MacLaren was inspired by Henry George, Socrates, Francis Roles, Pyotr Ouspensky, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and finally the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta through the Shankaracharyas of Jyoti Math.
[4] Maclaren said he was grateful to have inherited from his father three things: no religion, no education, and a strong desire to distrust experts.
At the age of sixteen, MacLaren contemplated how his life could best be put to the service of mankind, a one-word answer came to his mind, the word was "School".
At the 1936 International Conference of Georgist Organisations held in London, a contingent from the US presented a question-based method of teaching Henry George's ideas.
[8] In 1937 MacLaren left the Henry George movement and founded the School of Economic Science (SES) with the support of his father.
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.
[16] According to the SES web site, MacLaren studied Advaita Vedanta philosophy in 1965 with Shantanand Saraswati the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math.
[18] 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.
"[23] Leon MacLaren is described as one of three men responsible for meditation being practised so widely in the west due to his early adoption of the practice and propagation of it globally via the School of Economic Science, the other two men being Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Dr Francis C. Roles of The Study Society.
In 1994, though ill, he flew from London to South Africa to lead a study week with the School's senior students.