Born : 14th December 1924

Died : 11th April 1997 - Myrtle Beach, SC., USA

Married : Charles C. Haynes Jr.

Children : John, Wendy & Charles

AMERICAN

ACTRESS, THEATRE DIRECTOR, BOOK EDITOR-COMPILER & PAINTER

Jane attended with her 3 children the Sahavas at the Meher Center in Myrtle Beach, SC., in 1958 when Meher Baba visited for a short time.

Jane attended with her 3 children the 1962 East-West Gathering for Meher Baba at Guruprasad, Poona, India.

Courtesy of : http://www.mehercenter.org/

Baba’s Jane and St. Teresa of Jesus
by Christopher Wilson

In the summer of 1978, Jane Barry Haynes received one of her most cherished Meher Baba treasures, sent to her at Meher Center by Baba’s sister, Mani. It was something unusual: an ivory-colored stone with tan veins, about two inches long. The stone immediately pierced Jane’s heart because, in an accompanying note, Mani explained that it “was picked up from ground trod by Beloved Meher Baba when He was in Avila in October of 1933.” Aware of Jane’s deep love for St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) – the extraordinary Spanish mystic, author, and reformer of the Carmelite Order, whose name as a nun was Teresa de Jesús – Mani entrusted this precious relic to Jane. “It is sent through dear Charles to my sister Jane,” Mani wrote, “for I know it belongs to her”.

Why should this stone, touched by the feet of the Beloved in the place where St. Teresa grew up, founded her first convent, and had visions of the Lord, “belong” to Jane?

Jane first heard the saint’s name on May 26th, 1958, in the Barn at Meher Center. Seated in Norina’s high-backed yellow chair, Baba asked several around Him if they knew of St. Teresa of Avila. Some commented on her founding of convents, others mentioned her spiritual writings on prayer and the journey toward union with God. Baba gestured, “Yes, all these things are true. But the most important thing was that she devoted her entire life to Jesus Christ – to Me.”

Jane describes her reaction to Baba’s words in her book, Letters of Love for Meher Baba, The Ancient One:

I had never before heard the words ‘St. Teresa.’ At that moment when Baba spoke of her great love for Christ, He gave me a deep inner longing to know about her and study her works…the happiness in his eyes, and the exquisite gesture of His hand when He said that she devoted her entire life to Christ, to Baba. [My] heart simply surged with the impulse to cry out: I would do so too. I want to try to love you that way.

Jane soon discovered that St. Teresa was one of Baba’s four favorite saints. He said that Avila, the city where Teresa lived and worked during the sixteenth century, is one of the four great spiritual centers of the Western world. When visiting there in 1933 with some of His Eastern and Western disciples, He said: “I am so happy here.” He also told Norina Matchabelli, as they walked around the Medieval wall that surrounds the city and looked down toward the Cathedral: “I was here long before that Cathedral was built.”

Jane was guided to learn more about Teresa by Charles Purdom, Baba’s longtime English disciple and biographer, whom she befriended at the 1958 Sahavas at Meher Center. He gave her his own copies of Teresa’s books, underlined and worn from years of use. Jane and Charles became close friends and through frequent correspondence shared their love for Baba and St. Teresa. On October 19th, 1958, Purdom wrote to Jane:

Dear Jane: I wonder what you are doing and try to picture you at home, not very successfully. I read St. Teresa every night and have nearly completed it. I shall then read for the hundredth time her Way of Perfection. I find the echo of your voice in Saint Teresa’s words. It is very strange. It might be you speaking; that has given me an added pleasure in reading [her works.]

Jane not only read, but deeply studied, all of Teresa’s writings. During her years building an acting career in New York and, beginning in 1965 after her family’s move to Myrtle Beach, working alongside Elizabeth Patterson and Kitty Davy at the Center, she underlined and made notes in the margins, finding in Teresa’s words a map for her own aspirations as a disciple of Meher Baba (one of His “innermost Circle,” as Mani once put it in correspond to Jane). She accumulated a large library of books on Teresa and became an authority on the saint and her protégé and confessor, St. John of the Cross. Beginning in the 1960s, she and Elizabeth traveled to Spain, visiting the seventeen convents that Teresa founded in her lifetime. Jane built close friendships with several of the cloistered nuns of Teresa’s Order, corresponding with them regularly until her death in 1997.

In her study of St. Teresa as an exemplar of the spiritual life, Jane had one aim: to please Baba by loving Him as Teresa had loved Jesus. One passage in Teresa’s writings held special significance for her. It’s the saint’s description of her mystical marriage to Christ, a vision that she experienced in 1572 at the Convent of the Incarnation in Avila after receiving Communion from St. John of the Cross. Jesus appeared to her and, instead of a wedding ring, He gave her one of the nails with which He had been crucified and said to her:

Behold this nail; it is a sign that you will be My bride from today on. Until now you have not merited this; from now on not only will you look after My honor as being the honor of your Creator, King, and God, but you will look after it as my true bride. My honor is yours, and yours mine.

nspired by Teresa, Jane prayed constantly to Baba: “If I couldst be Thy Bride.” Tucked into her copy of Teresa’s masterwork, The Interior Castle – given to her by Charles Purdom –is a card on which Jane wrote the full text of her prayer to Baba :

This is all –

Nothing matters,

Oh Beloved –

do not be indifferent to me – Oh Beloved

suffer me not to

be separated from

Thee – forever and ever.

