of his father. In 1938 he was called to the bar and practised in Chambers at 2 Paper Buildings in the Inner Temple. In 1939 he was nominated to stand for Parliament against Winston Churchill, when war was declared the election was cancelled. Some sources say MacLaren's father founded the school, while others state it was Leon. According to the SES web site, MacLaren introduced and developed philosophy courses to complement his economics courses. Over time the philosophy courses became SES's principal area of teaching. According to the group's literature, from the mid-1960s onwards, MacLaren presented, in addition to some of the ideas of P. D. Ouspensky, the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, a philosophical theology of absolute non-duality as taught by the eighth-century Indian philosopher-theologian Śaṅkara. He later stood as the Liberal candidate for Yeovil at the 1950 election and then at Hendon South in 1951 without any success. According to the SES web site, MacLaren studied Advaita Vedanta philosophy in 1965 with Shantanand Saraswati the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. MacLaren attended a lecture by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Albert Hall in London in 1959 and became a student of the Maharishi. On commentator states that in the 1950s, MacLaren met and was deeply inspired by an Indian guru, Sri Shantanand Saraswati, and henceforth the School of Economic Sciences curriculum combined Platonic and Neoplatonic mysticism with Eastern Vedic philosophy. Meditation classes were taught alongside Socratic group dialogues. According to Practical Philosophy's (founded by MacLaren) web site MacLaren spent three months in the early 1970s traveling around the world visiting the SES affiliated schools. MacLaren's illness came during his final world tour. He was brought back to England from South Africa and died in a London hospital on 24 June 1994. According to his foundation web site, MacLaren wrote a book called The Nature of Society. In 2009 MacLaren's former personal assistant, Dorine Tolley, published a biography of MacLaren's life called The Power Within: Leon MacLaren, A Memoir of His Life and Work. In conjunction with Frances Roles, MacLaren founded the School of Meditation in London. MacLaren was an enthusiast of the Sanskrit language, stating "The grammatical rules of Sanskrit are also the rules of creation". He began Sanskrit courses at School of Economic Science. Today SES represents the largest body of Sanskrit students in the UK. MacLaren said on teamwork "The first quality of a leader of people –