I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick

Still

374 Still Dr. Johann Heinrich Jung, who in later years added to his name Stilling, which he borrowed from an uncle, as indication that he was happy or, in any event, tranquil in the prospect of the next life, published Theory of the Doctrine of Ghosts (Theorie der Geisterkunde) in 1808. Goethe had already published the first part of Jung-Stilling’s memoirs, an act of ghost publishing that would appear to be the reverse of the occult act of plagiarism. We have the body of work that is reckoned as the onset of the Entwicklungsroman, the other novel of development, on Goethe’s authorship . But on this role Jung-Stilling kept on publishing, and late in his public career released his ghost treatise. “Through magnetism, nervous illness, long-term states of concentration , and through other hidden means a yet living person, if he otherwise has a natural inclination in this regard, can untie his soul to a certain higher or lesser degree from its bodily organization” (367). The untying is what Jung-Stilling designates in German as Entwicklung, the word for “development ” that literally also means “to untie” or “to unwrap”: the shroud from a mummy or a baby’s diaper. But as the opening up of the liminal realm of earthbound spirits it identifies what is stowaway or repressed in the genre of Entwicklungsroman that Jung-Stilling unknowingly originated under Goethe’s direction. Jung-Stilling essentially gives counsel on how to help ghosts find the path into the light of dissolution or redemption. He still has his work cut out for him. Good spirits will try to guide him in what to do to claim the Heavenly good. He must cleanse his imagination (and remembrance) of all images of his former life, indeed of the very love of earthly things (297). Still 375 It’s hard on Mr. Between who’s not yet been given a taste of Heaven and yet must give up the shadowy aftertaste of the world (298). The spooky apparitions that divine justice must, in time, condemn hover on the border between this and the next world as cautionary examples for the living (332). The ghosts pull together their apparitions as shape to come from the same seed of resurrection hidden away inside the living (300–301). Yet the eternal love that sent us away from paradise also cut the open line to the spirit realm. If that had not happened, we would have gone to the Devil or become demons (377). Jung-Stilling also counsels the living to prepare for a Christian death and thus go directly to the afterlife and not pass through ghostliness, the between state that hangs over life lost as though still depending on it. The powers of imagination increase after death but their realization at the same time proves empty, mere dusty projection (373). Transmigration of souls is a misguided belief. The spiritual realm has enough cleansing action without return trips to or through the life of the senses (374). You don’t have to do time in Hades, dear reader. As long as you don’t leave behind unreconciled blood debts and guilts or ruling earthly passions and sensual dependencies—you’ll swing straight on up into the light (296). The suffering in Hades is homesickness for the world of senses irretrievably lost. It is hard after death to shake passions that have taken root in this world. You have to give these problems over to death here in this world (327). Jung-Stilling addresses haunting as a therapeutic issue but not within a preexisting interpersonal or intrapsychic relationship. Thus none of his examples includes the return of an identified loved one, with whom one identifies. The reason ghosts hover about waiting to make contact with relative strangers, or stranger relatives who are generations removed from the ghost’s former lifetime, is because they must find someone who is sensitive , attuned, and otherwise gifted in the matter of contact with the spiritual realm. But the spiritual realm itself must not be reduced to the range of haunting. It is the ghosts who compromise the spiritual realm by importing leftover imaginings or memories of materiality, corporeality, and worldliness for the purpose of getting their communications across (185). Thus ghosts are our doubles in a loss we, all together now, can’t acknowledge or let go. Jung-Stilling teaches by example or anecdote. According to the lengthy account written by the father, his son was regularly...