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With a biographical introduction by David Bradshaw and a foreword by J. G. Ballard, the Sunday Times described this as a masterpiece, 'Concise, evocative, wise and, above all, humane.' In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes, everything from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers was transformed, Huxley describes his experience with breathtaking immediacy in this novel. In its sequel Heaven and Hell, he goes on to explore the history and nature of mysticism. Still bristling with a sense of excitement and discovery, these illuminating and influential writings remain the most fascinating account of the visionary experience ever written. In that afternoon in Los Angeles, Huxley experienced the suspension of time and space and the melting away of the ego. He talks about artists and their heightened ability to perceive things, about the experiences of schizophrenics and moments of despair but also of unadulterated joy. He talks about the profundity of religious experience and Eastern and Western philosophical views of the world. 'The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge...' and that was before the Internet! 123pp, paperback.