Musician, millionaire, master salesman; con-man, drug dealer, convict; entrepreneur, benefactor, wise and revered meditation teacher – Alan Gompers has led an amazing life. His life-long search for recognition, power and love drove him to make (and lose) million-dollar fortunes, betray friends and family and deal drugs, which ultimately brought him a 15-to-life prison sentence. It was in a maximum security prison that he finally found – deep within himself – what he had been seeking: the true meaning of freedom.

This is his story – Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom.

Born in 1939 in New York, Alan Gompers grew up in Parkchester, a middle-class housing project with a population of close to 60,000 people, which still stands today, just south of Tremont Avenue on Unionport Road, in the Bronx.

He started his performing career at the age of 8, playing his saxophone. At the age of 14, while a student at Music & Art High School, he began a singing career by forming a Doo Wop group known as the Montclairs. He wrote most of the original music and orchestrated the arrangements for their records and on-stage routines. The Montclairs are best known for their recordings of "Good Night Sweetheart" and "A Broken Promise."

During his college days, Alan earned a living as a professional musician, playing in the famous resort hotels in the Catskills Mountains of New York. During that time, he graduated from Hunter College, taught health & physical education in the NY City High Schools and attended graduate school working towards a Masters Degree.

Alan remained a teacher for about eight years. He left teaching in 1970 and entered the financial community. Within a year, he went from a stockbroker to sales manager, to a full-time partner in an investment-banking firm. During the next three years, Alan's company raised over $50 million in underwritings and became one of the largest over-the-counter brokerage houses in the country. He did this through a combination of sales genius, masterful manipulation and systematic disregard for rules and regulations. His firm was ultimately closed by the SEC for violating securities law and he received federal probation.

Alan started a real estate company in 1973, marketing land and homes in the fast developing Pocono’s Mountains of Pennsylvania. After a highly successful run in the real estate business, he opened an elegant nightclub in Westchester County, a classy suburb of New York City. He also began dealing drugs.

During his tenure as a nightclub owner, he became a professional boxing promoter and manager. One of his fighters was on the verge of becoming a world champion when Alan was arrested for selling drugs and sentenced to 15 years to-life in a maximum-security prison.

In the most unexpected way, in this most unlikely of places, his sentence would prove to be the turning point in his life. Although Alan had achieved an extraordinary amount of success in the world, he was now facing the possibility of never tasting freedom again. This terrifying realization led him to begin looking deeply at himself, desperately trying to find some answers, some light, and some hope.

What he saw was that he had led a life entangled in lust, deception, manipulation, and finally betrayal. Ultimately, it was his pride, ego and greed that brought him to his knees. Yet, underlying everything, from his earliest recollections as a child and all through the greatest moments of his success, he was plagued by the relentless inner demons of loneliness, despair and fear, ultimately leading him to the use of drugs and alcohol to cope with it all. Eventually he became a drug dealer.

In prison, he was introduced to the practice of meditation. His experience was so profound that it instantly changed his life.

In 1983 he received a special commutation, Executive Clemency, from the Governor of New York. In 1985, he was granted a special opportunity for early discharge in a "work release program." During this time he started a company known as Sports Vision. All-star first baseman, Don Mattingly, of the New York Yankees, and Howard Johnson, the great slugger with the New York Mets, signed on with the company and helped launch its incredible early rise to success. In Alan's typical outrageous fashion, he headed a multi-million dollar company by day and slept in a jail cell at night.

He was finally released on parole after serving 6 years in a maximum-security prison.

In the late 1980’s, Alan formed a company called Shakti Productions, which brought together legendary, original artists from the 1950's. The concerts were so well received that Alan became affectionately known in the music industry as "Pop Doo-Wop." He later went on to create “Children First for a Better World,” an organization that provides educational support for children of all grade levels to improve their performance in school.

Since his release from prison, Alan has traveled around the United States and Canada speaking to organizations and groups on the power and healing qualities of meditation.

In 2007, Alan finished writing a memoir of his life experiences titled, Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom. The book is being published by Burns Park Publishers and will be available in May 2008.