“Reality, he wrote, “has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.” Mescaline and LSD, he theorized, inhibited the systems in the brain designed to shut out impractical stimulation, so humans could keep coloring within the lines and go about the business of survival without being distracted by the astounding awesomeness of the universe—or as Huxley put it, “the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event.” Huxley”