The Lotus and the Robot (First edition: New York: The MacMillan Co., 1960) The Lotus and the Robot is an account of a long travel that Koestler did in 1958-1959 to India and Japan to investigate how could oriental mysticism help to solve the seemingly unresolvable philosophical dead-ends of the West. According to the book's contents, Koestler left for the East with a great enthusiasm and hope, but after long research his conclusions were extremely discouraging, and he decided that neither Yoga in its different forms neither Zen could be any good to the Western mind. The Lotus and the Robot was later described by Koestler as the second volume of his trilogy about the mind of man, the first one being The Sleepwalkers and the third one The Ghost in the Machine.