Virginians Slain in Attacks Lived Out Peaceful Ideals

American Alan Scherr and his daughter Naomi were killed during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India; wife Kia is at left. (AP)

When Muktananda died in 1982, Master Charles had a vision in which his departed guru told him to go to the Blue Ridge Mountains, Lang said. He bought 80 acres in the Virginia countryside, three hours south of Washington, and began building a spiritual community that emphasizes his own form of a soothing Eastern art he calls "high-tech meditation," or fast enlightenment.

"We have created McDonald's. If we have created fast food, can we not also create fast enlightenment?" he told The Washington Post in 1990, when the group's emblem was a Buddha wearing a Walkman.

Today, the Synchronicity Foundation is one of a number of spiritual retreats in Nelson County, a rural enclave of about 15,000 residents that sits on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge and includes the Wintergreen Resort. No more than 50 adherents, known as monks, live at any one time on the property, which has grown to 450 acres. They spend their days meditating, planning spiritual retreats and taking orders for the group's business selling meditation tapes, CDs and books.

The foundation's 2007 federal tax return lists income of $242,000 from such sales and total assets of $5.4 million. The form says Master Charles and the six-member board of directors take no salary, although Master Charles lives on the property in a $589,000 house known as the Parsonage.

Synchronicity's collection of wooden structures are well-maintained and landscaped, and its common spaces are hung with Christmas and other religious decorations. The compound is crisscrossed with meticulous gravel paths lined with stones, and both indoor and outdoor spaces carry the lingering smell of burned incense.

In a fellowship room hangs a picture of Master Charles with Zsa Zsa Gabor, one of his Hollywood admirers.

Synchronicity's approach seemed a natural fit for Scherr, who wrote in a 2000 essay in the Web magazine Realization that he had spent 25 years practicing and teaching Transcendental Meditation. But it was not yet his life's work: He was an art professor at the University of Maryland and a part-time photography instructor at Loyola College from 1990 to 1996.

Everything changed for the professor in April 1994, when he ventured here and saw a presentation from Master Charles out of, he wrote, "a mixture of curiosity and a compelling sense of destiny."

"I am taking in his every word and gesture with my eyes, while I feel my heart melting and my head reeling, opiated beyond understanding. I am drunk and I do not know why or how," Scherr wrote.

As he was drawn ever deeper to Synchronicity, Scherr struggled with his life in Silver Spring. He and his wife filed for bankruptcy in 1996 and would lose their house to foreclosure in 1998. "Piece by piece, everything I had acquired or accomplished began to fall away, as if by design," Scherr wrote. "Every attempt at keeping up the facade of my life as a suburban householder, resulted in failure and bitter disappointment."

In 1996, Scherr broke with his former life and moved his family to the Synchronicity compound, where until his death he was vice president of the foundation, helping to run its business side and serving in a public affairs role. He and his family eventually lived on the compound in a house donated by a New Zealand businessman, Lang said.

Naomi Scherr was 2 when her parents moved to the compound, and so her playground was amid meditation centers, and monks could be counted among her friends.

"She . . . was a shining light, a visionary, a brilliant artist," said Garvey. "She could draw anything. Or write. She got that from her father." Garvey remembered how, as a child, Naomi would draw pictures for everyone and later, as a teenager, would work in the kitchen, even choosing to cook dinner once for the entire community.

Monk Sydney Miller said everyone in the community -- "like a family" -- watched her grow. She remembered how the toddler would lie on the floor during meditations.

As a teenager, she would join her parents every day at 5:30 p.m. as they gathered outdoors to meditate. Miller said Naomi was looking forward to the trip to India. "She was just so excited," Miller said. "She wanted to get her nose pierced. And she did."

Naomi had dyed her short hair blue one time and red another, and she knew her way around a computer. Community member Marie Kelly described Naomi and Alan as "inseparable," saying he had recently taken her to a concert in Richmond. "She could wrap him around her finger," Miller said.

Staff reporters Maria Glod and Jerry Markon reported from Washington. Staff researchers Meg Smith and Alice Crites contributed to this report.