The Teacher

Having always had his heart set on how to improve human life, Dr. Nader had followed the path of medicine and science, attending some of the most prestigious institutions in the world.

It was while pursuing his medical and scientific training that Dr. Nader became aware of the profound influence of the mind on physiology and behaviour. He discovered that there were systematic ways to naturally develop consciousness and thus mind and body. He became convinced that proven mental techniques were as reliable as any other well-researched scientific approach and could give fulfilment most holistically to every individual and every society.

Meditation and the full value of what consciousness is and its practical applications used to be considered philosophical – outside of the realm of pragmatic empirical science. It was a risk to depart from the traditional ways of medicine and science, but as a pioneer Dr. Nader was driven to understand the development of consciousness. In 1980 he personally met Maharishi at a health conference on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and – parallel to his scientific studies – he thus began with Maharishi a teacher/student apprenticeship which spanned nearly 30 years.

Meeting Maharishi was “a life-transforming experience” for Dr. Nader. He felt that it was here that true answers were to be found. As a student, many questions had been posed – now it was through direct personal experience that answers became apparent. Deeply inspired, Dr. Nader was clear that the next step was to share the knowledge and experiences with more people by becoming a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. He took a leave of absence from his medical work and returned to Switzerland. In 1982 he became a Certified TM Teacher.

Being able to teach TM as a doctor was “very profound”, Dr. Nader has said, because the TM technique is “a very holistic way to approach problems without side effects”. Dr. Nader’s questions continued to be answered through both science and TM. As both a medical doctor and a TM teacher, Dr. Nader’s pursuit of excellence in all areas of life continued, bringing him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he earned his Ph.D. in the field of Brain and Cognitive Science and became visiting physician and the assistant director at their Clinical Research Centre. He also guided students and taught under the undergraduate research opportunity program at MIT. His post-doctoral work was as a clinical and research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. At the same time, his relationship with the world’s greatest teacher of Vedic knowledge and consciousness, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, continued to grow, inspiring him to carry on the timeless yet still most relevant teachings of Maharishi. Through scientific research, Dr. Nader brought together spirituality and the physical and material aspects of life, showing how ancient subjective and modern objective sciences meet.

In his presentations Dr. Nader examines, among many other things, what scientists call the “hard problem” of consciousness: What is consciousness? He makes this abstract question understandable by looking at consciousness in terms of human physiology, quantum mechanics in physics, and Vedic Science.

Consciousness, he concludes, is the source not only of the human mind and our ability to experience, know, innovate, and create, but also the source of all physical structures and functions – from fine particles and DNA to galaxies.