Vedanta Leads Agnes Baron to Meher Baba
By Sam L. Ervin & Margaret Magnus
Agnes Baron, co-founder and lifetime caretaker of Meher Mount, lived the life of a Vedanta nun before her time at Meher Mount. Vedanta played an important role in Agnes’ life, particularly in helping to prepare her for recognizing and accepting Avatar Meher Baba.
Beads on One String
Avatar Meher Baba said that He would bring the world’s religions together “like beads on one string.” [1]
One of the most important of those “beads” is Vedanta, one of the great schools of Hindu thought and tradition. It is celebrated for having first stated the principle that the soul (atman) is one with God (Brahman).
Vedanta is based on the Vedas, the sacred scripture of India. It affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of all religions. Vedanta is one of the world's most ancient spiritual philosophies and one of its broadest. [2]
Swami Paramananda Meets with Meher Baba
"TRUTH IS ONE" is inscribed over a doorway at the Vedanta Ananda Ashrama in La Crescenta, CA, where Meher Mount co-founder Agnes Baron was staying when she first learned about Avatar Meher Baba in the 1940s. The Ashrama was founded by Swami Paramananda who met Meher Baba in Boston in 1931. (Photo: Sam Ervin, 2012)
During Avatar Meher Baba’s first trip to America in 1931, the Vedanta monk Swami Paramananda came to meet with Him at the Vendome Hotel in Boston on November 22.
Paramananda (1884-1940) had come to the U.S. in 1906 as a disciple of Swami Vivekananda [3] and three years later founded the Vedanta Center of Boston. [4]
During the 1931 interview, Paramananda invited Meher Baba to visit the Ananda Ashrama in La Crescenta in Southern California, a 120-acre retreat Paramananda had established in 1923 as an extension of the Boston Vedanta Center.
Meher Baba replied, “It is not possible on this trip. When I visit America again after six months, maybe I can.” [5]
Agnes Baron Lives at the Ananda Ashrama
Coincidentally, it was Agnes Baron, co-founder and lifetime caretaker of Meher Mount, who later in the 1940s visited the Ananda Ashrama in Southern California. Agnes was living at the Ashrama around 1945 when she first learned about Meher Baba.
Agnes (1907-1994) said that her experience with Vedanta, including her study of Sri Ramakrishna and his chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda, helped prepare her to recognize Meher Baba as something great when she first heard of Him. Agnes said she had never considered herself a “spiritual” person, though she had always been drawn to provide service to others.
A Young Woman with Insatiable Curiosity
A BUSINESS CARD for Agnes Baron during her years of reporting and traveling in Europe and the Middle East prior to the entry of the U.S. in World War II.
As a young woman, Agnes had shown an insatiable curiosity and a spirit of adventure. After graduating from Antioch College, Ohio, in 1928, she traveled around Europe and the Middle East for 13 years, learning 13 languages and studying local cultures.
During that time, she worked as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, a New York City-based newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. Agnes also wrote economic studies for the U.S. State Department.
As the Hitler (German) and Mussolini (Italian) regimes gradually spread over Europe in the 1930s, she worked in Lisbon, Portugal, to help get refugees out of Europe.
Troubled, Disillusioned and Angry
After the U.S. declared war on Germany on December 11, 1941, all Americans were told to leave Europe. Agnes then returned to the U.S. deeply troubled and angry over the inhumanity and suffering she had witnessed. She did not know what to do.
DR. MANMATHA NATH CHATTERJEE professor at Antioch College in Ohio and Agnes Baron's mentor.
She went to see her longtime friend, mentor and college professor, Dr. Manmatha Nath Chatterjee for guidance.
Professor Chatterjee and his wife had taken Agnes in when her parents had written her off at age 16 because she had insisted, against their wishes, on attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH.
Agnes knew that Chatterjee’s grandfather had been the village Hindu sage in India.
And she knew that “Chat” meditated daily, although he never discussed that part of his life with her until much later.
Agnes Goes to California
Chatterjee suggested Agnes go to California and look into what Aldous Huxley [6], Gerald Heard [7] and Christopher Isherwood [8] were up to. In the early 1940s, they were researching and experimenting with various spiritual and scientific activities and communities.
Isherwood introduced her to the Vedanta Society of Southern California, based in Hollywood, CA. At that time, various swamis from India were developing Vedanta temples at several locations in California based on the life and work of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa (1836-1886).
Agnes was quite taken with the teachings and life of Sri Ramakrishna. She joined Isherwood and the swamis in a celebration inaugurating the new Vedanta Temple in Montecito, near Santa Barbara, CA. This Temple is operated by the Vedanta Society of Southern California and under the spiritual leadership of the Ramakrishna Order of India.
THE TEMPLE for Vedanta Society of Southern California at 927 Ladera Lane in Santa Barbara, CA. Agnes Baron lived the life of a nun here for a year in the 1940s.
The Life of a Vedanta Nun
Agnes asked the head swami if she could live the life of a Vedanta nun at the Montecito temple.
He said yes and that he would be glad to initiate her personally. Agnes told him, “No.”
She said she knew from reading Ramakrishna that one must have a deep rapport with one's spiritual teacher and that she did not feel that with him.
The swami was taken aback, as they had never allowed anyone to live the cloistered life without initiation by one of the swamis. For Agnes, they made an exception.
She said she was the first live-in person at the Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple in Montecito where she lived the meditative life and worked in the gardens.
“I stayed for two years,’ Agnes remembered. “I had renounced the world, and I was going to be very spiritual and stuff like that.” [9]
Agnes also said that this time of contemplation and getting in touch with the earth and plants helped her regain her balance and health after all the pain she had witnessed and experienced in Europe.
