If these walls could sing...

Last night, in the post about Jung in Ravenna, I mentioned that something similar happened to me, too.

It did - only it wasn't a visual "slip".
Instead, I heard something that "logic" tells me couldn't have been there.

It was September 11th or 12th, 1998.
I was visiting a delightful small town by the sea; a town I had visited many times before.
(The absence of geographical names is the result of a "secret pact" with myself: whenever something is precious to me, for whatever reason, I take precautions to preserve it from over-exposure and outer influences by withholding a vital piece of information. And you're welcome to think I am a kook...:))

Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I climbed a hill to visit an ancient church that stands there, commanding a view over two gulfs. (It's actually just a single gulf, but from the vantage point at the church it looks like two.)

I was happy to be there, and relaxed, as I usually am after the sea air, with all that iodine, gets me. But, climbing that hill, I was also saddened on seeing the obvious neglect of the town by its present population.
And so, when I arrived at the top of the hill and leaned on the parapet in front of the church, observing the skyline merging with the sea, a sense of melancholy took over me as I thought about the town's glorious past.

I like history; I even know a thing or two about it.
I also happen to have a vivid visual imagination.
Which is why it would have been practically impossible for me to resist the temptation of trying to imagine the town as it once was. In my mind, I tried to remove all the baggage of the centuries, all the architectural additions (AKA houses ;)), and see the hills around me as they once were, overlooking the very same sea that I was now hearing, pounding against the rocks far below me.

I turned to look at the church. It was too far "gone" to be envisaged as it once was, what with the additions and remodeling through the centuries (and besides, nobody really knew how it looked when it was first erected, back in the 7th or 8th century). But at least its location hadn't changed in more than a thousand years. Regardless of its looks, people had been climbing that same hill for more than a thousand summers, more than a thousand autumns, more than a thousand Septembers; and, without a doubt, they, too, stopped to catch their breath at the very spot where I was standing at that moment. The sea was the same as then; so were the mountain crests and the hills in the distance; and the sun, all those centuries ago, shone on their hair and cheeks as it shone on mine in September 1998.

My spirits were suddenly lifted; I started to feel cheerful as I hadn't felt in a long time. I realised that nothing could really defeat and destroy the ancient spirit of the city; that the neglect, as destructive as it was, could not reach backwards into time and corrupt what once was. For once something exists, it never ceases to exist: it cannot cease to exist.

I decided to go to the other side of the church, to take in the view of the "other" gulf.

There was a stone bench attached to the church wall. I sat there, leaning on the church wall with abandon, with the back of my head against it. I felt so good... With my sadness and resentment gone, there was nothing to occupy my thoughts - nothing whatsoever. I just wanted to breathe and relax, not thinking, unthinking, almost animal-like. My eyes wandered lazily across the sea and up into the sky and back again.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard music. It seemed to be coming from behind the wall on which my head was resting. I was startled. (The church seemed empty when I had arrived, and I would have heard people arriving to the top of the hill and entering the church.)
I listened intently. Definitely, it sounded as if it were coming from inside the church: a small male choir singing a Gregorian chant - muffled but unmistakable.

For some reason I still find slightly odd, I immediately grabbed my handbag and literally ran to the other side, where the entrance to the church was.

It was just as I thought: there was nobody there.

Nor was the music, for that matter.

I stood still, holding my breath, so I could catch the slightest sound of any movement, anywhere in the church.

Nothing.

And yet, I still stood there for a minute longer, waiting... something.
Then I returned outside and looked all around me: there were no people, either arriving or descending from the hill.

It's been almost ten years, and I still haven't figured out what exactly was that happened on that warm September day.

There is no question of my having "imagined" it. (My mind was almost totally blank at the moment, remember? And even if I had been thinking about the church's history - which I wasn't, certainly not at the time - I would not have thought about music.)

There was no visible or audible tape recorder or any other sound device - or anyone to operate them, for that matter - not in the church not anywhere around it. (The church doesn't have a monastery or any type of dwelling attached; and I didn't have any type of radio or player with me.)

I wasn't under "influence" (alcohol, prescription or OTC drugs of any type) nor was I suffering from any physical or mental condition worth mentioning.


So... what was it?
No, really - I am asking you: what do you think it was?
Send me an email if you think you've found a satisfactory answer. ;)

The Ultimate Tourist

or (as this* delightful website which beat me to the title puts it):

IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU
IF YOU ARE JUNG AT HEART

Many time slips seem to happen during perfectly mundane activities.
In fact, the activities can be so mundane that, for that very reason, the "time slipper" doesn't even notice anything out of the ordinary... at first. (But more on that on some other occasion.)

Then, there are those enchanted moments that happen in circumstances that are somehow out of the ordinary: during travels, in moments of extreme feelings, in moments of self-oblivion, of - literally - ecstasy (Gr. extasis = being outside oneself).

It is then that the nature of "time travel" - the connection between slipping out of "time" and stepping out of oneself, of one's perception of Self - becomes evident.

If you're reading this page, you are likely to have heard of Carl Gustav Jung.
In fact, you're likely to have heard of him even if you aren't reading this page.

He was a very famous Swiss psychiatrist, originally a disciple of Freud (originally, Freud's favourite disciple, as a matter of fact), who revolutionised the "scientific" psychiatric perspective of man and his/her placement within Time and within the World at large.(And, by the way, his surname is pronounced YOONG, not "young".)

Jung always loved traveling. He especially wanted to visit Rome - but he never did. It's a very interesting story, but it's not the main point of this writing.

During one of his travels in the early 1930s Jung visited the ancient town of Ravenna, once upon a time the capital of the Western Roman Empire. Its many Byzantine churches are famous for its glorious mosaics. But Jung's attention was focused mainly on the tomb of Galla Placidia, a Roman princess in whose fate he was deeply interested.

After the emotional experience of visiting her tomb, he and an acquaintance (we know now that this "acquaintance" was likely one of his former students and his mistress at the time, not that it has anything to do with our story) proceeded to visit the Neonian baptistery, also called "of the Orthodox"...




Let's listen to Jung's own account as published in his posthumously published autobiography, edited by Aniela Jaffe, titled Memories, Dreams, Reflections, translated by Clara and Richard Winston.

Pages 284-287:


"Even on the occasion of my first visit to Ravenna in 1913, the tomb of Galla Placidia seemed to me significant and unusually fascinating. The second time, 20 years later, I had the same feeling. Once more I fell into a strange mood in the tomb of Galla Placidia; once more I was deeply stirred.

I was there with an acquaintance, and we went directly from the tomb into the Baptistery of the Orthodox. Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that filled the room; yet I did not wonder about this at all. I did not try to account for its source, and so the wonder of this light without any visible source did not trouble me. I was somewhat amazed because, in place of the windows I remembered having seen on my first visit, there were now four great mosaic frescoes of incredible beauty which, it seemed, I had entirely forgotten. I was vexed to find my memory so unreliable."



Follows an extensive description of the mosaics and their relevance to Jung.
I know there are people who are really not that interested in such descriptions, which is why I've italicised the entire passage, so you can skip it or read it, whichever you prefer.



"The mosaic on the south side represented the baptism in the Jordan. The second picture, on the north, was of the passage of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea. The third, on the east, soon faded from my memory. It might have shown Naaman being cleansed of leprosy in the Jordan; there was a picture on this theme in the old Merian Bible in my library, which was much like the mosaic. The fourth mosaic, on the west side of the baptistery, was the most impressive of all. We looked at this one last. It represented Christ holding out his hand to Peter, who was sinking beneath the waves. We stopped in front of this mosaic for at least 20 minutes and discussed the original ritual of baptism, especially the curious archaic conception of it as an initiation connected with real peril of death. Such initiations were often connected with the peril of death and so served to express the archetypal idea of death and rebirth. Baptism had originally been a real submersion which at least suggested the danger of drowning. I retained the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter sinking, and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the blue of the sea, the individual chips of the mosaic, the inscribed scrolls proceeding from the mouths of Peter and Christ, which I attempted to decipher."


"After we left the baptistery, I went promptly to Alinari [the famous publishing house who issue stock photography of artistic monuments, n. V.] to buy photographs of the mosaics, but could not find any. Time was pressing -- this was only a short visit -- and so I postponed the purchase until later. I thought I might order the pictures from Zurich. When I was back home, I asked an acquaintance who was going to Ravenna to obtain the pictures for me. He could not locate them, for he discovered that the mosaics I had described did not exist. The memory of those pictures is still vivid to me. The lady who had been there with me long refused to believe that what she had seen with her own eyes had not existed. As we know, it is very difficult to determine whether, and to what extent, two persons simultaneously see the same thing. In this case, however, I was able to ascertain that at least the main features of what we both saw had been the same. "

"This experience in Ravenna is among the most curious events in my life. It can scarcely be explained. A certain light may possibly be cast on it by an incident in the story of Empress Galla Placidia (+ 450). During a stormy crossing from Byzantium to Ravenna in the worst of winter, she made a vow that if she came though safely, she would build a church and have the perils of the sea represented in it. She kept this vow by building the basilica of San Giovanni in Ravenna and having it adorned with mosaics. In the early Middle Ages, San Giovanni, together with its mosaics, was destroyed by fire; but in the Ambrosiana in Milan is still to be found a sketch representing Galla Placidia in a boat."


But Jung also said something else, often (and incomprehensibly) omitted from partial accounts of his extraordinary experience (p. 287)


"Since my experience in the baptistery in Ravenna, I know with certainty that something interior can appear to be exterior and that something exterior can appear to be interior. The actual walls of the baptistery, though they must have been seen by my physical eyes, were covered over by a vision of some altogether different sight which was as completely real as the unchanged baptismal font.
Which was real at that moment?
My case is by no means the only one of its kind."


No, indeed it isn't, Herr Doktor Jung.
Something like that happened to me, too, back in 1998.
But more on that some future occasion.

Meanwhile, here's a website with wonderful pictures of mosaics in Ravenna, to whet your appetite for travel... in space, time or otherwise. ;)




***

(Edit added on February 6th, 2009):

Much to our regret, the website referred to in the first link isn't operational anymore.

But it really deserves to be read, so here is the Wayback Machine cache of its home page.

It'll be a little cumbersome to read all of their pages this way, but it's better than nothing.