the pursuit of God. Yet the reason so many people fail to find happiness is because they look for it in the wrong place-at the market instead of in their hearts.
It takes discipline to pursue God.
There is no mystery to finding God: just follow the sound of the divine Voice back home. Could anything be easier? Not so for most people, for whom the pursuit of God is as unlikely as the phenomenon of a flying rabbit. And why? It's simply not in their consciousness yet to know that the destiny of each Soul is to become a Co-worker with God, who expects more of us than an eternity of eating and play.
For many, life is much like a trip to a casino.
They place all their talents and dreams on the gaming table then bet the outcome of this life upon a turn of the wheel of fortune. That is the sum of their spiritual life in pursuit of God.
Happiness, to them, is blind luck.
People want happiness, but they go about it backward. They keep looking for happiness. And then they spend their money on things: new computer toys, new cars, new cloths, and the like. Trying to find happiness. If they'd only look for freedom first-maybe meditate like the Buddhists or contemplate as we do in Eckankar, which is a lighter form of meditation.
Yet some individuals do have a true desire for God and use some form of prayer or worship to better understand the creator. Mostly, however, their prayer is like traffic on a one-way street: They do all the the talking. It never occurs to them to stop for a moment and listen. God may want to speak.
Often, God doesn't get a word in at all.
How, then, does God communicate with us? God speaks to all life with the voice of divine Light and Sound. The Christian name for these dual aspects of God is the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, which in Eckankar we refer to by the age-old name ECK.
The range of vibration in the universe spans from infinity to infinity. And while the primal cause of vibration is the Light and Sound of God, the human voice is a mere speck on the full scale of vibration. Why would God only speak in a whisper? Yet people who believe that God speaks chiefly in the frequency range of the human voice forget that the human voice, in comparison to the universe of sound, is but a tiny whisper.
So the idea that God only speaks to life within the narrow field of human sound is an attempt to reduce the might of God.
The Light and Sound of God are the food and drink of Saints. Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus was struck to the earth by the Light of God. Martin Luther, the great reformer, was also fortunate to see it. Then there was Genghis Khan, the Mongol conqueror of the thirteenth century, who every so often would fall into a swoon for days, able only to chant HU, an ancient name for God. In those trance states, he saw and heard the majestic Light and Sound of God. The Divine One spoke through the Holy Spirit.
So the highest form of speech from God to the more spiritually advanced of the human race is the Light and Sound.
Who, then, does God talk to?
In fact, everyone who has made a contribution to the human race has heard or seen the true voice. The ways of God are many. God often speaks in a less direct manner to dreamers, poets, visionaries, and prophets-in part, through visions or dreams, daydreams, prayer (the listening kind), or intuition.
History tells of many such people.
Brother Lawrence was a camelite monk in Paris aroun 1666. He was the monk whose duty it was to wash the pots and pans. Brother Lawrence found a way to practice the presence of God while washing the pots and pans, doing even the very lowly jobs. The people around him couldn't really understand how he could be so happy while doing the dirty work. It was because he saw God in everything he did.
A list of other famous people who have been a mouthpiece for the voice of God includes the likes of Socrates, Plato, Elijah, King David, Mozart, Beethoven, Jung, Einstein, Shelley, Edison, Michelangelo, and thousands more. Each does his best to render the divine will into human terms, using a natural genius as the tools of communication.
The Sound and Light carry out God's scheme of creation. So the highest anyone can aspire to is a life of high creativity, but always guided by the force of divine love.
That is how to be most like God.

THE ECK MESSAGE IS NEITHER ORTHODOX NOR EVANGELICAL
ECkankar is a religion but not an orthodox religion. Eckankar is a religion for the individual-what many of us hoped religion would be. It is designed to help individuals find their own way back to God through direct personal experiences.
There is no desire to convert people to Eckankar. Though many ECKists share their spiritual enthusiasm with others, there is an abiding respect for the belief system of all people. The ECK message therefore tends to be offered in a quiet and steady way. The teachings are written to speak to the inner being, Soul. They don't play off the emotions or the fears of spiritual seekers.

WHAT ARE ECKISTS LIKE?
ECKists come from all walks of life. Their only common denominator is a love of God and a commitment to spiritual unfoldment. They are of every race and religious background. They are responsible members of their community and are not restricted by any special dietry rules, ascetic practices, or dress codes which would differentiate them from their neighbors. Most people who have come into Eckankar have done so because their questions about life were not being answered by orthodox and traditional teachings.

DEFINING ECKANKAR
To aid your understanding of Eckankar, a few definitions are in order. We use certain words to define spiritual principles, either because they are more descriptive or because they do not carry the same connotation or stereotype as some more commonly used words.
ECK- (EHK) The Divine, or Holy, Spirit; the Audible Life Stream; the essence of God which supports and sustains all life; the Life Force.
ECKANKAR- (EHK-ahn-kahr) Religion of the Light and Sound of God. Also means Co-worker with God.
LIGHT AND SOUND OF GOD- The Holy Spirit. The two aspects through which God appears in the lower worlds. The Holy Spirit can appear to us as Light, which is a reflection of the atoms of God moving in space, or as Sound, which is the Audible Life Current that carries Soul back home to God. The Spiritual Exercises of ECK show people how to look and listen within themselves for these qualities of Divine Spirit for upliftment and guidance.

