Peter Russell was born in London, England. He attended Steyning Grammar School and Maidstone Grammar School. In 1965 he was awarded an Open Exhibition to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to study Mathematics. In 1969, he gained a First Class Honours in Theoretical Physics and Experimental Psychology. He then went to Rishikesh, India, where he trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1971, he gained a post-graduate degree in Computer Science. From 1971 to 1974, he studied for a Ph.D. on the psychophysiology of meditation at Bristol University.

In 1975, he began working with Tony Buzan teaching mind maps, and memory skills to various European corporations. In the eighties, he expanded this work to include personal development tools and mindsets, teaming up with Roger Evans to run programs on creativity enhancement.

In The Global Brain Awakens (1995), an update of The Global Brain (1983), Russell's most popular book, he opens with part one on the Gaia Hypothesis. In part two, he discusses orders of evolution going from the evolution of the early universe during the Big Bang, through biological evolution, and finishing with "the emerging social superorganism." In part three, he discusses "inner evolution" and the "high-synergy society". In some ways, this book echoes the optimistic dot-com zeitgeist.

The White Hole in Time also took an evolutionary perspective on human affairs, arguing that the current global crisis is a result of our mental development not having kept up with our technological development. He suggested that we are heading towards an evolutionary singularity, which he equated with Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point. This is not the same as Raymond Kurzweil's subsequent notion of a technological singularity. A new edition of this book was published as Waking Up in Time.

In From Science to God, Russell evokes Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift to argue that science is on the threshold of a new superparadigm1. Russell disputes scientific materialism and likens current efforts to explain consciousness in terms of neuropsychology to the convoluted epicycles before the Copernican revolution in astronomy. Russell's views are in sharp contrast to materialists like Daniel Dennett, author of Consciousness Explained. The view is similar to views held by nonmaterialist thinkers like Plotinus, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Ken Wilber.