Consider the following description
and elucidation of the I Ching system. I have worked with it for over thirty
years and speak from both study and my personal use of it as an oracle
system.
Appendix D
The Philosophical Basis Of The
I Ching
The I Ching, based on the philosophical
premise that the only permanent thing about the universe is change, has
been used as an oracular system, teaching one how to live most consciously
and well on the level of opposites ( good/bad, beautiful/ugly, true/false,
etc.). It purports to predict, if one pays attention to the positive elements
and negative elements in any given current situation, how that situation
will transmute into a particular situation in the future. This is its most
important feature: it can accurately determine, predict what will be the
future resolution of any given situation from the elements which are internally
undergoing transmutation within the present one. This presupposes that
there is a law which determines and governs our consciousness, that it
is identifiable and that it can be comprehended and practically applied.
It specifies that there are 64 hexagram/gestalts and not some other number
of identifiable gestalts which are fundamentally adequate and sufficient
to differentiate and specify the states of the human mind. (If we evolve
to habitual four-dimensional consciousness then, I speculate, we would
have to expand the I Ching system, perhaps adding additional components
to the hexagrams to mirror the additional dimensionality of our consciousness
-- although the "secret" of the I Ching is that it already integrates the
effect of the fourth dimensional component implicitly.
The I Ching As Oracle
The inevitable question prompted
by the nature and operation of the I Ching system is, obviously, How could
the originators of the I Ching even conceive of chance division of a bunch
of yarrow sticks or chance throws of three coins being able describe the
precise situation in answer to a question posed by the user much less predict
the future outcome of that situation? I do not claim to be able to answer
this question definitively. I can, however, say what I have learned that
has proven out over time.
There are several interrelated principles fundamental to the I Ching
which can be expressed in modern terminology and which give clues to the
answer to this fundamental question.
1> The system is built up from the concept of primitive distinction.
By primitive is meant the most fundamental operation of the human psyche
at basis of all perception and comprehension. By our nature, unless we discriminate
one thing from another we do not comprehend anything. Even discrimination
itself must be discriminated from other things and actions for us to recognize
it and other things. We comprehend by distinguishing, by discrimination.
The I Ching, working on that basic assumption, takes it a step further:
it says that, as soon as one discriminates any thing as such, its opposite
is immediately discriminated. If one discriminates cold, hot, as its opposite,
is automatically discriminated, distinguished. If one distinguishes truth,
so false is automatically distinguished. Since a thing can have only one
opposite, its logic goes, things may be seen to come in twos. This is a
foundation of the I Ching, based on empirical and experiential observations
over thousands of years.
2> The I Ching is a closed, self-referential system; each hexagram
contains within itself every other hexagram and each hexagram expresses
the nature and dynamics of the entire system. This is a key concept: the
hologrammatical nature of the system makes it a kind of unified field law
of consciousness. This structure mirrors the image of the human psyche held
by the developers of the I Ching. They had a full appreciation of the universe
and the human being as part of that universe as lawful, operating according
to the laws of chaos and complexity. But they also realized that the most
fundamental characteristic of human nature was that we identified ourselves
as being self-referentially aware and, ultimately, had to rely on our subjective
perception and comprehension as criterion of truth. A system that modeled
our mind's operation therefore would be adequate if it modeled its essential
self-referential characteristic.
3> To reiterate, the I Ching is explicitly based on chaos and complexity
theory and, since it is a dynamic model of the human psyche in operation,
this means that it assumes the human psyche operates on the basis of the
rules of chaos and complexity also.
4> The I Ching assumes action at a distance is a fact. The most
adequate metaphor we currently possess for what the I Ching calls "Influence"
is that of the morphogenetic field as theorized by Sheldrake (A New Science
of Life) and the mental influence of the human mind on electronic machines
as documented by Jahn and Dunne (Margins of Reality). Both studies present
evidence, controverted and resisted by our current scientific establishment,
that information is transmitted to other minds and objects at a distance
effecting information modification and increase and physical change. Although
we are now only beginning to tentatively even experiment in this area and
tend to deny even the possibility of such phenomenon, it has been a robust
concept for thousands of years within the Chinese ethos.
