The writer turned mystic

When you think of the English, you don’t usually think of ‘ecstasy’ - I mean ecstasy in the sense of surrendering control of your habitual self and feeling filled with a higher power or spirit. That doesn’t sound very Downton Abbey.

And yet cultures are full of paradoxes. English culture - rational, empirical, commercial, and moderate - is also the culture that gave us Blake, the Beatles, Methodism, and acid house. Because we’re so uptight, we need to really let go; sometimes.

No one illustrates this paradox in the English character better than Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World. He was a posh, cerebral, emotionally-repressed intellectual. And yet, ironically, this stiff upper lip Brit became a spiritual guru in California, and helped to shift western culture’s attitude to ecstasy.

I’ve always felt