अ Novel

Episode 17: On the Dead Spirits



Father has gone. It's not been so easy to find an apt word for his disappearance. Such verbs that indicate semantic synonyms as 'died', ‘passed away' do not suffice to refer to his disappearance. He said "I am going" as if he was talking to his close relative when he meant to go out to the village neighborhood.

Father said he was going but he didn't mention his destination. He didn't like the idea of going to Sun Valley where his dead parents and clan relatives were being interred because then he would not be able to see his dear sons and daughters oftener. He liked to be buried near his home, or near the orchard cum home of his second child at Oksan.

So my brother and I, with the help of a geomancer, who had been arranged by my best friend Paragon, decided on a site immediately below a low hill top seen from the orchard, and talked to father about the place. He nodded at the suggestion. I wondered at that time and I now wonder whether he would be really there.

Father, that is, the spirit of the father, would not take a rest in there. He might occupy some celestial space. Sounding a little bizarre to you readers, in his life time already, I had once dreamed about him: He would be appointed as an on-the-spot commander of some celestial building site.

The late father's materialization I did not know of, but I vaguely knew he had gotten so near to me and us, about whose mention you the readers of my humble novel piece would laugh at the idea. I missed him so much more after his death, and I think he did so because father and son had made a sincere reconciliation through my apologies.

One of my "fortune consultants," Mr. Oh somebody I had once or twice met with over the matter of whether my manuscripts, entitled the Conversion Approach, would be able to see the world in a book form, he predicted the exact date of the successful negotiation for the book publication, and to my dismay, also predicted the date of dad's demise. I had not at that time consulted the matter of my father's illness.

When I had had the second meeting with him, after dad's funeral and the subsequent 49-day prayer for the peaceful respite at Eunhaesa Temple, Yeongcheon, I asked him about his own experience of the reunion with his dead father in any format virtual or physical. He said yes, but he only gave me a muted smile when pursued further.

I was so curious to know about the wellbeing of my father in the nether world. I wondered whether he had been elevated to any lofty tier of the celestial realm because he, in his life time dream, precisely two years before his demise, had had a very unusual encounter with the Great Buddha standing in the East Sea in front of Kyeonpodae, Kangwondo, who consecrated him with encouraging remarks: "Having lived concerted lives with clean mind, you will rest assured of peace."

Bizarre as it may sound, and I am so scared and so ashamed to reveal it, that the spirit of the departed father had once come up to his son's home in Seoul, but that he had been disappointed at what had been being developed. It was past midnight on a night about two months or so past father had passed away that I had been engaged in an amorous momentum in a very vociferous way. At the end of it when a storm of the passion had receded some rustling noise, a muted groan, or a sigh, or something like that was heard. I knew, in nano seconds, from instinct that it had to be papa who had come a several-hundred-kilometer-long way to see his son who was expected to have some somber hours to mourn his dead father. He might have desired to verify the "filial" son with his own eyes for the last time before ascending the higher tier of the spiritual world, with the reluctant permission of his superior.

"Are there ghosts?"
"Yes, there are."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am sure."
"How are you sure?"
"I don't know for sure, but I just know. I feel it."
"You haven't seen a ghost, have you?"
"No, I haven't. But there are some who have seen a ghost or ghosts."
"For example?"

My theory is that there have been some qualified few who have been able to observe the spirits. They might be supposed to be crystal-clear minded folks of younger age. My nephew Chee Hong, then in his teens and now at college, once told me he had seen his grandpa. "Grandpa was standing at the bank off the orchard," he once said. It was at a daybreak and Chee Hong was on the walk to his house latrine. He saw his grandpa garbed in white dopo. As soon as grandpa noticed he was being watched by his grandson, he disappeared from sight, Chee Hong said.

My brother in his middle sixties told me a few years ago that he, then in his early teens, had seen "human shapes in white garbs" dance on the rooftop of the water mill house. Both of us brothers weren't talking about the subject of ghosts or something, but I was only talking about my nightmare of a sniper with red eyes in my teens, with mom's arm simultaneously mangled in the mill accident.

"They were seen to dance on the rooftop," he brusquely said.
"Were you not scared?" I casually asked.
"I wasn't afraid or scared of them," he as-a-matter-of- factly said. I wondered how he had been so composed and insouciant. If if it had been me I might have raised hell.

My third and last son Kyo once casually, the day after we had moved to Eunma Apartment Complex, talked calmly to me as if to himself he had seen at his bedside a female-dressed ghost for just once. He was in his middle twenties and single at that time. The apartment house we had lived in had leaks, about which I shall tell you readers later.

Though I'd praised in a decent manner my son's audacity and composure at that time, I myself had actually gotten inwardly scared, thinking how I would be able to respond if I might have to run into a ghost or two one day by myself. I once again solemnly realize that the child is the father of man, that is, the latecomer goes one better.

I think that if I died now what category of ghost I would become. I vow to myself that I should become "a good ghost", and that I should become the one better than a good ghost. Naive as it may seem to you readers, my modest theory is that even in the world of the dead spirits the rule of the tiers by rank should apply.

Just as we the people of the real world belong to a certain entity according to the civilian, bureaucratic and ecclesiastical rank of ours, the dead spirits would belong to their turf according to their celestial or spiritual rank. Therefore, we the people of the physical world are supposed to make utmost efforts to make ranking tier evaluation loftier by commendable deeds.

Let's suppose thousands of ranking tiers, for example, in the worldly realm, from a village bully to the head of a state, and from a tower keeper to the Catholic pope. The head of a state is not supposed to make any interference in the behavior of a village bully. The nether world is ruled, I am afraid, by the same principle.

In specifics, let's suppose there are guishin (鬼神), literally gods, spirits, or ghosts. To elaborate, this world is replete with gods, spirits, or ghosts, that is, resentful or spiteful gods. We the people of the physical world should have to reconcile with, crack down on, or override them. Override them at best, if you can. However, if you can't, reconcile with them or woo them at least.

The rites of consecration in Catholicism give us a certain suggestion, or orientation. You also are supposed to make an occasion of consecration or two in your own way when you're confronted with novelty of occasions. For example, when you have bought a new car, you are supposed to prepare some offerings and "consecrate" it in your own way.

Conceit and haughtiness are what is to be frowned on. Humility is recommended for you to hold as an eternal virtue. Beware of the proud Christians if and when you were given a chance to travel with in a vehicle or two. Think of a joyride car overturned whose passengers had been sheer Christians.

I need to say that the world we live in, and the world we experience and feel, is not wholly for the living only. The world also is for the dead. We the people of the nation and of the whole world need to know the solemn fact. The reconciliation of the physical with the spiritual beings is the genuine harmony of the universe.

This country now is replete with the resentful and spiteful gods who we are supposed to console. The government should be advised to establish the Department of the Tribute in which the government should have to build The Shrine for the National Heroes and pay respect to them on a regular basis.

The troops of the United Nations Armed Forces who fought and perished here in this land should have to be honored and remembered in a proper manner. And in the same context, the late General MacArthur, though he had not perished here, was a great benefactor to our country, who should have to be honored and remembered here in this country for ever.