In a major coup for Sufism Re-reoriented and their sympathizers, the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Trust, based in India, is planning to have Sufism Re-reoriented host a focus group on the development of a long range plan for the Trust. This focus group is one of four such events planned, the others being in Myrtle Beach, SC, London, England, and Avatar’s Abode, Australia. This focus group is to be led by Daniel Stone and Merwan Dubash, a trustee of AMBPPCT.
Needless to say to readers of my blog, this is a fiasco. SR does not speak for anyone but themselves- they are not a Baba group per se, but a cult. They have adopted an intermediary- a so called murshida, stated to be on the 6th plane of consciousness, in defiance of Meher Baba’s order to not interpose any spiritual authority- real or assumed, between him and his lovers, at this time.
This decision to allow SR to host this event was made unilaterally by the president of the Meher Baba Center of Northern California, Janet White, that is to say without including all of the group’s board of directors and without canvassing membership opinion. Alan Talbot, a member of this group, facilitated this decision.
So, what is wrong with this?
SR has a rogue political/ spiritual ambition that must be countered. In conversation today with the chairman of AMBPPCT, Shridhar Kelkar, in Moraga, CA at the home of Alan Talbot, I reminded him that when we last met in Australia for the 60th anniversary of Meher Baba visiting Avatar’s Abode, that the murshida of SR, Carol Conner, had a statement read out by a surrogate, that the reason why SR never took root in Australia was because Francis Brabazon lacked the resources to accomplish this. She also said that SR would one day remedy this deficiency.
This is a complete falsification of the facts. Meher Baba expressly divorced Francis Brabazon and the Abode from SR, just as he did with the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach, SC. That Carol Conner got this wrong speaks volumes. This so called Baba group is in the grip of spiritual fascism.
So, what is to be done?
If the plan goes ahead as planned- that SR hosts the only Trust sponsored focus group on the future of the Trust, the vast majority of non SR Baba lovers in northern CA will not attend. We remember- even if Baba lovers generally do not, the severe exception that all of Meher Baba’s mandali took to the occult makeover of SR as documented in the 1980 “Bell of Warning”.