It first came as an inner sound, like bells tinkling. I heard it in my left ear while quietly reading. I thought it must be my watch ticking, which I placed in a drawer across the room. Still the bells tinkled. I could not explain this sound that occurred intermittently for a week.
A week after I seemed to be developing ringing in the ears, I went up to Chapel Hill for a visit with my friend Roger. Roger and I became good friends in Scouting. A medical student, an Eagle Scout, a Unitarian and the son of a scientist, Roger was Mr. Down-to-earth.
We spent most of that weekend talking about this new religion Roger had joined six months before, Eckankar: Religion of the Light & Sound of God. Eckankar seemed strange and challenged everything I believed. Past lives and dreams intrigued me. Soul travel and a living master bothered me.
However, I could not dismiss Eckankar, because I could not dismiss Roger. Roger, the medical student, seemed to be able to explain the tinkling bells through Eckankar.
Eckankar teaches that the Holy Spirit is an audible and visible current, much like a radio beam, which flows out of the heart of God. This current, or the ECK, has a centrifugal flow out into creation, and a centripetal flow back to the source. (Imagine a rock dropped into a pond.)
This ECK creates, sustains and binds all life. As spirit vibrates throughout all creation, it creates different sounds and frequencies of light. St. Paul and Muhammad both wrote about different levels of heaven. Each level has a particular sound and frequency of light associated with it. Roger told me the bells tinkling came from one of those planes.
I left Chapel Hill with two books from the local ECK Center by Paul Twitchell, who founded Eckankar in 1965. Overwhelmed but motivated, I wanted to validate through personal experience what I had learned.
Twitchell taught contemplative techniques he called the Spiritual Exercises of ECK to connect with the light and sound. If I was hearing one of these sounds sporadically, what might I experience through deliberate effort?
One ECK exercise is to chant or sing the word HU (Hugh), an ancient name for God in Eckankar. Sung on the out-breath (HUUUUUU) 20-30 minutes daily, HU can open one up to the Life Force.
The Bible relates how the Holy Spirit came to the apostles as "cloven tongues of fire and as a mighty rushing wind." Totally unexpected, one day during contemplation the sound came rushing in, not as wind but as a swarm of bees. Unlike the tinkling bells that were intermittent in one ear, this sound sustained itself in both ears.
With time, I began to see flashes of blue, purple but mostly white light on the inner screen between my eyes. Is this the light that transformed Paul on the road to Damascus or that Moses saw and heard metaphorically as a burning bush?
With time and continued practice of the spiritual exercises, other sounds came: water running, a flute playing, something like electricity humming and, yes, wind blowing.
Eckankar teaches that the sound is God's voice calling each of us back home. In my experience, to see the light is to see God. To hear the sound is to hear God. To experience both is to feel the transforming power of God's love.
Twenty-five years later, I understand more about past lives, dreams and soul travel. Dreams are windows into the past, present, future and beyond. Dreams help me understand how my past has brought me to the present. Light and sound have a purifying effect as well as a revealing one. Out of the past, I learned to live life better by realizing my own divinity in the present and future.
Soul travel is simply expanding the consciousness into a greater viewpoint, which comes through the light and sound. Soul travel to me is like taking a journey upward in a hot-air balloon and being able to see everything below. With each ascent, I go higher and the view becomes clearer. But always the balloon comes back to Earth.
The effect is that I learned to live life in a more balanced, loving and spiritual way. Such discovery never ends.
The journey began with a sound. Where the path leads from here I wait to discover.