The Witch of Sulphur Mountain

Copyright 1999, Ventura County Star. All Rights Reserved,Published September 12, 1999
By Elena Jarvis, Correspondent

Even in Shangri-la, there is a special divinity about Meher Mount. Amid a profusion of buckwheat, sagebrush and Life Ever Lasting -- the latter smelling oddly of butterscotch and used in ancient Chumash worship -- the 170-acre Sulphur Mountain parcel is a monument of natural beauty.

Five years dead, Agnes Baron whispers in spirit in the stand of eucalyptus that first drew her to the Upper Ojai property. It wafts through a burned-out fireplace that now serves as a shrine and only remnant of the original home site. It wanders down craggy mountainsides, with panoramic views of the Channel Islands and Chief Peak. Topa Topa rises out of the condor sanctuary.

On a clear day, past Los Angeles and Palmdale, Mount Baldy to the east looks close enough to touch. Below, conversations drift up from actor Larry Hagman's palatial estate, hitching a ride on air currents with redtail hawks.

This was the land that Agnes Baron promised "through hellfire and damnation", to preserve in the name of Meher Baba. She got plenty of both.

She was a watchdog for this place, explained Dorothy Hartman, a longtime associate of Baron. Agnes only cared about keeping her promise to Baba.

Indian spiritualist Jiddu Krishnamurti tried to convince her to give him the land for a retreat, but Baron was skeptical of his teachings. Over four decades, unscrupulous people attempted to steal it, in her later years even trying to make her a ward of the state.  No amount of persuasion, not the isolation, not even a devastating fire in 1985, could drive Baron from this land.

Today, Meher Mount is blossoming anew as an ecumenical meditation center, attracting admirers from around the world. Under a trust established by Baron, a five-member board oversees the nonprofit, dedicated to education and work programs in agriculture, ecology and humanitarian services.

Baron spent 48 years hanging onto Meher Mount, paying it off payment by payment, sometimes growing and selling strawberries to make up the money she lacked. When she died, she left only the land and her ashes scattered among the trees.

Thus, Meher Mount subsists on contributions from those who come seeking inspiration and on the hard work of caretakers Kendra and Jonathan Burroughs and other volunteers.

Witch or Saint?

Who was Agnes Baron, this passionate, resolute Witch of Sulphur Mountain?

Close friends knew her as the liberal-leaning, irascible Red Baron or "Agni" -- fire in Sanskrit.  With its capacity to destroy and cleanse, fire is a fuse running through Baron's long life, which ended at age 87 on July 3, 1994.

"People don't know about Einstein's connection to Meher Baba or that Alexander Graham Bell's assistant, Thomas Watson, was the first to invite Baba to America," Hartman said. And Agnes didn't want to talk about herself. She only wanted to be known as a devotee of Meher Baba.

Baron's story stars not only Indian guru Meher Baba but psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, writer Aldous Huxley and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well.

"Escaping the Drug Trap," a 1975 book on early efforts to quell America's drug crisis, features a chapter on Baron's pet project, Drug Abuse reorientation Training or DART, which preceded D.A.R.E.  (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) by 18 years. The book mentions that Baron's many enemies call her "The old witch of Sulphur Mountain" and a few other things.

Legend has it that someone along the line referred to her as the "Saint of Sulphur Mountain" in tribute to Baron's selfless championing of the underdog. An iconoclast by design and self-deprecating by nature, Baron renamed herself "The Witch of Sulphur Mountain."  It stuck, especially for those on the wrong side of Baron"s high ideals, said historian and artist George Stuart, one of few who crossed intellectual swords with Baron and departed a friend. Over 30 years, they shared verbal battles, spiritual kinship and, after the fire, Stuart's Ojai ranch for a time.

Hanging onto Meher Mount was no feat for the weak of faith. The income she earned working with the poor and in education gave her no leverage with banks, so Baron depended on the kindness of co-signers. Most tried to push her off Sulphur Mountain, mostly with dreams of development.

Baron fought continuously with those who wanted to grab the prized parcel. Trusting her implicitly, Meher Baba called her his "watchdog." Among Baba believers, Baron's preferred title is "The Beloved's Watchdog."

Finally, after ridding herself of the last partner, a ferocious fire swept through the Ojai Valley on Oct. 16, 1985. Driving up Sulphur Mountain Road, its mark remains today on twisted and charred trees.  Unable to afford fire insurance, Baron lost $200,000 in property, an orchard and all but a few possessions. Inexplicably, a delicate rose garden survived. So did Baron, barely.

