Vernon Katz obituary

My friend Vernon Katz, who has died aged 98, was a childhood Kindertransport refugee from Germany; he escaped the Holocaust and went on to become an Oxford scholar. His postgraduate studies there in Indian philosophy aroused a strong desire to experience for himself what was described in the literature. That wish was fulfilled when, in 1960 in London, he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught him transcendental meditation. The Maharishi invited Vernon to help with his translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gītā, published in 1967, which at the time sold more than a million copies and helped to revive Vedic knowledge. Vernon recalled: “The Gītā was translated and discussed on land, sea, and in the air, in townhouses and country houses, by the Thames and by the Ganges, in the Alps, and on the canals of Venice. I had never known such happiness as this work with Maharishi.” Later he assisted Maharishi in translating the Brahma Sutra, another key text of Indian philosophy. On reviewing the recordings made during their work together, Vernon created two volumes of Conversations with Maharishi, published in 2011 and 2018. In addition he wrote, with Thomas Egenes, The Upanishads: A New T