One Living Master at a Time

Eckankar holds that there is at any moment exactly one Living ECK Master, and that the position is the highest spiritual authority on earth for the duration of its holder's tenure. The title Mahanta names the inner aspect of the role, the guide a member is taught can be met in contemplation and who leads the soul through the inner planes toward the Sugmad, Eckankar's term for the divine.

The role is not understood as founded. Eckankar presents it as a succession, passing from one Master to the next, and Paul Twitchell described a line of Masters stretching back thousands of years before his own tenure. The movement's account is therefore of a recovery and a resumption rather than of an origin in 1965.

In practice the office carries final authority over Eckankar's teaching and organisation, and members relate to its holder through published writings, discourses and gatherings as well as through personal contemplation. The combination of an administrative headship with an inner presence available to individual members is characteristic of the Sant Mat derived movements generally, and it means that questions about the office are simultaneously questions about doctrine and about governance.