HU, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PRAYER
Singing HU has been practiced for thousands of years in one form or another for inner attunement. In the same way a musician can use a tuning fork to find the right pitch, the person singing HU tunes in to a higher spiritual awareness. In most spiritual traditions, sound plays a part in uplifting the individual. Religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism have made use of sound in the form of hymns, chants, and prayers to help open the heart and go beyond intellectual knowledge. Muslims, Sufis, and Hindus chant or sing the holy names of God in their monasteries and temples around the world.
One example is the word alleluia, a form of the word HU that is sung in many hymns and in famous chorus from Handel's Messiah. Alleluia is from two words, Allah and HU, joined together to form the sound "allahu.” Over the centuries, it has become the familiar word alleluia or hallelujah.
We are involved with the uplifting nature of sound and music every day. Look at the positive feelings inspired by songs with personal meaning for us. Just hearing a familiar melody opens us again to another time and place. And consider that our mother's heartbeat is one of the first sounds we experience in this world; then comes her voice. When she sings a lullaby, it's a carrier for love to her child.
In a similar way, HU is a carrier of love between you and God.
HU can be sung silently at work, home, or anytime you feel a need to tune in to a higher perspective on your life. You might try experimenting with it when you face a challenging situation or want to open yourself to a more loving attitude.
Singing HU each day can lead to a deeper understanding of yourself and why things happen the way they do in your life. It carefully opens your awareness to new view points and attitudes. Anyone can work with the HU regardless of age, background, or religion.
HU, the most beautiful prayer, is a gift to the world.

THERE IS ALWAYS A LIVING ECK MASTER
The key teacher and mentor in Eckankar is the Living ECK Master. Eckankar is never without a living Master. This ensures the religion remains pure and appropriate for the consciousness of the day. It avoids the theological disputes and political maneuverings so common in large organizations. And it allows the spiritual student to see and hear a teacher who has traveled the path to Self-and God-Realiztion.

REINCARNATION
You're like a hamster going around and around in a wheel. This wheel is called the wheel of reincarnation. Life after life you come back trying to solve the mystery, wondering how to love God, then how to love yourself.
The answer to that mystery is called spiritual freedom. And the way to spiritual freedom is simply to sing HU with love. That is where you begin.
That is the doorway to a new life, a life of love.

Another scientific principle is the conservation of matter and energy. This natural law states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.
French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier discovered this principle in the late eighteenth century shortly before losing his head in the French Revolution. Since then, several scientists, including John Dalton and Albert Einstein, refined and expanded on the principle. They found that the total amount of matter and energy in the universe always remains the same. The parts are just reassembled into new combinations.
Every aspect of the universe is part of a phenomenal recycling effort. We, as Soul, are divine sparks of God. That which can never be created nor destroyed. This doesn't mean that the human population on earth remains the same. Not all Souls incarnate as humans at the same time.
We evolve in consciousness through many different forms of life, even in the plant and animal kingdoms, before we take human form. Our goals are to learn how to survive, how to love, how to archieve self mastery, and how to find our way back home to God.

NEAR-DEATH AND OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES HAVE HELPED PEOPLE LIVE LIFE MORE FULLY.
Some people have had near-death experiences. They were able to view their injured body from above and had a glimpse of the higher worlds. Most have extremely happy and uplifting experiences.
Soul never dies. It does not grieve for Its physical body. Many tell of meeting old friends or relatives who have passed on or of encounters with great majestic beings who greet them but say the time for their death has not yet arrived. Those who return to their physical body often feel totally different about their lives. They are now free of the fear of death and are able to live life mor fully.
And there are those who've had outof-body experiences. These experiences are similar to the near-death experience but can occur under more ordinary circumstances. The person is able to shift his spiritual attention away from the physical realm and travel in the Soul body. After such experiences it is hard to be afraid of death because the continuity of life becomes so apparent.

HEAVEN EXISTS ON OTHER PLANES
When the pysical body dies, Soul continues to exit on other planes of God. Soul may stay on these other planes for a day, a thousand years, or more. This is dependent on Soul's mission, Its karmic obligation, and its level of spiritual unfoldment. For many, this in-between time is heaven. The Astral plane, for example, has sections which resemble all of the heavens described in the major religious traditions. You might find Saint Peter and the pearly gates, or the happy hunting grounds, or even visit the palace of Zeus or Jupiter. On the Astral plane you find what you expect, what you hope for, or what you fear.

I am not an eckist but believed in singing Hu and is been working for me