Who was Charles F. Lutes?

Charles F. Lutes was the first person to enroll into the Transcendental Meditation program first offered by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the Continental United States in 1959. Impressed with the meditation technique he received, Mr. Lutes teamed up with Maharishi and became a founding pillar of the Transcendental Meditation organizations. He traveled around the world five times with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to open hundreds of meditation centers around the world. In 1969 he became a teacher of the Transcendental Meditation program.

Mr. Lutes had gained God Consciousness enlightenment after two years of practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique. He was one of the most advanced of Maharishi’s teachers of Transcendental Meditation. Mr. Lutes was clairvoyant, a healer and a lecturer. He was also accomplished in many yogic siddhi powers.

Mr. Lutes preferred to keep a low public profile. Instead he traveled extensively to meet with his extended family of thousands of meditating friends. He used his spiritual gifts to help all those with the consciousness to receive him. He gave inspirational lectures on a wide variety of spiritual matters, and discretely performed numerous healings and assisted many of his friends with their personal problems. He maintained a 24/7 telephone hot line for anyone who wanted to reach him; and the phone rang off the hook. For over forty years Charles Lutes dedicated his life to helping people stay on the spiritual path.

Charles Lutes had a strong executive, command presence whose light filled the room when he entered. Although he held several titles of distinction in both the corporate business world and within the Transcendental Meditation organizations, he always wanted to be just known as "Charlie." His compassion, warmth and understanding, and jovial and casual demeanor immediately made anyone feel comfortable to be near him.

Charlie was my best friend as he was for many others. Everybody loved Charlie.

The Spiritual Healing

In January 1989, at the age of 48, after some ten years working at a desk job, I came to the realization that I had physically atrophied. My muscle tone was gone and I had gained some weight. I decided that it was time to get myself back into physical shape. So, I took up weight lifting; something I had enjoyed as a youth. Enthused by the quick results I was getting, I added more and more strenuous exercises to my routine. Soon I was working out daily, morning and evening, pushing some million pounds of iron in a month. By the following April, it happened…

I was working at my computer when my heart just plumb stopped beating. It took only a couple of seconds for me to realize what had happened – it was a helpless feeling. I realized that I had to do something immediately and began to forcibly hyperventilate. I figured that that would keep the oxygen going. However, I only bought myself a few seconds of time. A momentary fibrillation occurred, then my heart totally stopped again. I saw the room spinning; then my vision faded. I began to fall out of my seat as I was loosing consciousness. Suddenly my heart began fluttering, then it began to beat normally just in time for me to catch myself from falling to the floor.

This episode of heart failure, which seemed to have lasted ten to fifteen seconds, sufficiently scared me that I quit my weight training. I hoped that this episode was a unique one-time event. Ten days later, again at work, my heart stopped again, and this time for about five seconds. This second episode made me realize that I could drop dead at any moment. So, I sought medical advice. My cardiologist discovered that I had developed an irregular heartbeat and insisted I take six weeks off from work to recuperate, which I did. Then, I went back to work. But, my health was not the same anymore. Although I never had a recurrence of heart failure, I did continue having an irregular heartbeat that was disconcerting whenever it happened, and that was fairly often. I accepted this condition and hoped that someday it would correct itself. But it didn’t…