Love and Sex

Love

In Eckankar, the explicit point of cycles of karma and spiritual growth is “to accept the full love of God in this lifetime.”¹  A common phrase shared among ECKists is: “You exist because God loves you.” Because God loves us, we have a responsibility to share that love with those around us. As Alice suggested, “All that there is is love. Why bother if it’s not for love?”

All that there is is love. Why bother if it’s not for love? —Alice

Sex

Eckankar’s stance on sexual relations, although overtly heteronormative, speaks to the religion’s appreciation of the sex act as an important and meaningful experience in human life. In Youth Ask A Modern Prophet, Harold Klemp writes, “The deep relationship between man and woman is a sacred token of human love. The sex urge does not lift anyone into the higher heavens, so why endorse sex as a means for spiritual unfoldment?… Lovemaking, a deep expression of love and warmth between a man and a woman is their private business…The union between man and woman demands mutual responsibility. The ECK Masters advocate virginity until marriage…”² Eckankar encourages virginity “for the youth because without a fair grounding in life, an individual is hollow inside and mistakes sex for love. Sex takes, love gives. Unless there is love, life can be a miserable and sad experience: an unnecessary detour on the road to God.”³

Unless there is love, life can be a miserable and sad experience: an unnecessary detour on the road to God. —Klemp