Now, I know you face this question all the time in your community. It may not be at the forefront of your thoughts by the moment, of course, but it underpins each and every Vahana project.
So, why do people come to ECK?
Some of the reasons they give include the following:
- “To grow spiritually.”
- “I agree with the precepts and what I’ve heard or read in ECK books. I feel welcome and feel like I’ve been an ECKist before.”
- “To live a happier life with love and service; to find the truth!”
- “[I am] interested in doing spiritually based dream work and Soul Travel.”
- “Because my spiritual unfoldment accelerated quicker studying ECK than any other path I have been on thus far.”
- “Because I found out it is a true religion, and the love I receive from the members at the ECK service is excellent.”
And the list goes on. Yet what is the common element behind every seeker’s quest? In a word, it is love. The search for a true and lasting love drives the affairs of this world—and has done so since consciousness took root in man. Not human love, but divine love.
Yet this quest for divine love is hidden. In their spiritual youth, people expect to find it in power, success, conquests of one sort or other, ambition, acquisitions, and political and social causes. All satisfy for a time. Then experience shows the holes in the cloth, so they wander off in search of a better reason for living.
And thus man returns to school at Route 1, Earth, for a new school year. He comes in a new body, with an erased memory, and picks up where he left off in the prior year of spiritual tutoring.
There’s a lot of hoopla today about the renewal of religion. But here’s a little secret: This is a materialistic age, not a spiritual age.
So what’s our yardstick?
Scientific accomplishments of today consider only if it’s possible to clone another life-form, not if it’s the moral, or right, thing to do. Scientists of several nations worked feverishly to create an atomic bomb—because it was possible. Only after Pandora’s box was opened did anyone consider the dire consequences. By then it was too late to ask, “But is it right?”
Business or political success is gauged by two standards—what someone does in public or what he does at home. Appearance beats out virtue. And truth.
People now want security from poverty and terrorism. They are willing to trade their personal and spiritual freedoms for the promise of physical safety. And so they let their leaders increase surveillance and collect data on them. Soon, both their freedom and security will be gone.
Why do seekers come to ECK?
They can feel in their heart of hearts that in the world around them all is a magician’s trick on the audience. Yet ECKANKAR, they rightly sense, offers the way to real security, love, and freedom.
That’s why they come.
—Sri Harold Klemp
Before you leave your house today, try this spiritual exercise:
Take a moment to be aware that whatever you will be doing, wherever you go, you will be an instrument of God’s love in your world.
Carry that mission in your heart.