ANGELS AND SHAVING 
365 
experience is perfectly 
paralleled by the simplest and 
commonest phenomena of our daily life! 
People who tell you that it is "all quite different beyond 
the Veil" or what not, are blithering incompetents totally 
ignorant of the nature of things. 
On the contrary, 
I will 
tell you 
more about 
"communication . " 
There is a method of using Ethyl Oxide which enables one 
(a) to analyse one's thoughts with a most exquisite subtlety 
and accuracy , (b) to find out-in the French phrase-"what is 
at the bottom of the bottle." By this they mean the final 
result of any project or investigation; and this; surprisingly 
often, is not at all what it is possible to discover by any 
ordinary means. 
For instance , one might ask oneself "Do I believe in God?" 
and, after a vast number of affirmative answers of constantly 
increasing depth and subtlety , discover with a shock that "at 
the bottom of the bottle" one believed nothing of the sort! 
Or vice versa. 
On one occasion the following experiment was carried out . 
A certain Adept was to make use of the Sacred Vapour , and 
when the time seemed ripe, to answer such questions as 
should be put to him by his Scribe. Presently, after about an 
hour's 
silence , the Scribe asked: "Is communication 
possible?" 
By this he meant merely to enquire whether it would now 
be in order for him to begin to ask his prepared list of 
questions. 
But the Adept thought that this was Question No. I : 
meaning "Is there any valid means of making contact 
between two minds?" 
He remained intensely silent-intensely, 
as opposed to his 
previous rather fidgety abstention from talking-for a very 
long time, and then broke slowly into a long seductive ripple 
of hushed laughter , suggestive of the possession of some