"It was amazing," Stuart said. "When the fire started, we all were watching down in Ojai. I tried to call, but the line was down. You could see the flames on Sulphur Mountain. Before dawn the next day, she was down at my gate in her car. She moved in and was more concerned about her dogs and cats than herself.  "I thought she was going to have a heart attack, a nervous breakdown, a collapse. She didn't. She took it all as another one of those goddamned calamities that happens. She wasn't fixated on possessions. The tragedy is she lost an enormous amount of memorabilia, which would have been valuable to a biographer," he said.  A Slow Burn Cleaning up after the debacle, Baron fell and broke her back. It never healed properly and her health declined. She shunned outsiders, throwing up a "No Trespassing" sign.

A believer in selfless love, Baron had no patience with the Hollywood crowd of Baba devotees.  Just before her death, she called them "a bunch of Baba-yahoos."  "They're always going on about love and they don't know a damned thing about love. Baba said to always give, never ask. They're always asking,asking, asking."

Until the end, Baron cast a spell over those invited to her rampart, dubbed Meher Mount in 1946 when it was purchased to honor him. During his one trip to Ojai -- though he corresponded with Baron for 20 years -- Meher Baba stayed in a small bungalow beneath a 500-year-old oak on the property.

Like Baba, Baron and all the original buildings, that long-ago Meher Mount is gone. In its place Baba lovers rebuilt, turning the first home site into an ecumenical center, with communal kitchen and the Burroughs' residence.

Under the "Baba tree" lies a wooden stump, beautifully carved with Baron's birth and death dates.

Toward the end, never married and with no children, Baron survived on Sulphur Mountain through the generosity of people who shared the task of 24-hour care, primarily brothers Ken and Len Ceder of Montecito. The brothers called it a case of what goes around, comes around.

Said Ken Ceder, "Second only to Meher Baba, Agnes for me has beena great teacher not of divinity but of humanity. She taught me to be human."

Surrounded by mountains, books, animals and the indignities of old age, Baron spent her last years in a tiny bed in a stifling trailer. A distrust of outsiders worked against her, impeding efforts to rebuild her home. She died in a hospital, living only a brief time in the completed Center.

"I'm the one who said, 'Let's build you a house, let's get you in a place that will be safe and healthy,' " Ken Ceder said. "She did not agree to build it for herself, she built the house to be used as a Center."

Past Lives

Those last days on Sulphur Mountain were illuminated by an overhead reading lamp, electronic beeper and telephone. The Ceders went to great lengths to secure a telephone number that would be easy to remember -- 640-0000.

"Ken paid to have it, so it would be easier for Agnes," said Dorothy Hartmann, "but he liked it because of Baba's idea of going back to the void, the void being zero. It's a complicated philosophy, sort of like trying to explain Zen."

In cramped quarters, scattered pages of the Christian Science Monitor, among other newspapers, and shelves bulging with books bore witness to Baron's lifelong thirst for knowledge.

Fragile, unable to speak, Baron seemed far removed from the fiercely independent woman who traipsed across the continent, recording Hitler's early reign of terror for European news agencies. When Nazis marched victorious through Vienna, she was there visiting Sigmund Freud, who wanted her to become his student. She found Freud "too macho."

Stuart said: "She admired people who had a sense of security enough to act independently of the group. She certainly did that in her journalism, in the Balkans where she jeopardized her life and career by acting out of sync with her editors."

Fluent in 11 languages, Baron reported on a range of subjects in the 1930s. She stood beside Greek radicals as they fought advancing German troops. She traveled alone with Albanian bandits to record their exploits and unwritten code of honor.

When precious few got involved, Baron intervened on behalf of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Thousands escaped to Portugal and Baron followed, taking up their cause. In the United States, she caught the sympathetic ear of Eleanor Roosevelt, who arranged an appointment with the president to discuss expansion of immigration quotas.

On the day of that meeting, a distraught Mrs. Roosevelt called Baron, saying, "I'm sorry, my dear, Europe is at war."

Among Baron's bitterest memories was Portugal's fascist dictator, Antonio Salazar, who sold those refugees back to the Nazis.

"One of the early things Agnes did after she left college is go to Lisbon. Her passion was for the underdog and she tried to understand and counteract the Franco movement. In 1936, she went to Greece and people thought she was a Communist, so she was deported. She did a lot of work in the Balkans and in Transylvania," recalled John Dudley "J. D." Dawson.

A professor for 70 years at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Dawson died July 29 at age 97. In the 1920s, he taught Baron mathematics at Antioch, where she went at age 16 after a falling-out with her family in California.

