"Man is not born to exhaust all his intellectual and material resources on the building of the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, as they did in the ancient world, or on devising the most destructive weapons of war or spending colossal sums on the exploration of distant planets while millions die of malnutrition, but in finding a solution to the problems of its own existence." (1)

The parents and grandparents of the founders of science were, almost without exception, devoutly religious individuals. But the atmosphere of intolerance which became the hallmark of the church prompted many men and women of science to use their particular genius as a tool for flattening the whole structure, rather than urging a timely revision; many declared God a fantasy, and that science could now explain virtually every event witnessed in the formerly marvellous show of Nature.

But several generations on, scientists plumbing the depths of molecular or biological matter, or the most distant ends of the universe, find that rather than becoming more simple and easy to understand, the universe is becoming more complex and harder to grasp.

The inexplicable behaviour of subatomic particles, the mathematical support for hidden dimensions, and the staggering complexity of biological devices such as the human brain, dwarfing even the combined activity of all the activity of all the computers on earth, point to a perfection and subtlety which seems to elude man's intellectual comprehension. But is there another sense, another tool of the brain which is designed to at least partially interpret the true nature of the universe, and to which all the religious founders pointed with conviction?

Mystics throughout the ages all referred to an unfathomable intelligence which underlay the entire universe. Allowing for understandable differences in culture, ability and temperament of each, as is done when comparing individuals from all other areas of human endeavour, in what general way did their brains differ from the norm, and to what levels of creation were they given access? Will the mystic vision aid the scientist in unravelling the greatest mystery of all: our own mystery?