Around 9:30 p.m. on November 26, 2008, the first shots were fired in the lobby of the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, India. Gunfire echoed through the whole building and was soon followed with the first bomb explosions. Fire erupted on the floors beneath my room and soon the entire hotel filled with thick smoke.
Gasping for air, we broke the heavy windows while the fire brigade extinguished the fire. The room slowly cleared. So did our thoughts. We remained captive in that room, listening to incessant gunfire and explosions, not knowing whether physical death was imminent.
Throughout the experience. I was calm and wakeful, amazed but not surprised, watching the experience that was happening as it unfolded moment by moment.
I have been a meditator and holistic lifestyle practitioner for almost fifty years. In the early days of the arduous daily discipline within the Indian Ashram of my teacher, Baba Muktananda, he would tell us to intensify our practice and learn to live within the truthful moment.
In our futures, he said, we would be tested by the circumstances of our lives and then we would experience the benefit of our years of disciplined spiritual practice. I vividly remembered this teaching through the many hours of the terrorist ordeal and marveled at how accurate it was.
Simultaneous to the first gunshots and explosions, I heard the voice of the Blessed Mother. Everything became still, luminous and ethereal, as I heard Her say, “Trust and Watch.” Periodically over the next three days I heard Her repeat the same message.
Watching is the state of “witness consciousness,” a unified state of holistic observation. Because of meditation, I experience detached witness consciousness. I am able to observe the mental, emotional and physical levels of my experience and remain peaceful within the detached observation.
Trusting relates to awareness and perspective: we trust based on our experiences. Awareness gives us a greater vision and a perspective of universal consciousness simultaneous to our individuated consciousness. We are aware that Source Consciousness is orchestrating the show. This is how we are able to trust and watch, even during a life-threatening experience.
By the third day of captivity, I was physically exhausted yet hyper-wakeful. The room filled with light long before daybreak. I was enveloped with light and love, and intuitively knew that the horrific ordeal would soon be over. At five in the afternoon, we were rescued by the Indian Army Commando Units.
Four members of my spiritual pilgrimage group were wounded and two of my closest disciples were killed in the attack. Later in interviews, many were shocked when I said that I felt compassion and forgiveness for the terrorists. I consider them victims of a fragmented human experience, and it is these fragmented human beings whom I forgive. I have compassion for their suffering.
Buddha said “We must be the light we wish to see in the world,” and Jesus said “Forgive them, they know not what they do,” but these must be born from our experience. After several years of practicing a holistic lifestyle and meditation, it is a 24/7 experience: peaceful, blissful, grateful, compassionate and forgiving.
Everyone we encounter, not just a terrorist, offers us a choice. What is important is who we choose to be. We can choose their fragmented experience and be filled with fear, hatred and violence — or we can choose wholeness and fill ourselves and our world with love, compassion, kindness and peace.
The choice is always ours to be anchored in this wakeful moment, trusting and watching. We live in a relative reality and our success depends on how we treat each other. In truth, there is only one, and we are the one and only.
Master Charles Cannon, an ordained monk in the Vedic tradition, is known worldwide as a master of meditation, contemporary spiritual visionary and holistic educator. He was a close disciple of Paramahansa Muktananda, one of the most acknowledged Eastern spiritual masters of the modern era.
Tasked by his teacher to modernize meditation for the West, in 1983 Cannon founded Synchronicity Foundation as a non-profit, non-sectarian, spiritual, educational organization dedicated to the art and science of meditation and holistic lifestyle. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide currently practice meditation using his contemporary approach to the traditional context of spirituality.
Master Cannon will be appearing in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara at the following venues.
March 24, Los Angeles: Theme: Modern Spirituality… The Time is Now — An Evening Dialogue and Synchronicity High-Tech Meditation at The Wheel of Wellbeing, 1575 Westwood Blvd., Suite # 303, 7:30 – 9:30 pm. This program is free and open to the public.
March 26, Santa Barbara: Evening Dialogue at Yoga Soup, 28 Parker Way, 8:30 – 10:30 pm, $10 donation.
March 28, Los Angeles: Theme: Modern Spirituality… High-Tech Meditation and Holistic Lifestyle—The One Day Seminar at The Wheel of Wellbeing, 10am-5:30 pm, $125 donation includes book and meditation CD.
For more information please visit http://www.synchronicity.org.
