Letters to the Living

I grew up in the United States Baba world, i.e. the small group of a couple thousand Americans who still identify as followers of Meher Baba. There’s a saying I heard all my life from the older baby boom followers. It was, ‘They’re going to make it a religion.’ These followers would say this despondently and then sigh as if facing some sad inevitability. Is that really inevitable? I want to explore this idea that the Baba world will soon become a religion. The first question one needs to ask is 'Who are the they they have in mind that are going to do this?' Their words give the impression they envision some kind of outsider. It invokes a sense of other, some intruder?  This kind of xenophobia about outsiders is common to cults. What is this sense of other that they are calling future religion? What are the traits they feel a religion has that they don't have? In what sense are they not a religion? Well, it is likely they are speaking of religion as a religious organizatio...