Founded in 1852 by abolitionist and social reformer Horace Mann, alternative Antioch is still known today as a "boot camp for Revolution." It was a perfect match for Baron, Dawson said.  Then-university president Arthur Morgan became Baron's mentor and, later, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. She earned a sociology degree and acquired another mentor, sociology professor Manmatha Nath Chatterjee, who challenged Baron's thinking with Socratic teaching methods and Far Eastern philosophy.

"He was a very stimulating teacher and had a great effect on her.  Chatterjee got Agnes going in the direction of the peace movement, world affairs and dealing with Eastern culture," Dawson said. "I remember Agnes, partly because she was a very able student and came into prominence and because I saw her in later years at Meher Mount."

Sociologist, foreign correspondent, environmentalist, spiritualist, counselor, teacher, editor and novelist, she was above all a voice of conscience. To hell, she said, with anyone who couldn't handle unvarnished truth.

In an interview six years ago, she looked frail, but Baron's handshake was strong, solid as an oak.  Friends and detractors alike recall her as brilliant, remarkable and impossible. Although she denied it then and to the death, doctors suspected she also suffered a stroke after the fire. For the last decade of her life, only close companions such as the Ceders could translate her speech and handwritten notes.

Baron vowed, "I tell my enemies I will live to be 150," and next to organized religion and hypocrites, she hated the American Medical Association the most.  So in the absence of medical records, her impairment remains a mystery.

Because Meher Baba spent his last 44 years in self-imposed silence, Baron figured, "This is Baba's way of giving me time to reflect on my life."

Into the Future

The Baba tree and a Center born out of Baron's tough-minded idealism live on.  Philosophical sorts find symbolism in the fact that the tree is burned hollow but endures, turning a resplendent green each spring.

Left with a useless shell of a body, Baron remained alert against injustice and focused on her promise.  That promise began at the behest of Professor Chatterjee, who suggested Baron return to California and write about the suffering she experienced abroad.

First stop was San Francisco, where Aldous Huxley told her of a place near Los Angeles where she could write in peace.  In Southern California, Baron was hired to edit "Avatar," a book about Meher Baba. That, in turn, led her to Sulphur Mountain.

Sulphur Mountain is no stranger to eccentrics. It was home to the late Ida Eyroud, the wild French shepherdess of Sulphur Mountain who roamed the wild countryside barefoot, with weeds in her wild hair.

Baron was mad about a lot of things but she was far from crazy, Ceder said.

"The property was financially secured with a mortgage, but the money didn't come from Meher Baba because he never touched dollars unless it was to distribute to the poor," Ceder said. "Agnes started teaching school, growing strawberries, working 20-hour days in many cases, and serving humanity."

Ultimately, she paid the mortgage herself, finishing in 1991 "with only pennies of contributions from any of the so-called Meher Baba lovers," Ceder said.  She put her life savings of $20,000 into rebuilding on the scorched earth of her former residence, turning faith and cash into the Meher Mount Center of today.

"Agnes' vision, her main focus, was service," said Kendra Burroughs, a free-lance book editor. "Hers was a spirit of action.  She wanted people to work and to put what Baba taught into action.  The board is continuing that focus, not to teach Meher Baba per se, but to have a universal center. This is not the kind of place where only Baba lovers come to have Baba meetings."

Jonathan Burroughs added: "Basically what Baba was saying is that every religion is an expression of God's love; that people should love God and their fellow man. That is all God asks."

Meher Baba said, "Only God, myself and Agnes know what she's been through to keep this place." Baron's response was, "What trouble?"

Six months before her death in 1994, she reflected that "I never married because I was looking for the perfect person. When I found him, he had found someone else.

"I was too busy to ever think about marriage. I spent all my energy helping people," Baron said. "I did what I did because I loved to help other people and I hated injustice. I never thought that was unusual."

Timeline of a Spiritual Journey

Jan. 17, 1907: Agnes Baron is born in western Pennsylvania.

1924: She leaves San Francisco to attend Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

1928: Baron graduates from Antioch.

1929-38: She works as a foreign correspondent in the Balkans, Greece, Spain, Lisbon.

March 1938: She visits Sigmund Freud in Vienna.

1938: Baron returns to United States.

1945: She moves to Los Angeles.

1946: Baron helps found Meher Mount.

April 26, 1952: She meets Meher Baba in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Aug. 2, 1956: Meher Baba visits Ojai, California, Meher Mount.

November 1959: Baron divests herself of her last partner, John Cook.

September 1982: Baron visits India.

Oct. 16, 1985: Fire destroys Meher Mount.

July 13, 1989: Baron trust/Meher Mount Corp. is established.

July 3, 1994: Baron dies at Ojai Valley Community Hospital.