Ancient Wisdom for Today (6 page)

of Golden Wisdom on this plane, is lo-

cated in the city of Mer Kailash, and the guardian is the Koji Chanda. You can

recognize the Mental Plane by the sound of running water.

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The Etheric Plane

Marking the border between the lower

and higher worlds of Divine Spirit is the Etheric Plane. This is the source of our primitive thoughts and the subconscious.

The Dayaka Temple of Golden Wisdom is

located here in the city of Arhirit, and the guardian of the Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad is Lai Tsi. You can recognize the Etheric Plane by the sound of buzzing bees.

As you unfold spiritually, you’ll travel through the various God Worlds of ECK.

This journey will be a unique experience because we are all individuals, each at a different point in our unfoldment.

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7

Love

The very heart of the doctrine of

ECK is love. This love is that

divine essence which unites all reality and
brings together all Souls. The higher Soul
goes into the other worlds the greater this
becomes. Love is the bond which holds the
worlds together.

The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad

once reported the story of a dog named Norman. Norman is very special. He’s a shining example of divine love in action.

Norman, a curly haired cockapoo with

weak knees, sports a different brightly colored scarf around his neck each day.

He is a caregiver at a south Minneapolis nursing home. An odd occupation for a

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dog? Not really, if you think about it.

He’s good at what he does. Residents

look forward to his arrival every day. He arrives in the morning with the activities director. He moves from lap to lap, day after day, giving selfless love and bringing joy to his patients.

Divine Love Needs

No Words to Communicate

One patient in particular, who suffered a stroke, is especially appreciative of Norman’s attention. She always welcomes him with a big smile and outstretched

arms. They often set off for an adventurous ride in her wheelchair. The stroke took away her ability to speak, so she can’t communicate with him verbally, but she scratches him on the head. Neither needs words to express the love they share.

Why does Norman take his job so se-

riously? Why does he do it so well and willingly? Because of the love he’s been given.

When Norman was a pup many years

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ago, he was abandoned on a doorstep. A loving Soul, his former master, rescued him. When it was discovered that he had leukemia, she invested over two thousand dollars of her own money to save

him and nursed him back to health. It

was then he began his career as pet

therapist.

His master was associate director for

a nursery and early childhood center.

Many of the children were developmen-

tally disabled. Norman’s owner saw a

bright future for him as a caregiver. He charmed and inspired the children until his master died. That could have spelled the end of his career, but Divine Spirit and his master’s sister saw more need for his gift of love. She started taking him to the nursing home where she worked,

to continue his mission.

What Can We Learn

from Norman about Divine Love?

The love given Norman by his master

transcended the love most people give

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an animal. The love she gave was given with no thought of return. It was love given straight from the heart. Totally selfless.

This type of love keeps on giving,

building on itself. Speaking of divine love,
The Shariyat
says, “One does not see and grasp it at first glance but it grows within him like the acorn of the oak in the earth.

Gradually it opens the consciousness of the receiver and flows through to the

world, changing all about it.”

Further, it says, “The wise man is one who stores up the ECK within himself

and at the same time distributes the spiritual love which is within himself. He is not one who gives his compassion to a

few but to all, whether or not many understand this. He is able to live among the wretched, the thieves, the unhappy, robbers and fools, for he accepts life for whatever it is and gives love to all. He is the wise one who is able to give all that he has to his fellowman. He finds love for those who greedily accept what he gives, 68

and they shall be blessed a thousand

times for his love.”

Life in the lower worlds is made pos-

sible by the interaction of two powerful forces: the ECK force and the Kal force.

Positive and negative. Love and power.

The ECK force descends from the pure

positive worlds of God, giving love and life to all that exists in the worlds below.

Love Is Simple

In
Cloak of Consciousness
, Harold Klemp says, “It is no secret that the power of love is stronger than the power of the mind. The mind enjoys little games and psychic adventures, such as the use of crystal power. Someone who wants the

God Consciousness no longer cares for

these things. We care about the Light

and Sound of God. For this one must

have the Golden Heart, which means a

heart filled with love.

“Someone told me about how well his

young daughter took to having a new

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baby in the family. Whenever the baby

wants the rattle or needs the bottle back in its mouth, the little girl simply helps the baby in whatever way she can.

“She doesn’t question the reason for

the baby’s needs or wait to be told what to do. She does it simply because she

loves the baby, with none of the petty jealousies that can make things complicated in a family or a group.

“. . . Love makes things very simple.”

Know Greater Love

through the Golden Heart

The key to love is the Golden Heart.

If you have it, it is very easy to Soul Travel. Let’s take a moment to look within and experience the radiant love of the Golden Heart.

Begin to visualize a growing, golden

light surrounding you. It may be very

subtle at first. It embraces you, flows with you.

Soon you are riding currents of light

into the vastness of the cosmic sea. A 70

place you’ve long forgotten. It’s a place deep within your inner being, the dwell-ing place of Soul.

Now your consciousness settles on the

surface of the sea. Now the sea of love and light begins to emanate from you,

expanding. It’s deeper than the mind can conceive. You’ve moved beyond the regions of space and time.

Ever so lightly, you sense a breeze. You hear the sound of a wind from deep within.

It creates tiny ripples on the surface of the sea. Suddenly you realize you’re experiencing the Light and Sound of God.

