The International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) claims their association with Eckankar is not different from other religious groups.

photo by: Michael Swan

I live in San Diego, California. As much as I love it here, the move to Southern California was a bit of a culture shock. Like the first time I ran into a group of Hare Krishna followers on the beach. It was a beautiful day and plenty of families, kids, dogs, and I guess you’d say “normal people” were out enjoying the positive ions rolling in off the surf.  Among the crowd, a small group of shaved-headed Hare Krishna people were bouncing around in robes singing, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna! Of course, this being San Diego, everyone went about their business, but to me, it all seemed very weird.

Fast forward a bunch of years. As I’ve continued to practice yoga and develop my spiritual practice I’ve become interested in Kirtan. A devotional singing practice very similar to what I saw those Hare Krishnas doing on the beach all those years ago. And I’m sure, if anyone were to see me on my yoga mat, dripping in sweat, singing, Ram, Ram, Hare Ram, they’d probably think I’m pretty weird.

I might have learned a lesson that day about judging someone’s spiritual practice. On the other hand, and this gets to the point of today’s show, when it comes to spiritual and religious practices, there’s a fine line between judgement and discernment.

I have a lot of respect for the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS). They do important work researching and communicating to the public about near-death experience science. But when couple of Skeptiko listeners alerted me that IANDS was getting cozy with a New Age cult called “Eckankar,” I took interest. Firstly, because I think near-death science is important and I don’t want to see any group try to co-opt it for their own purposes. And secondly, because this particular group had popped up on my radar screen before. You might remember episode #240 and my interview with Dr. David C. Lane. Dr. Lane came on to talk about consciousness but as part of his bio and introduction he mentioned his experience with cults and his extensively researched dissertation on the Eckankar cult. What he told me was on the one hand stunning, and on the other hand, if you’re familiar with New Age cults, not different from stories you’ve heard in the past.  Here’s an excerpt that interview:

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Alex Tsakiris: …I directed you away from this other interesting topic that I want you to talk about a little bit – your book, Exposing Cults: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the Mystical. And it is quite a story, right?

Dr. David Lane: Yeah, because what happens is that at the age of 20 I do a term paper on Eckankar and it is supposed to be 10 pages but it balloons up to about 120 to 150 pages because I find out that Paul Twitchell had plagiarized his sacred writings.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay,