The day's events had had an impact on Adi Sr. as well. He noted in his diary: "Today has been one of the most interesting days of interviews, with men and women bursting into tears out of love ... Baba looked radiant, happy and very beautiful."
On Sunday, 20 July 1952, Baba met with Don, Ivy and Charmian at Scarsdale from 9:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Baba explained and instructed them about the reorientation of the Sufi order and its charter, and added: "On November 15 and after will be my Fiery Life. There will be a great mess as never before. If my body does not fall off, I will be back in the United States by July 9, 1953. If my body does fall off, I will be back in 700 years.
"By December you will receive about 500 typed pages and $1,000 toward the publication of my book [ God Speaks ]. How to publish it is up to Ivy and Don.
"Before November 15, I will send the complete charter of Sufism Reoriented with my signature. It must be applicable to all other sects and equally throughout the world."
Don then asked a question privately, which Baba answered.
At one point Baba dictated, "Intellectual knowledge backed fully by feelings is intellectual conviction."
Don and Ivy returned to the city, and Don left for his home in California.
Don Stevens' first meeting face-to-face with Baba had confirmed the wisdom of accepting Rabia Martin's example of accepting Meher Baba as her Spiritual Master, as is described in his following letter soon after he returned home to California:
Dear Baba, Always when the human mind is faced with things which are beyond its capacity for the present to absorb, it escapes off into contemplation and absorption in inconsequential and trivial detail.
I remember your first, or one of your first, statements to me, "My Don, my boy." And then my mind goes along the inane and delightful reasoning that God is your Father, and therefore He must be my Grandfather. That really delights me to think about, because I had never expected him to be even a remote uncle removed three times by marriage!
Baba, while I watched in fascination as you told a story, and listened in thin-bladed anticipation and delight to your handling of business and abstruse matters of philosophy, and felt my heart grow great when you knew that I had not yet asked you about the things that lay deepest within it, while all these things occupied my mind and attention you slipped into the fastnesses and stillnesses of my soul and held the hand of the weeping child and played ball with the awkward lad who fell over himself and summed the column of figures that the mathematician added constantly and ever to different sums ...
Thank you, Baba. Can one possibly thank you?
Your loving son, Don