Meher Spiritual Center
North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States
A 500-acre oceanfront retreat established in 1944 under Meher Baba's direction as a place of pilgrimage for his followers, kept as a place of silence on the South Carolina coast.
The Meher Spiritual Center, founded in 1944 by Elizabeth Patterson and Anita de Souza under the direction of Meher Baba (1894 to 1969), is a 500-acre stretch of maritime forest, lake and private beach at North Myrtle Beach. Meher Baba, the Persian-born teacher who described himself as the Ancient One and drew on Sufi, Hindu and Christian idioms, visited the center in person in 1952 and gave it its charter: a place of pilgrimage for those who love him, where they can come apart from the world to rest and renew themselves in an atmosphere of love, beauty and peace.
The center keeps that character deliberately. Overnight guests stay in cabins among the pines and live oaks, films about Meher Baba's life play nightly in the Barn, his room in Meher Abode keeps its own visiting hours, and the atmosphere is one of silence and retreat rather than programming. First-time day visitors take a guided tour; the beach is for retreat guests; and there is no entrance fee.
Visiting
The center's visiting page sets day-visit hours (afternoons, with evening hours daily) and the guided-tour requirement for first-time visitors; overnight retreats are booked by reservation through mehercenter.org.
Photo: The center's gateway, [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gateway,_Meher_Spiritual_Center.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Arabindu.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories