(374-377) Jung's Experience 374-377

The quintessential quality comes and goes;
The weird preferences of the intelligence and consciousness.
The Secret and the Yellow greet each other;
Their ideas affecting each other mutually.

I was in Bolligen just as the first tower was being finished. This was the winter of 1923-24. As far as I can recall, there was no snow on the ground; perhaps it was early spring. I had been alone perhaps for a week, perhaps longer. An indescribable stillness prevailed. One evening - I can still remember it precisely - I was sitting by the fireplace and had a big kettle on the fire to make hot water for washing up. The water began to boil and the kettle to sing. It sounded like many voices, or stringed instruments, or even like a whole orchestra. It was just like polyphonic music, which in reality I cannot abide, though in this case it seemed to me peculiarly interesting. It was as though there were one orchestra inside the tower and another outside. Now one dominated, now the other, as though they were responding to each other. I sat and listened, fascinated. For far more than an hour I listened to the concert, to this natural melody. It was soft music, containing, as well, all the discords of nature. And that was right, for nature is not only harmonious; she is also dreadfully contradictory and chaotic. The music was that way too: an outpouring of sounds, having the quality of water and of wind so strange that it is simply difficult to describe it.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.C. Jung1

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