 It is now. At its inception, it wasn't. Twitchell wrote passionately about his dislike for organized religions and assured the faithful that Eckankar would never become one. That all changed, however, at the insistence of a group of insiders and higher initiates who refused to do anything for free, according to Darwin Gross in a Mystic World article in the 1970s. They wanted the tax writeoffs and other perks that come from non-profit status and Twitchell eventually went along with it. It's paid off handsomely in coin. Twitchell seemed to have a lifelong love/hate relationship with religion. In 1967, he was refused entry into the Catholic church. This is two years after he started Eckankar, a point members would do well to ponder.
Today, under the rulership of Harold Klemp (the self-appointed 973rd Eck Master, Living Eck Master, Mahanta), it's officially a religion and conducts itself in accord with IRS non-profit corporation rules. It has clergy (Although they're not in any way trained or highly educated clergy as we usually think of the term.), worship services, its own temple and so on. Publically, Klemp writes that all religions have some merit, but in secret, members-only discourses, he always disparages them, claiming they are dead religions with no spark of God in them. The silly followers of religions are eventually going to have to join Eckankar if they ever hope to make any genuine spiritual progress. |
"The silver cord has been severed for the bodies of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, even to the extent that the recent offshoots of ECK, such as the Sant Mat groups, have so little of the spiritual essence in them that one could spend a lifetime in them and not see any real results . This is not to say that only people in ECK will find enlightenment, but the members of the orthodox groups find it despite their church. If their future depended upon the nourishment that is in the bibles of men, they would starve in spirit." |