I wouldst by Thy bride,

Thou art the Christ –

Jane kept her bridal aspiration a secret. But when she went for Baba’s darshan at the East-West Gathering in 1962, she discovered that the Beloved – who tells us that “every moment I respond to the whole of creation” – knew the prayer in her heart.

During the darshan program on the afternoon of November 1st, a sudden rainstorm drenched the crowd seated before Baba. He directed the Western women to go into Guruprasad to change into dry clothes. The women mandali opened their trunks and provided dry clothes. Jane was given a yellow dress with a floral pattern, which she wears in a photo of Baba embracing her on the platform. When darshan ended, the Western women went back inside to gather their belongings before returning to their hotels. In all the confusion, Jane had misplaced her scarf. At one point, Mehera picked up Jane’s scarf, held it aloft, and asked the group: “Who belongs to this? It doesn’t belong here. Take it.”

Mehera, of course, was merely trying to match the stray scarf to its owner. But Jane heard Mehera’s words as being about far more than the scarf. All her anxiety about not being worthy of Baba or Mehera came to the surface. Before coming to India, Jane so deeply wanted to be loved and accepted by His close ones, especially Mehera. With her painful history and what she perceived as her many faults and limitations, did she really belong there? The words about the scarf brought opened old wounds dating back to childhood of being an unworthy outsider.

As happens with Baba, Jane’s painful rupture, which left her feeling fragile and rejected, became the doorway to a transformational experience of the Beloved.

One morning during the darshan session with the Westerners, a few days after the incident with the scarf, Baba asked for a wedding song to be played. Baba translated the lyrics, saying, “the bride is leaving her home.” Those words struck Jane deeply. The bridal imagery echoed her secret prayer, expressing out loud what she had held within for so long.

After the Sahavas ended, as the Westerners prepared to leave, a wedding of an Indian Baba family took place in Poona. The couple came to Guruprasad to receive Baba’s blessing and offer the wedding garland and bouquet to Him. Baba blessed and embraced the couple and placed the wedding garland around His neck. After the family left, Baba instructed Minoo and Adi Sr., two close disciples, to take the wedding garland and bouquet to Jane at the Turf Club where she was staying. Baba said that Jane was to keep the garland and bouquet in her room overnight. Jane described what happened next in a letter she wrote to Baba the next day:

Dearest Beloved Baba: If only I can retain in my heart the beauty of last night and dawn this morning. When Minoo and Adi came running down the walk to tell me that You said I was to keep the bridal Bouquet and Garland in my room all night, I knew in my heart of hearts why you had sent them to me. The fragrance of Your Love filled my room; I looked at them through the white of the netting and I knew that it was my bridal chamber. What else could you have meant? When the dawn woke me, soft light filled the room with diffused splendor, and I felt your sweet fragrance near me. My secret inner prayers to You are now answered: ‘If I couldst be Thy bride’.

The next morning, a photo was taken of Jane holding the wedding bouquet, an image she called her “bridal picture.” Her son Charles urged her to keep a few of the flowers which she did. After returning home, Jane made note of her bridal experience in St. Teresa’s Interior Castle on a page that mentions “Spouse” and “her Bridegroom.” In the margins, Jane writes, “November 8th, 1962. Turf Club, Poona, India. Wedding garland worn by Meher Baba, Bouquet.”

Although Jane had many public roles in her life, including succeeding Elizabeth as president of Meher Center, she was by temperament a very private person drawn to quietude and contemplation. Administering the Center, therefore, was a challenge that often left her exhausted mentally and physically. Like Teresa, who was sometimes frustrated by having to journey outside the convent walls to expand the Discalced Carmelite Order, Jane would have preferred a life of solitude and prayer. But like St. Teresa of Jesus, Jane knew that her Beloved gave her the gift of participating in His work – and that knowledge was her joy. Jane – Baba’s Jane – longed only to please Him as Teresa of Jesus had pleased Jesus.

Source:
https://www.mehercenter.org/.../babas-jane-and-st-teresa...

Article courtesy of Meher Baba.co.uk

This photo is courtesy of Jane's son Charles Haynes.

He writes ; Charles Purdom, Meher Baba's disciple and biographer (who met Baba in 1931) with my mother Jane in July, 1958. This was most likely taken when he was directing Jane in the play "Separate Tables" at her theater in Myrtle Beach (Star Carousel Theatre). They first met during Baba's visit to Meher Spiritual Center in 1958 and became good friends and frequent correspondents.

Jane Haynes husband - later seperated.

Jane Haynes' Theatre - Myrtle Beach, S.C.

BOOKS WRITTEN BY JANE HAYNES

http://en.calameo.com/read/000485624f7b18628bba7

Lamp Street Lamp Post  newsletter  Winter / Spring 1997  pages 22-3