1. When referring to Eckankar leaders I will use the male pronoun, since there have been no female leaders to speak of yet. However, in the case of Radhasoami I will be careful to use the pronouns "he/she" since there have been a few women gurus, like Mataji in the Manavta Mandir group. Overall, however, female gurus are rare in India.

2. David Lane, The Making of a Spiritual Movement: The Untold Story of Paul Twitchell and Eckankar. San Diego: Del Mar Press, 1987.

3. Twitchell's later, standard cosmology has thirteen distinct realms, although he only numbers twelve of them. Why does he fail to number the Etheric stage? Perhaps he is adverse to the number thirteen, since popular superstition suggests it implies bad luck.

4. Paul Twitchell, Eckankar Dictionary (Golden Valley, MN: Illuminated Way Publishing, Inc., 1973), p. 69.

5. Several scholars have noted strong similarities between Eckankar and Radhasoami literature. In fact, Twitchell's books, The Far Country and The Tiger's Fang, have been directly connected to Johnson's The Path of the Masters and With a Great Master in India. However, the comparisons drawn here between Eckankar's most sacred writings, The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Book One and Book Two, and The Path of the Masters are new findings. I found the parallel in writings by first looking at the index of Twitchell's and Johnson's books for common terms and then turning to the relevant sections in the books to see if the concepts matched up. To my surprise, not only did the concepts match up but the actual writings did as well.

6. Paul Twitchell, Eckankar Dictionary (Golden Valley, MN: Illuminated Way Publishing, Inc., 1973), p. 92.