One afternoon, Jean Adriel approached Agnes Baron, who was renting a cottage at the New Life Center at the time, and said, “We are going out for a drive this afternoon, looking for a place, would you like to come?”
In 1944, Jean Adriel and Alexander Markey had established the 500-acre New Life Center in La Crescenta, CA, which was dedicated to Avatar Meher Baba.
Then sometime in 1946, Jean received word from Meher Baba that He wished for them to relocate to a place farther from the Los Angeles area, somewhere one or two hours outside a big city.
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For $42,500 – or about $608,250 in today’s prices – the New Life Foundation acquired the Sulphur Mountain property, now known as Meher Mount, on July 31, 1946.
At least two of the area newspapers carried news of the purchase:
“Shri Meher Baba to Establish Center in Upper Ojai Valley” (The Ojai, August 9, 1946) and
“Baba Will Start New Foundation” (Santa Paula Chronicle, August 13, 1946).
The Ojai article began, “Of interest to the numerous valley residents who follow the history and development of the numerous religious groups that are prominent in the world today… is the news that Shri Meher Baba will come to Ojai from Europe within a few weeks to establish a center of his New Life Foundation up on Sulphur Mountain.”
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The founding of Meher Mount starts about 70 miles southeast of Ojai, CA, with the creation of the New Life Center in La Crescenta, an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, CA.
In the mid-1940s, Alexander Markey and Jean Adriel formed The New Life Foundation, Inc. to spread Avatar Meher Baba’s messages and establish a center in California in Meher Baba’s name.
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Agnes Baron recounts her first moments with Meher Baba:
“There are no words to describe it. It was so fantastic. All my doubts just flew out the window. The first thing Baba did was to open his arms and put my head on his shoulders. Something out of this world happens to you when Baba puts his arms around you. It's indescribable. What I saw sitting on the couch and what I felt was sitting on the couch were two different things. Without any more rationalizing, I accepted him one hundred percent.
“The love just poured out of him. His vibrations were like a hummingbird…you couldn't see the vibrations, but you knew the vibrating. You felt that in Baba...his eyes were so full of compassion, just utterly irresistible…. I was hooked…that was it. I didn't care about obedience. I didn't give a damn about anything like that. He was utterly irresistible.”
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Agnes Baron, co-founder and lifetime caretaker of Meher Mount, spent a year living 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.
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“To the living Christ whose beauty the very heavens cannot contain, but whose presence may be found in every humble, living heart," wrote Jean Adriel in her Dedication for the biography, Avatar: The Life Story of the Perfect Master Meher Baba, 1947
"Besides telling the life story of Baba, the author relates her personal experiences with him, along with those of many other of his close followers. This account of Baba’s life describes many events from ‘behind the scenes’ - it captures the gamut of emotions involved as people struggled variously to comprehend Baba’s unusual ways, to carry out his demanding instructions, to test him, and to love him.” - Back Cover, Avatar
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The following story covers several conversations between Avatar Meher Baba and Jean Adriel, where she is lamenting her despair to Him.
Jean, author of the book Avatar and a co-founder of Meher Mount, was among a group of Eastern and Western disciples with Meher Baba in Cannes, France, in the summer and fall of 1937.
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In 1949, Avatar Meher Baba asked His mandali (close disciples) in Meherazad, Ahmednagar and Meherabad, India, as well as His close lovers and followers everywhere in the world to keep silence for the entire month of July. Meher Baba had been silent since July 10, 1925.
One of Meher Baba’s followers in the West, Marguerite Poley wrote about observing that month of silence at Meher Mount. The following is her account reprinted with permission from “Meher Mount Memories: The Month of Silence, July 1949,” by Marguerite Poley, Love Street Lamp Post, January 2006 (1st Quarter 2006), pp. 43-44. ©Avatar Meher Baba Center of Southern California.
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Agnes Baron (1907-1994) is remembered because of her dedication to Avatar Meher Baba, for her role as a founder and lifetime caretaker of Meher Mount, for her fiery nature and no-holds barred approach to life, for her selfless service, and for the many lives she touched.
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