Among the practices of new religious movements, this one is distinguished less by what it involves than by how it is offered. Eckankar presents HU as an ancient name for God, older than language and belonging to no single tradition, and holds that anyone may sing it regardless of membership, belief or preparation. Public HU chants are advertised as open events, and the movement has run recurring worldwide gatherings on that basis.
In Eckankar's teaching the sound opens awareness to what it calls the Sound Current, an inner audible stream held to carry the presence of the Sugmad, the movement's name for the divine, and to prepare a person for Soul Travel, the movement's term for conscious movement through inner planes. Those are the movement's own categories and the atlas reports them as such.
The openness is worth recording as a fact about religious organisations rather than only about this one. Most movements with an inner teaching restrict its practices to members and stage access by initiation. Eckankar does maintain graded teachings for members, but it has made its most characteristic devotional practice its principal outreach, which is an unusual arrangement and a deliberate one.