FABER — At 6:30 each morning, the 15 monastic residents at the Synchronicity Foundation, a spiritual community in Nelson County, emerge from their small brown trailers to walk the mountain.
They tread a winding gravel path through the forest, past a duck pond, past a statue of the Blessed Mother, past a Yanja fire pit, a site where Brahmin priests perform sacred rituals.
At 7 a.m., they meditate for 90 minutes in a dark room in their sanctuary building. With earphones on, they listen to a meditation soundtrack; it could be gentle music, waves crashing into the shore, a Sanskrit mantra.
They eat breakfast in silence, and then begin their day of service: manning phones, working the mailroom and IT department, cooking food, chopping firewood, planning retreats.
They will meditate twice more before the day is done.
The quiet life of this small spiritual community on the cusp of the Blue Ridge Mountains was jolted when it lost two of its own, Nelson County residents Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter Naomi, in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, last month. They were among a group of 25 on a trip led by Synchronicity’s founder and spiritual leader, Master Charles Cannon. He and the others survived the siege.
Overnight, the Synchronicity Foundation was thrust into the international spotlight as major media outlets flooded their sanctuary for a news conference and memorial service. In households across the country, Synchronicity became a topic of conversation.
Their world can seem strange and impenetrable to those on the outside. In recent years, some of the community’s more mystical elements, such as its claims of an appearance by the Blessed Mother Apparition on its grounds, have garnered skepticism.
Yet in the wake of tragedy, Synchronicity received an outpouring of support from members of their international community and from complete strangers as well.
“It was a huge healing process,” said Bobbie Garvey, vice president and managing director.
Founded in 1983, the Synchronicity Foundation is a nonprofit organization that aims to use technology to make ancient meditation practices more accessible to people in the West.
It generates revenue through the sale of its meditation aids, mostly books and CDs, and retreats, which can cost up to $1,495 for a week. It also receives donations.
Its spiritual leader, the 63-year-old Cannon, is the backbone of Synchronicity.
He is a calm man with short black hair and round-rimmed glasses. When addressing an audience, as he did at the Scherrs’ memorial service Dec. 14, he speaks in a gentle voice, and seems to utter each word and syllable with a deliberate regard for its sound and meaning.
Cannon is known for developing an audio technology called “Holodynamic Vibrational Entrainment Technology” that Synchronicity claims facilitates meditation.
“People from all over the world, people who are drawn to meditation, have found this method and really like it,” says Dr. Philip Duncan, a managing director who began using Synchronicity’s in-home meditation program in the late ’90s.
Cannon spent his formative years in India, where he studied under Swami Paramahamsa Muktananda, an Eastern mystic. Cannon was trained in Vedic/Tantric mysticism and initiated as a Vedic monk.
Drawn by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he established the community’s home base on several hundred acres of land off a narrow country lane in Faber, population 1,300.
The sanctuary and fellowship hall, painted in muted tones of gray and brown, almost blend into the woods that surround them. A cluster of trailers, visible from the road, serves as the administrative office and monastic residences.
In winter, the sanctuary is wrapped in stillness, as members spend most of their time indoors, where meditative soundtracks are played in the background through loudspeakers. Each Saturday, no matter the weather, the residents perform outdoor work, chores like weed-whacking and cutting firewood for the wood-burning stove that heats the buildings and water.
The Synchronicity experience is designed to nurture the body, mind and emotions through healthy lifestyle choices, said Caroline Avant, a monastic resident of seven years. Residents eat a special diet and incorporate regular exercise, like walking the mountain, into their daily routines, she said.
The organization has nurtured a local secular community, which includes about 40 members who live off-site. Some moved from other parts of the country, some from other parts of the world, to be closer to Cannon and the monastery.
What ties members together is the meditative journey, though no two journeys are the same.
Take Garvey. For years, she was stressed out from juggling her responsibilities as wife and mother, along with full-time work, first as a casino manager in Atlantic City and later as an owner of two furniture stores. She was exhausted, yearning for a change.
About 18 years ago, Garvey discovered Synchronicity’s in-home meditation program.
“It’s transformational,” she said.
Though she was living in New Jersey, Garvey developed close ties with the community, visiting on retreats on a regular basis. She moved to Nelson in 2006, and has since taken on a leadership role.
“What it has done is totally transformed me from that fragmented, stressed-out being to this very balanced person, who sits in the stillness and watches the chaos,” she said.
Duncan moved to Nelson with his wife after retiring from a career as an intensive care doctor and hospital administrator in Arkansas. They have been members of Synchronicity for 10 years, and have lived in the area for more than three.
Duncan followed a meditative life for more than 30 years, beginning with transcendental meditation. But it was Synchronicity’s high-tech methods that he connected with the most, opening the doors to what he describes as “states of greater fullness or wholeness, a more complete human experience.”
“My mind is a lot quieter than it used to be, yet more creative than ever,” he said.
It was a CD in the New Age section of a bookstore in Sweden that led Martin Thambert to Synchronicity 10 years ago.
“I had a really profound experience while I was listening. I guess you could call it an awakening experience,” he said.
The former social worker eventually plans to return home and share what he has learned with others.
“In the world we are living in today, there are so many more things that are creating imbalance for a human being, instead of balance.
“The draw is the sense of inner fulfillment, and wholeness that you feel within yourself. That’s a very powerful and very nice feeling.”
The days at Synchronicity wind down with a third and final meditation. As dusk descends, the monastic residents follow the same gravel path they walked in the morning.
Their destination is a wooden pavilion overlooked by the Blessed Mother statue. It’s a peaceful spot, surrounded by tall trees, a landscape with one addition in the last week — an eternal flame to memorialize the lives lost in Mumbai.
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