Later, Agnes left that Vedanta Temple because she felt that the swami was a hypocrite. “I was very angry at the spiritual path and teachers. I was finished. I was going to be very cynical and move back to my old life,” Agnes recalled. [10]
Agnes Meets Jean Adriel, Author of Avatar
A PLAQUE at the entrance to the Vedanta Ananda Ashrama in La Crescenta, CA, where Agnes Baron was living when she first heard about Avatar Meher Baba. This Ashrama was next to the New Life Center where Jean Adriel was working on her book, Avatar, The Life Story of the Perfect Master Meher Baba, published in 1947. (Photo: Sam Ervin, 2012)
After leaving the Vedanta Temple in Montecito, she went to another Vedanta place, the Ananda Ashrama in La Crescenta, CA, founded by Swami Paramananda in 1923. It is 120 acres with gracious buildings and grounds shaded by large pine and oak trees. It includes residences for retreats.
“For some reason,” she remembered, “this placed was much more agreeable. I was trying to find a place to live, and I wanted to do some writing.” [11]
Agnes said other people staying at the Ananda Ashrama complained that the “clacking” of her typewriter until late in the night was keeping them awake, and she was asked to stop or please relocate.
She said that they told her, “There’s a funny place about two miles along the road. They have some teacher from India. We don’t know what His name is, and well the woman’s name is Jean something, and the man’s name is Alexandar something. We don’t know who they are. Now they may have some cottages.” [12]
The place two miles along the road was the 500-acre New Life Center in La Crescenta, CA, founded in December 1944 by Alexander Markey and Jean Adriel and dedicated to Meher Baba.
“Now why did I leave the Vedanta Temple in Montecito in great anger and get recommended to go to this other queer place which is Meher Baba’s? Don’t ask me!” Agnes said. [13]
THE THIRD PRINTING of Avatar: The Life Story of Avatar Meher Baba by Jean Adriel, 1971, by The Beguine Library.
At the New Life Center, they let Agnes have a cottage. She had almost no contact with the New Life Foundation group.
But every time Agnes would see Jean Adriel, Jean would start talking about Meher Baba.
One day, Jean said, “Oh my dear I’m a writer, too, you know. Would you read this manuscript?” [14]
The manuscript was the original text of Jean’s book, Avatar, a biography of Avatar Meher Baba.
The last half of the book got Agnes’ attention. “I thought, this is funny. She’s talking about this weird teacher called Meher Baba and all the things that He did.
“I thought this is simply unbelievable, and I got more and more excited. And I read and read, and I finished it that night.
“And I’m thinking, He sounds for real,” Agnes recalled. [15]
The next morning, she dashed down the hill to find Jean, and said, “What are your waiting for? Why don’t you get it published?” [16]
Jean asked if Agnes would edit the book for her, and Agnes agreed. She said that reading the book convinced her that if it was true, Meher Baba was truly something very special.
From that time on, events unfolded such that Agnes’ life revolved around Meher Baba.
Meher Baba's guidance would also led Jean Adriel, Alexander Markey, and Agnes Baron to the heights of Sulphur Mountain in 1946 and the founding of Meher Mount.
AGNES BARON in her living room at Meher Mount in 1956. (Photo: Lud Dimpfl, Courtesy of the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust Archives, 2014)
Footnotes
[1] Bhau Kalchuri, Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar of the Age Meher Baba, Online Edition, pg. 1370, accessed September 3, 2017. This quote from Meher Baba was part of an interview with Him in a newsreel by the Paramount Film Company in London on April 10, 1932.
[2] "What Is Vedanta?" Vedanta Society of Southern California, accessed September 2, 2017.
[3] Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the chief disciple of the 19th century Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886). Vivekananda brought Vedanta to the West in 1893. (Vedanta Centre, Cohasset, MA) (Wikipedia)
[4] Ananda Ashrama in Cohasset, MA, was established by Vivekananda in 1929 and is now the permanent headquarters of the Vedanta Centre.
[5] Kalchuri, op.cit., pg. 1321.
[6] Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter best known for his novel Brave New World (1932) set in a dystopian future. He moved to Southern California in 1937 where he became a follower of Vedanta in the circle of Swami Prabhavananda. Prabhavananda founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California in 1930, including the Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple (1944) and convent where Agnes first lived after returning from Europe. Huxley was introduced to Vedanta by Gerald Heard. (Wikipedia)
[7] Gerald Heard (1889-1971), born (Britain) Henry FitzGerald Heard, was a historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator and philosopher. Heard was the first among a group of literati friends to discover Swami Prabhavananda and Vedanta. Heard became an initiate of Vedanta. (Wikipedia)
[8] Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), also British, is best known for The Berlin Stories (1935-1939), two semi-autobiographical novellas inspired by his time in the Weimar Republic Germany. They were adapted into the play and film, I Am a Camera, and later in 1996 into the Broadway musical Cabaret. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1939, Isherwood sought advice from Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley about becoming a pacifist. Like them, he became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda (1893-1976), head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He also wrote the book Ramakrishna and His Disciples. (Isherwood Foundation)
[9] Agnes Baron, “Beginning,” Mandali Hall Talks. Recorded in Mandali Hall, Meherazad, India, in September 1982. Accessed online on August 2, 2021.
[10] Baron, ibid.
[11] Baron, ibid.
[12] Baron, ibid.
[13] Baron, ibid.
[14] Baron, ibid.
[15] Baron, ibid.