It’s Christmas Day. Even during this strange year, we have felt its approach: singers crooning on the radio, lights dotting houses and trees in the dark, perhaps a longing to be with our loved ones which may or may not be fulfilled this year. And as the whole country bears witness to this day on some level, we’re also bearing witness to the One who, as Baba puts it, is “always One and the Same, the Eternal, Indivisible, Infinite One, who manifests Himself in the form of man as the Avatar, as the Messiah, as the Prophet, as the Ancient One—the Highest of the High.” So I wanted to share two Christmas gifts today: stories of Baba’s Western Disciples who contributed so much to the Center, and whose deep love for Jesus led them to find Him again as Meher Baba.
Darwin Shaw: A Handshake with the Living Christ
Darwin Shaw writes in As Only God Can Love* that he always felt a deep connection with Jesus. During his baptism at age three, he became “aware of being surrounded by light and a strong sense of the Spiritual Presence.” As a young man, that connection continued—whether singing hymns while working on the vast planes out West, or feeling an expansive spiritual kinship with those around him as he painted signs on the road in Schenectady, New York.
In 1932, Darwin saw a newspaper article declaring that Meher Baba, a “modern Messiah,” was coming to America. Darwin had felt intuitively that Christ had come again, and he thought Meher Baba might be the One—a feeling that was confirmed through a deep internal experience he had after writing to Baba. The connection was so strong that Darwin surrendered his life to Baba and His cause without ever having met Him.
Then, in 1934, Darwin and his wife Jeanne finally had a chance to be in Baba’s physical presence. This is his account of that moment, in a hotel lobby, when they first shook hands and looked into one another’s eyes.
“For me, it was an indescribably glorious moment. This was our first glimpse into the infinite pools of Divine Love that were Meher Baba’s eyes. His handshake might have reached down through some two thousand years to clasp mine at that moment. I saw him as the Christ, and no words can adequately describe what poured forth from my heart as I recognized the Beloved— the living Christ. I felt instant rapport with him and experienced a great spiritual upliftment. It was like the fulfillment of an ‘impossible dream.’
“I was overjoyed. Baba’s Beauty, the sweetness of his love, which could not be expressed in words— the joy, the sparkling wonder of his Being! One could not prefigure him. One could not imagine how it would be, what he would be like. He was more than one could imagine— much more, immeasurably more. Although this meeting with Meher Baba was very brief, it seemed for an instant as though time stood still, and I caught a feeling of timelessness in the presence of the Timeless One.”
Jane Haynes: Recognizing the Ancient One
Jane Haynes describes in the book Letters of Love** that from childhood she had longed “to know if Christ was really real.” But as she grew, this longing was obscured by “a heavy curtain of superficial life: a life of pleasure, pursuit of all facets of illusion.”
Nevertheless, in 1956, when she was thirty-two, Jane felt herself calling desperately from inside, seemingly out of nowhere: “Please, God, Help me.” Soon after, she had a deep spiritual experience of bliss and pain, during which she received a call asking her to move to Myrtle Beach to run a theatre. Jane quickly met Elizabeth Patterson and found herself at the Center.
Jane was impressed with the love, purity, and selfless service of Baba’s Western disciples, and was drawn to a photo of Meher Baba gently holding a lamb, but she initially couldn’t reconcile her longing for Christ with this man from India. Later that year, Jane met Baba for the first time. She felt an inexpressible beauty, an indescribable peace in His presence. But she still didn’t know who He was.
Then one night, while Baba was still in town, Jane woke suddenly to the sound of her name being called, and the smell of jasmine and roses. She began weeping, permeated by bliss, and drove straight to the Center.
Jane found herself waiting for Baba in the Barn along with hundreds of others who had come to be with Him. When Baba entered in His lift-chair, carried by four dancers, He asked to stop directly in front of Jane. Baba folded His hands next to His face, looking at her as if to ask —Did you sleep well?” Later, as Baba was leaving the Barn, He stopped in front of Jane again. This is her description of that moment.
“I felt that I was all alone in the universe with Baba, no one else existed. With lightning swiftness, I saw His beautiful slender hands move to His face, just under His chin, and He leaned even closer to me—close to my face— with the same gesture: Did you sleep well, Jane? Now do you understand? I heard these words with a clarity that never before had I heard sound. As He spoke them with the unmistakable inner voice, He looked deep into my eyes. His own were shining, radiant, deep brown pools of Compassion and Love. And lo—
“His visage changed. Next to me I saw the Christ of my dreams, my prayers, my pains, my desperate hopes. Young, like the precious Lambie picture— exquisite Beauty and Grace. What I beheld was clearer than the illusion of the Barn and the hundreds of people. It was the only Reality.
“My heart stood still within me. I could only cry out from my soul, silently, ‘But it is You.’
“And Meher Baba said to me: Yes, Jane, it is I.
“I knew Him, and He loved me. The only miracle had occurred— a miracle that only God can perform— the unveiling; a glimpse of the God-Man’s Divinity.
“In that eternal moment, I knew, and will always know, that Meher Baba is the Ancient One. I had always known Him. Now He had come again. And as He always does, He had touched the heart of the sinner. The Beloved smiled tenderly, waved the dancers on, and left the Barn. My new life had begun.”
*As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw; story and quotes from pg. xxix-28
**Letters of Love, Compiled from the correspondence of Jane Haynes; story and quotes from pg. 25-43
