by Grant E. Rostig

Grant E. Rostig was an engineer at Fortune Systems in Redwood City, California, when he posted this introduction to ECKANKAR to net.religion in September 1984. ECKANKAR — "the Ancient Science of Soul Travel" — is a spiritual movement founded in 1965 by Paul Twitchell (1908–1971), drawing on Radhasoami, Sant Mat, and Theosophy to teach that consciousness can be trained to separate from the body and travel through hierarchical planes of existence toward reunion with SUGMAD, the supreme deity. This post is among the earliest appearances of ECKANKAR on the internet — an engineer sharing his spiritual practice with a nascent online community that would soon become a global commons. The post is preserved here as a document of 1984 Usenet spirituality: the first people to discuss religion online were not theologians but engineers, and the traditions they brought to that forum were eclectic, sincere, and often unknown to mainstream audiences.

A fundamental premise of this science is that SUGMAD (God) radiates the sustaining life force. A lowering of the vibratory rate of this wave occurs as it travels through the realms of existence and flows downward from a oneness to a duality. In one of its lowest forms it is called electricity, lower still mass. This wave also returns to its originator. Consciousness can tune into this vibration to be carried back to its origin in the heart of truth. There is an analogy to this in the cyclic nature of all phenomena and experience in the dual worlds.

The divine spark of consciousness can place its attention in the higher worlds of God through Soul Travel. Once separated from the body consciousness the realms of experience are broadened. St. Paul spoke of this as dying daily. One can travel through the astral, causal, mental, and etheric levels of awareness. Once the threshold of the psychic realms is crossed; time, space, and matter are no longer at issue, all duality ceases and perhaps this can be called a true heaven. This stage is where ECKANKAR leaves off. Here a quantum leap to ECK, the Path of Total Awareness, takes place. The journey never ends.

Numerous techniques are documented in the works of Paul Twitchell. They comprise the methods for experience of the dual aspects of the SUGMAD, namely Light and Sound. Others cause a tuning of the consciousness to the various manifestations of the life force. Conscious communication with IT is established. These experiences unfold Wisdom, Power, and Love.

May the Blessings Be.

Colophon

Written by Grant E. Rostig ([email protected]) of Fortune Systems, Redwood City, California. Originally posted to the net.religion Usenet newsgroup on September 6, 1984 (Message-ID: [email protected]). This is among the earliest known internet discussions of ECKANKAR, predating the World Wide Web by a decade.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Email address removed.

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