You can stay here for a while if you choose, basking in this radiant, soothing ocean of Light and love.

When you’re ready, slowly come back.

It should be easy enough to speak of this kind of experience, but words often fail us. We can try to share our experience, but it’s up to each of us to open up that awareness within ourselves.

Truth is not gained through observa-

tion, it’s gained through experience. The 71

path of Eckankar offers each of us the opportunity to open our consciousness and our hearts to greater awareness, to become the Golden Heart. We can each feel the love that passes on from one world to the next, into the higher planes of reality.

But the awakening has to start within

your heart.

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8

The ECK-Vidya

If you are open to the Holy Spirit, you
will find truth coming to you through
the actions and words of other people.

This is a facet of the ECK-Vidya, the ancient science of prophecy. I call it the
Golden-tongued Wisdom.

When God speaks to you through others, the words may even come via the electronic media. . . . Suddenly a sentence
pops out that is precisely for you. It may
mean nothing to anyone else, but for you
it has a significant meaning.

Harold Klemp

The Drumbeat of Time

In his book
Journey of Soul
,
Harold Klemp gives several important insights 73

into the ECK-Vidya and the nature of

prophecy through the following story:

“An individual had a question about

the role of the ancient oracles in the spiritual life of man in the time of the Oracle of Delphi. To learn and open up, he decided to study the ECK-Vidya. First he went into a contemplative state and

asked, ‘What is this all about?’ He then visualized himself in ancient Greece,

sitting on the side of a mountain. After a while, an ECK Master came along and

asked him what he wanted. He said he

wanted an understanding about the role of oracles in the spiritual life.

“He came to understand that the

oracles were used in those early times because the consciousness of man was so low. They were not able to go to the temple within directly, through the Spiritual Exercises of ECK, and meet the Inner

Master to get information on whatever

they were looking for. So the ECK Mas-

ters at the time would work through

oracles. What has come down to us in

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history is a poor shadow of the original message that was given; it’s merely a

rehashing of the psychic and occult techniques which have lost their original

meaning.

“As he sat there on the mountainside

and got insight into his question, the ECK Master showed him some incidents

from his past lives, revealing something that was of importance to him in this lifetime, something which had a direct bearing on his spiritual unfoldment. Little objects that looked like electromagnetic cards were pulled out of a file. You may either read them directly, or they may display pictures that give the complete scope of the individual and of those

lives which were of importance. The ECK

Master pulled these out for him and gave him a look. He considered this an added bonus, but it happened through his own efforts. He worked with his creativity to figure out how he could go about getting a deeper, more penetrating insight into his own life, and this is how he did it.”

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Man Always Wants

to Know the Future

Men and women have long wanted to

know what their future holds. They ask if they will be happy, find love, or become wealthy. They want to know about their health or their careers. Corporations

spend millions of dollars trying to figure out the future. For the most part, they employ traditional forecasting methods.

If they believed in the power of prophecy, they’d spend millions more to take advantage of it.

Many seekers of truth have the pro-

cess of unfoldment in reverse order. They believe if one learns how to work with crystals, symbols, numerology, etc., they will unfold spiritually. In Eckankar, we believe one must first be linked with the Light and Sound of God. This process

purifies Soul and enables us to become Co-workers with God. Once this occurs, we are able to work with the various tools and symbols offered by the ECK-Vidya.

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Without spiritual understanding, these items become playthings for psychic

experimentation and do not lead to spiritual liberation.

All Life Is Cyclical

The ECK-Vidya teaches us that all of

life can be divided into cycles. These cyclical patterns have their origins in the ECK, or Holy Spirit. Daily cycles are

contained within monthly cycles, monthly within yearly, and so on. Because we

understand earthly, physical cycles, we can predict when the moon will again be full. This would seem like a miracle to someone unfamiliar with the movement

of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth.

It is the same with spiritual cycles. All life is governed by spiritual cycles, and the ECK-Vidya adept comes to understand them. Prophecy becomes a natural talent. The cycles governing ideas, nations, and individuals become more clear.

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ECK-Vidya Looks into Soul

Records— Past, Present, and Future

Those trained in the ECK-Vidya are

able to delve into the past and the future.

These adepts can look into the Soul

records to understand what has happened and why. They can also look into the

future and see what is likely to happen.

They can do this because they have come to understand the cycles of life.

This goes beyond astrology, which is

the study of planetary influences only.

Planetary influences are often over-

whelmed by other spiritual forces at work.

Knowledge gained from astrology origi-

nates from the Astral Plane, only one

plane above the physical. The same can be said of other psychic procedures, like numerology or channeling.

This Is a Warring Planet,

but That’s OK

What does the future hold? Unfortu-

nately for those utopians who believe we 78

can have heaven on earth, our planet is a warring planet. Any period of peace

will be followed by one of conflict. It is the nature of the lower worlds to have life and death, joy and suffering. The only way we can have heaven on earth is if our consciousness resides on the Soul Plane.

Though we are in a physical body, our

attention is on the love of God. Thus we are in this world, but not of it.

Never Use Knowledge

to Manipulate Others

The ECK-Vidya has identified the

various cycles which govern man’s life here on earth. The responsibility of working with the ECK-Vidya is great, because the information gained can be so easily misused. Many people would be knocked