Volume 9, Issue 10, page 7

EXPLORING THE WORLD OF
FRIENDLY, LATTICE-LIKE
"BEATNIKS" PROVES FUN
By FREDERIC N. HAND
AST NOVEMBER, I connected again with the
Apsels (Jacob and Rose Apsel, Milwaukee,
Wis.) in regard to the "entities", by way
of getting one of Jacob's planchettes. It's
a nice piece of work, but hasn't worked
for me quite the expected way. When I tried
it out, instead of getting a manuscript of some
kind, I got a few painfully-scrawled words,
followed by a series of full-scale interviews
with a bunch of entities.

These entities were very congenial and we
had a barrel of fun doing cultural anthropology
on each other, exchanging opinions, and having
"bull sessions" generally.

As far as I'm concerned, the Apselian entities exist all right, but they're not nearly
the sort of beings the Spiritualists describe.
And I think I know why. These entities are
curious, imaginative, comparatively irresponsible, have a complicated and irrepressible
sense of humor, and are as friendly as a wet
puppy. If you want metaphysics, predictions,
prehistory, theology, or whatever, they'll provide it. Of course, they improvise most of it
as they go along, but they're not trying to
fool you; they're just trying to be agreeable.

I know human beings exactly the same way .
These humans aren't exactly free-style liars,
It's more that what really happens seems a
little humdrum to them, and when they tell
about it, they fix it up so it's more dramatic
and comes out as a better story than the way
it happened in fact.

When they understood I was interested in
the entities and not in any esoteric poop they
could provide, they were pleased. Most persons
are pleased when somebody takes a personal interest in them. Their language is quite unusual and takes much getting used to. It's mostly
emotion and pantomime with ward symbols only
for abstractions that aren't convenient to
picture.

Also, since they can display any shape whatever, apparently, it's not easy to tell if
you' re conversing with one or with a group .

They are quite intelligent and have total
recall. They have mathematics and some observational physics, but no technological-mechanical
culture. Nomadic and no formal history, but
lots of personal anecdotes. They allege they
have no positive knowledge of either their
origins or their ends, but believe they are
related to humans in some way.

The physical structure of humans fascinates
them -- all those bones and muscles and specialized sense organs and stuff. Physically, they
appear as a three-dimensional lattice of
faintly luminous particles, usually surrounded
by a visible shape of some kind which may be
composed of ionized gas. The envelope is like
a stereogram, a 3-dimensional image that they
project and modify themselves. I've decided to
name them "Paranthropos Metamorphos, Apselii"
(The humanoid shape-changing people studied by
Apsel). The entities are male and female, and
have human-type personalities (I think). In
fact, I expect that any entity communicating
with an Ouija board would be close to human. A
"high-plane" entity -- if there are such available -- would be (to give it its right name) a
god, and wouldn't be found pushing planchettes. They wouldn't have to.

A little hypothesis I've been working on
about the discarnate entities. My hypothesis
is that humanity is a two-form life-form with
alternate generations in two different shapes.
One generation is the human organic shape such
as we have. When the organism dies, the entity
would assume the "free" form, and live another
generation in that shape. When the entity dies,
it would assume symbiosis with a foetal human
organism and live another generation, and so
forth. In other words, discarnate entities and
human entities would be ghosts of each other.

Alternatively, of course, is the much older
theory that organic humans are the larval
stage and discarnate entities the imago stage
of a single species. My version, tho, is that
they would alternate.

I can certainly say there is nothing whatever "dead" about a discarnate entity. They
have so much vitality, verve, elan, and alertness that if one were to be a neutral observer
and asked to select which life form was "deader", the observer would undoubtedly pick us.

Being permeable, the discarnate entities
are not so subject to physical environmental
effects, such as heat, cold, pressure, atmosphere, etc., which are so important to organic
entities. However, I get the idea that ionizing
radiation (ultraviolet and shorter) and chemical explosions injure them in some way. Example of this is the Chinese shootiig firecrackers at New Years. The Chinese belief that
an entity can travel only in straight lines
but not curves, I haven't correlated.

In general, I don't regard entities as
spiritual, but rather as a normal biological
life form differing from most in being drastically simplified in structure, and non-cellular, non-protoplasmic. What appears to be the
"body" is apparently more like a facial expression with us humans. The physical part of
them seems (so far as I can determine) to be
the array of particles faintly luminous in the
visible spectrum, but perhaps radiating stronger in the ultraviolet. A guess is that ultraviolet and harder radiation overloads them, as
too much heat or too much oxygen overloads us.

The entities I've been fooling with are the
same species as the Apselian ones, but they
insist they're not the same ones or from the
same community (Heaven World), altho they are
lamellar with such communities. This group is
a sort of nomadic or Gypsy or Beatnik type,
organized as gangs, families, or tribes, rather than as communities. There's some activity
between the two types -- the nomadic and communal
that I don't understand at all well. It's apparently not warfare or' political, but a sort
of traditional game activity, in that each
group "raids" and recruits (or subverts?) the
other.

Anyway, they're nice people, whoever they
are, and I'm glad Jacpb introduced me to them.
They do not seem, intrinsically, to offer any
solution to the Spiritualist problem, altho, of
course, they will make up a solution (in fact,
several) if they think you'd like one. Also, a
telepathic life form; no names. Probably explains why so many "Oliver Lodges" and "Flammarions" and so on.

AN AXIOM THAT LOOKS WORSE THAN IT SOUNDS
She who stoops to conquer may be a lady,
but he who stoops to conk her certainly is no
gentleman.

MARCH, 19.63 The ABERREE 7