As a rule, when a man shaves himself at his morning toilet, that suffices to make him look clean and well-groomed for the whole day. Should he omit shaving for some reason or another -- be it out of pure laziness, lack of time, etc. -- then this in itself is no great problem. However, over a longer time period this minor neglect does not allow itself to be concealed, for as everyone knows, a man's facial hairs grow inexorably longer, even during his sleep in the night, and thus the bristly stubble on the face sprout again the next morning at the latest.

These banal facts everyone certainly knows, and they serve only as introduction to the remarkable beard story which I can bring you from the experiential knowledge of Jacobus Bertschinger.

The event reaches back to the year 1975, when Billy Meier's family still had their residence in Hinwil. At that time Billy had no full beard, as he has today, and it was customary with him to shave regularly. And so Jacobus reacted with surprise when he was confronted with the following experience: It was in the summer of 1975 -- or more precisely on Thursday, the 17th of July, when Billy left his residence around 9 o'clock in the morning, freshly shaven, and only returned to the house early in the morning of the next day.

At this time Jacobus was in Meier's living room, impatiently waiting for Billy to return. He can still very well remember all the details, he assured me. After Billy stepped into the living room two things attracted special notice: First, Billy exhibited a very weary, fatigued expression, especially around the eyes, which he could keep open only with great effort. And second, Billy possessed an abundant beard, as if he had not shaved in a week. However, Jacobus precisely knew that Billy had been gone scarcely one whole day and night, and thus in no way long enough for the relatively long stubble to have been brought forth for all to see. Therefore Jacobus thought, quite correctly, that something was not right here, for how could this circumstance be reconciled with the aforesaid unbearded condition? Or, what would you say if a good acquaintance of yours appeared with a several-day growth of beard, although he had been freshly shaven the day before? Probably you would at first think of a magic drink or of some unknown hair-growth stimulator, to explain the phenomenon. However both explanations are in this case unsuitable, and the solution to the mystery must be found elsewhere.

In actuality the solution revolves around the following findings: The Pleiadian friends had taken Billy with them in Ptaah's great space ship on a great journey this way and that through our universe; this extraordinary excursion, which never before has been granted to an Earth person, lasted five Earth days in all. That Billy, despite the stated 5-day absence, returned home again after 22 hours is very puzzling. Yet there is only one single plausible explanation, and it reads: time manipulation!

Besides this, however, another curiosity stepped into the picture, for according to Billy, during the whole trip he had not a wink of sleep by day or night. Automatically this raises the question, how was it possible to go so long without sleep? Billy explained that this had not been his achievement. Rather, it was the nourishment provided him that had kept him in a wide-awake condition. Apparently, this particular nourishment possessed by the Pleiadians has a much stronger effect than the stimulant-amines available on our markets.

It was no wonder, then, that after these five sleepless days and nights Billy made up for it by sleeping 26 hours straight.

[Note: This five-day space trip is catalogued as Meier's Contact No. 31 of 17 July, 1975, commencing at 10:14 hours. It occupies some 44 pages of English-translation contact conversations within Wendelle Stevens's Message from the Pleiades, vol. 1, which does not contain still further conversation withheld by the Pleiadians from their machine-telepathy transmission to Meier that he received later for printing and dissemination, and a bit more filtered out by Stevens himself from his German-translation source.]