This past May, 2026, in New Jersey, Glow International, a magazine dedicated to Avatar Meher Baba, celebrated the 60th anniversary of the magazine. Representatives from the Meher Spiritual Center, Sufism Reoriented, and other groups of Baba lovers and individuals devoted to Meher Baba attended.
Glow International is a magazine dedicated to Avatar Meher Baba and, as it turns out, is massively supported by Sufism Reoriented. This event was in fact a showcase of support for SR as the primary benefactor of the magazine.
The putative murshid of SR was a prominent guest speaker at the event. The history of the tortuous subject of SR has been previously documented by this author. What is of interest at this time is that this celebration of Glow International represents the socialization and normalization of the greatest con in Baba history.
Every Baba lover with an attentive brain knows that in 1981 the mandali (apostles of Avatar Meher Baba) in India held an event called “The Bell of Warning” which sought to inform the Baba world of the danger posed by the apostasy of SR.
This warning has fallen on deaf ears, even by institutions and individuals allegedly dedicated to Avatar Meher Baba.
It has been pointed out by Jamie Newell in an article in the recent Glow that the degradation of Meher Baba’s advent into another world religion imposing authoritarian control on sincere lovers of Meher Baba is a dire and real probability.
This is the trajectory of SR. It claims to represent an authentic spiritual lineage in the name of Meher Baba, when Baba’s own apostles deny this claim. There is absolutely no confusion on this point, yet leading Baba institutions and organizations by their support of SR aver otherwise.
Why is this?
It is 45 years since the Bell of Warning was sounded by Eruch Jessawala. All the mandali alive at the time supported his claim that SR had lost its way. The main point was that Ivy Duce had appointed an occultist as the murshid of the Sufi order reoriented by Meher Baba, and that this was unacceptbale; that Ivy Duce had been corrupted by her own spiritual vanity, and had completely denied the charter that validated her sufi order.
The charter for SR is unambiguous as to how the order should conduct itself: in lieu of a genuine murshid, the order should conduct itself on a democratic basis. The sufi order should by no means endorse a faux murshid on the supposition that he or she is a real saint based on the mere assertion that this is the fact. Moreover, Baba himself made it clear that he would remain in charge of the spiritual hierarchy for 100 years after he “dropped the body”. He made it clear that he alone, the Avatar, would be responsible for the spiritual direction of all mankind and creation for this time period.
The point is that Ivy Duce “jumped the shark” most eggregiously, and that her drones have continued to do the same. But the question at hand is why have major Baba institutions implicitly or explicitly supported this absurdity? Why would The Glow and the Meher Spiritual Center rubber stamp SR’s absurd and abnoxious apostasy?
Baba lovers are at a crucial point in the transformation of their innocent love for the Prophet/ Avatar into a gratuitous affirmation of an authoritarian staus quo. This is emphatically what Baba did not want. This is the exact opposite of what Baba wanted.
