[8] Meares was educated at Melbourne Grammar School, where he boxed and played tennis, at Trinity College,[9] and at the University of Melbourne, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree in 1934,[10] and a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree in 1940.
Meares received his Diploma in Psychological Medicine from the University of Melbourne in September 1947,[11] and, on the basis of his presentation of a collection of 17 published papers relating to medical hypnotism (with each paper being independent of the others), he was awarded the higher degree of Doctor of Medicine by the University of Melbourne in 1958.
Meares also served as a captain in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps (1941–1945).
[12][13] Meares was a founding fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and, for a time, the president of the International Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.
[14] Meares was an internationally recognised expert in the medical uses of hypnotism,[15][16] and wrote a number of books describing his approach.