During 1952, shortly before Don meets Baba, a letter came from Baba to Don, in which he refers to Don as "my son." Unfortunately, Meher Baba is involved in an automobile accident while traveling from Don, Jill English Myrtle Beach, Leonard English, Kathy Harris South Carolina to Ojai, California, and never got past Oklahoma. Instead, Don travelled to meet Baba in New York at Ivy Duce's Manhattan apartment. After this initial meeting, a letter came from Baba to Don, referring to Don as "my spiritual son." Meher Baba explains about the "spiritual son" of the Master in Discourses,4 in relation to obedience (bold is mine): "Such literal obedience is not even bound by the requirement that the real significance of the orders should be within the intellectual comprehension of the pupil, and it is the best type of obedience for which you can aspire. Through such implicit and unquestioning obedience, all the crooked knots of your desires and sanskaras are set straight. It is also through such obedience that a deep link is created between the Master and the pupil, with the result that there is an unhindered and perennial flow of spiritual wisdom and power into the pupil. At this stage the pupil becomes the spiritual son of the Master, and in due time he is freed from all individualistic and sanskaric ties. Then he himself becomes a Master." Another statement from Baba was that Don has, "An almost perfect balance of head and heart." Don wrote to me, "I was reminded by Bal Natu of two brief but very important actions by Baba as he returned from Don & Kathryn Harris the 1952 visit
to the USA and Europe. On his arrival in Zurich after the accident and the final visit to New York, he was sitting in Hedi Mertens' garden with several of the
women who accompanied him, including several from the USA to that point. One of them wrote me from Zurich that on this occasion Baba mentioned out of the blue that it had been worth spilling his blood on American soil for the opportunity to meet someone of the caliber of Don Stevens." Shortly after this, Meher Baba commences the personal training of Don and the Sufi charges now under the guidance of Ivy Duce. Baba explains what he means by honesty to Sufis, a long explanation which made a giant impact on Don’s understanding of spirituality. This was to turn into not one but two “vows” of honesty Baba asked of Don, both spiritually and in his work at Chevron. Soon after, Baba asks Don and Ivy to edit God Speaks for publication. During this period, Baba, Ivy and Don create Sufism Reoriented, and the correspondence show that Don stresses the need for "democratic principles." Don told us a great story about what happened next. His version is in the book Meher Baba's Word and His Three Bridges. Here is my version of the same: