This story was apparently told to Carl Jung by his good friend Richard Wilhelm.

Robert Johnson has written a nice article on the Relationship of the Inner and Outer using this story on Inward Light. Click here.

A Chinese village is besieged by drought and unless there is rain quite quickly, the village is going to starve to death. They have tried everything they know. They have tried all their local people so they finally decide to send, at a great distance, for the famous rainmaker. (Have you ever noticed that all wise people come from very far away... it seems to be one of the essentials of wisdom that it be brought from a very great distance.) The great rainmaker is summoned from a very great distance; he consents to come. He comes to the village and he asks immediately: Please build me a straw hut outside the village and give me enough food and water for five days ... and don't disturb me! They do this quickly. The little hut is built and he disappears into it and on the fourth day it rains, just in time to save the village.

The villagers went to the hut, they drag the rainmaker out of the hut blinking into the light, give him his fee and pour all of the gifts that they can upon him. An enormous outpouring of gratitude for he has indeed saved the village.

One man came to him and said: How do you do it? What is the ceremony that you do that makes it rain? The rainmaker said: Oh! You must understand ... you see when I came to your village, I was so out of sorts inside myself that I had to put things right inside myself and I never got to the rainmaking ceremony. And the import of the story is; that if you put things right inside, they will come right outside without any further ceremony. And that is the power of the story!