Spiritual quest for father, daughter ended in terrorist siege

On a quest for spiritual enlightenment, Alan Scherr quit the workaday world 12 years ago and moved with his wife and infant daughter to a woodland monastery in the Virginia Blue Ridge, where they settled into quiet meditation at the feet of a swami.

The former college professor became the monastery's president, and his daughter, Naomi, passed her early childhood on the oak-shaded, 450-acre spread in rural Nelson County. Scherr also became chief spokesman for the community's spiritual leader, a New York native named Master Charles Cannon.

But Scherr's search for truth, awareness and meditative bliss ended tragically this week: A monastery spokesman and State Department officials said that father and daughter were among those slain by gunmen in the terror attacks in Mumbai, India.

Scherr, 58, and Naomi, 13, were sitting in a cafe at the Oberoi Hotel when gunmen burst into the room Wednesday night, said Bobbie Garvey, business manager of the Synchronicity Foundation, a nonprofit umbrella for the monastery and a retreat center and recording studio that share the property, known to members as "The Sanctuary."

Scherr was shot in the head, Garvey said.

The pair were among more than two dozen Master Charles disciples from Australia, Canada and the United States on an Indian pilgrimage when terrorists launched a wave of attacks on Mumbai hotels and other tourist targets that have so far claimed more than 150 lives.

At least four other Synchronicity members were wounded, Garvey said in a news conference held at The Sanctuary on Friday afternoon. Master Charles was in the hotel but apparently was uninjured.

"We thought this was the trip of a lifetime for all of them," the spokeswoman said. Scherr's wife, Kia, remained in the United States while her family was overseas and was reported to be arranging for the return of their remains.

A former faculty member at the University of Maryland, Scherr had practiced and taught Transcendental Meditation for 25 years when, in the early 1990s, he heard about a line of cassette tapes that purportedly offered shortcuts to achieving a meditative state. He was skeptical: "I put the thing on, bemused, thinking, 'What can this offer me?' " Scherr recalled in a 2003 interview. "And in one minute, I was totally astonished."

The tapes, and later CDs, were the work of Master Charles, who had moved to Nelson County in 1983 after spending several years in the Siddha Yoga Dham movement, including a few as personal

secretary to its founder.

The recordings incorporated natural sounds, vocal chants and glacial orchestral arrangements that seemed as unobtrusive as wallpaper - but which, when played over headphones, were said to provoke profound change in their listeners.

That was certainly true in his case, Scherr said.

"Without it," he explained, "it's like riding to California on a horse: You can do it, and people have done it, but it's a hell of a ride. Why not take a jet?"

For years, Synchronicity's logo depicted Buddha wearing headphones.

Scherr's enthusiasm for the tapes prompted him to visit The Sanctuary in April 1994, when Kia was five months pregnant with Naomi.

"Suffice to say, I was blown away," he later said of meeting Master Charles. "I was so blissed." He and Kia visited The Sanctuary several times together before deciding to devote themselves full time to the master.

The Scherrs lived in a house just off The Sanctuary but embraced the austere habits of the property's monks. They ate vegetarian meals in communal silence. They exercised with brisk hikes over the property's rolling terrain. They meditated for nearly two hours per day, plugged into headphones in a building dubbed "The Environment," and put in long hours at work, seven days a week.

"This is not the Camera Club," Scherr acknowledged in 2003. "About 5 or 10 percent of humanity, at any one time, is going to be open to something like this."

Naomi Scherr was home-schooled through the eighth grade and planned to apply to a Troy, N.Y., boarding school; she was working on an essay to accompany the application while on the trip, which began Nov. 14 and was due to end Monday. She'd had her nose pierced during her time in India, had acquired native shawls and other attire, and was enjoying her stay, Garvey said.

A tribute on Synchronicity's Web site Friday said that Scherr "committed most of his adult life to meditation, spirituality and conscious living," and was a "teacher who inspired many people to begin a journey of self awareness and meditation. He was committed to making a positive difference in the world and devoted himself to the community he lived in.

"Naomi was a bright and lively young woman who loved spending time with people and living life to the fullest," the tribute read. "She was passionate, if not a little mischievous, and will be fondly remembered by many of us for colorful hair styles and radiant energy."

As president of Synchronicity, Scherr oversaw the foundation's periodic retreats and workshops, which drew adherents from all over the world, along with a recording studio and a mailroom at which orders for Master Charles' tapes and CDs were filled. The company earned just more than

$2 million last year and had net assets of a little more than $5 million.

From behind a desk crowded with paperwork, incense and a miniature Zen garden, he also fielded sometimes exasperating queries about the master's past: Charles has long declined any discussion of his first 21 years, though old newspaper stories quote him saying he briefly portrayed Ernie on TV's "My Three Sons" and a doctor on the soap opera "Love is a Many Splendored Thing " and performed on Broadway in "Jesus Christ, Superstar."

He has also declined to reveal his birth name, although school officials in Palm Beach, Fla., told The Pilot that a photo in his autobiography matches a student they remember as Chuck Ceravolo.

Scherr was listed as the foundation's president in tax records through 2005, after which his title changed to vice president and director. In an essay he wrote in 2000, he praised his "simple life, free from distractions and highly focused."

"My family and friends sometimes ask about the seeming sacrifice of 'personal freedom,' " he wrote. "I answer that personal freedom is merely a mental construct. In practical terms, the freedom to do whatever one pleases does not deliver any significant experience of real freedom. People remain unhappy regardless of wealth, leisure time, any attainment of skill or knowledge, or any other conditional state.

"For me, real freedom means living life in each moment, as it unfolds, without concepts or conditions. It is a life very few choose because it requires an orientation and re-prioritization of life that is, in many ways, antithetical to our modern Western culture. And yet, it is always available whenever one is truly focused upon self-mastery.

"The miracle of this life," he concluded, "continues to unfold for me " on a daily basis.

This report contains information from CNN and the Nelson County Times.

Earl Swift, (757) 446-2352, earl.swift@pilotonline.com