He is a retired senior philosophy lecturer at Sonoma State University.

He received his Bachelor's degree from the Bundeshandelsakademie Klagenfurt and a PhD in philosophy from Karl-Franzens University of Graz where he studied with Rudolf Haller and Ernst Topitsch.

He was inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda and received a Fulbright scholarship for research on this subject at UCLA, leading to his dissertation, Methodology and Knowledge.

He presented papers at the World Congresses of Philosophy (Moscow 1993, Boston 1998, Istanbul 2003, Athens 2013, Beijing 2018), Tucson Center for Consciousness Studies, American Philosophical Association, American Anthropological Association, the Austrian Association for Philosophy, International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing, and other venues.

He is the current president of the Karl Jaspers Society of North America since 2006, and is the founding editor (with Alan M. Olson) and editor-in-chief of the online journal Existenz.