Eckankar says there has been a continuous line of ECK Masters for six million years on earth. Now we have the 973rd Living ECK Master. This means that each ECK Master would have had to live an average of six thousand years. Can you please tell me where I have gone wrong in my calculations, or how this could be?

The “973” refers to those who were both Mahanta and Living ECK Master. Many Living ECK Masters may serve the interval between each appearance of a Mahanta, the Living ECK Master.

Rebazar Tarzs was a Mahanta, the Living ECK Master. After his spiritual term, he aided those Living ECK Masters who served between himself and Paul Twitchell. If a Living ECK Master translated before his successor was ready, as with Sudar Singh, Rebazar took the Rod of ECK Power in the meantime.

In this connection, The Shariyat says that only one Mahanta, the Living ECK Master appears every five to a thousand years. This is a metaphor. It simply means that a new one may come almost immediately or not for a long time.

The image is of the phoenix, a mythical Arabian bird. There was only one of its kind. After five hundred to fifteen hundred years or so, it consumed itself by fire, only to rise again to begin a new cycle.

In a similar way, each new Mahanta, the Living ECK Master comes to bring a new level of spiritual awareness.

(from Youth Ask a Modern Prophet about Life, Love, and God, pp. 287–88)