Justice Is But A Heartbeat Away – Nick’s Story

During the years when I was involved with a group that taught meditation, I was fascinated by the fact that hard-core convicts could be rehabilitated to gentle and kindhearted people, simply by teaching them to meditate for 20 minutes twice a day. I vividly remember hearing the story of one inmate who was serving three life sentences (if that is humanly possible) at a maximum-security prison in California. I will refer to him as Nick here.

This man, who had killed three people out of rage and revengeful feelings, and injured several others, never felt any remorse for his actions and continued being a ‘hardened criminal’ throughout his imprisonment. One day, Nick and a number of other prisoners attended a lecture at the prison auditorium, given by a local instructor. As Nick listened to the instructor speaking about the beneficial effects of meditation, he felt so touched by the gentle, loving kindness of this teacher that tears came into his eyes.

He had never seen someone in his entire life who was genuinely interested in him and who didn’t care about the bad things he had done in his life. Here was somebody who valued him for who he was, without casting a judgment. Why would someone want to come into the dangerous and dark world of a maximum-security prison, and without getting anything in return, give him something that would help him find peace and joy?

At the end of the lecture, Nick went up to the teacher and asked him if he could learn from him how to meditate. It wasn’t so much what the teacher said during the discourse that had inspired Nick to approach this man. When asked about this years later, Nick said that it was the man’s radiance of inner peace, joy and the non-judgment that intrigued him the most, so much so that he wondered whether there was any chance he could become somewhat like him.

Nick signed up for instruction and literally, within the first few seconds of his first meditation, he immersed into a sea of love and peacefulness that would change his life forever. During my 20 years of teaching meditation around the world, I had seen dramatic internal shifts happen in some people, but I never thought it was possible for a murderer to turn into a saint within moments. What unfolded was a story that could only warm hearts. It shows that evil isn’t real, love is, and it is there in everyone.

For Nick, justice was but a heartbeat away.

To cut a long story short, it took Nick several years of writing letters to the Governor of California, to members of the media, to the leaders of the meditation organization and other rehabilitation centers to rally support for the official inclusion of meditation courses in the rehabilitation programs of his prison. Several years later, after many disappointments and rejections, his unwavering persistence led to the first American study on the psycho-physiological changes occurring in prison inmates who practice meditation. His prison became his home and his fellow prisoners his family. He, in fact, became the most loved and respected inmate of his prison at that time. According to him, this was already more than he could have wished for, but it got even better.

One fine morning, a woman meditation instructor, who had heard of Nick’s success story, came to visit him. They fell in love and were given permission to marry, within the prison walls. Soon after that, Nick was released from prison, something unheard of, given the 3 life-sentences he was to serve. But instead of staying away from the prison and enjoying his freedom outside, he decided to train as a meditation instructor himself and go back there and teach his inmate friends how to find the same love and peace within them that made him a person worth living for. This time, though, he went into prison as a free man.

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This is an excerpt from my book LIFTING THE VEIL OF DUALITY