Hans Vater received his Ph.D. under Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker with a thesis on Plato’s dialogue ‘Parmenides’. In 1972, he was trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. From 1978 to 1981, he was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal secretary. After a serious illness, he joined the ‘Thousand Headed Purusha’, a group of advanced TM practitioners. Since 2019, he lives in the spiritual community ‘Yoga Vidya’ in Bad Meinberg, Germany.