5> The reason that action at a distance could be taken for granted
is that the Chinese scientific view also assumes the existence of higher
dimensionality. In fact, it is this higher dimensionality, conceived of
as both higher intelligence and higher geometry, that the I Ching is designed
to enable the user to contact through the self-referential modality using
chaos theory technique.
6> There is a certain hologrammatical structure inherent in the
I Ching. Due to the fact that it is essentially a self-referential system,
it is fractal and hologrammtically expansive so that it contains temporal
cycles the length of which (three days, ten days, three years, ten years,
etc.) are natural periodicities arising directly from its structure. As
a result of having recognized these cycles within the written commentaries
on the I Ching and programmed them into his Time Line Zero computer program,
Terrence McKenna was able to overlay them on history and has found startling
and precise correlation with the major events and turning points in human
history. If we put together all these elements then an answer to the fundamental
question as to how the I Ching could conceivably work at all is at least
possible. The user, in throwing the coins at this moment, under this set
of circumstances, with this specific mind set and intention and question,
altering the physical conditions immediately present in just this specific
way, is, in terms of chaos theory, effecting the initiating conditions of
the situation with the coin tosses in such a way that it is at least conceivable
that a kind of attunement with one's own and general higher consciousness
and with a higher, probably fourth, dimensional geometry is achieved with
a degree of relative accuracy so that the hexagram produced resonates from
and with all those factors. To put it in a much simpler form: the I Ching
is a psycho-physical mechanism intentionally structured to put the user in
resonance with the space-time dimensionality of his or her current intention/question.
From the space-time perspective, although we think in linear, sequential
cause and effect, all events and phenomena are "simultaneous" and mirror
all other events fully -- just as the I Ching, in slow motion in consideration
of our "slow motion", sequential thought processes, demonstrates how all
64 hexagram/gestalts flow one into the other. As a result, the hexagram produced
as an answer to the user's question, even if one only grudgingly allows subconscious
anticipation on the part of the user, can trigger the proper understanding
and act as an entry into the system itself. The hologrammatical richness
of the self-referential nature of the system, in which each hexagram contains
the potential to become all the other hexagrams, can take one to the transcendent
level of the perspective of four dimensional consciousness regardless of
through which door one enters. Is the I Ching an accurate mirror of our
consciousness? Based on my own experience with it, I must answer Yes, on
the level of opposites. And its nature and structure makes it seamlessly
linked to a psychic tourist guide like the Book Of The Dead, for the transition
to more expanded states of consciousness as dealt with in the Book Of The
Tao.
Is it comprehensible immediately to almost everyone? I would have to
answer No -- although the inherent attunement with the human psyche and
the almost poignant names of each hexagram dictated by the system itself
make it maximally resonant and intuitive. But, because the system is as
rich and deep as it clearly is, it must be learned as a whole, the principles
not only understood but patiently observed operating in one's own psyche.
It has been important for me to also experience what the limitations
of the I Ching are. There is a certain level of consciousness at which
it drops out. It is structured and fine tuned to express the laws of the
psyche operating at the level of opposites and to mirror the subtle constant
changes as one moves from gestalt to gestalt, situation to situation at
that level of consciousness. But when one moves to expanded, relativistic
awareness, the I Ching, as expressed in line four of Hexagram One, The
Creative, enters into realms that are uncharted -- at least by its context.
At that point one moves into the flux of the Book Of The Dead, the guidebook
for the transition past opposites to the highest levels of consciousness
we can attain at this point in our evolution -- although, by the very fact
that we can at least conceive of there being levels of consciousness beyond
the most expanded we can attain now, we are on our way there. The important
point here is to recognize the limitations of the I Ching: it is as correct
and powerful in the three dimensional context of our consciousness as it
is because it recognizes the involvement of a fourth dimensional influence,
but it does not address our consciousness operating directly in a space-time
mode as such. The Book of the Tao does that.
To summarize: I submit that the I Ching is a well developed, comprehensive
schemata of the human psyche's range of possible actions and reactions
at the level of three-dimensional consciousness, the habitual, usual level
at which we comprehend and communicate by discriminating and naming discreet
phenomenon in terms of opposites. Even more succinctly: the I Ching is
a powerful, dynamic system expressing the operative laws of human consciousness.
Since it explicitly deals with the three-dimensional realm of discriminated
opposites in lineal time as its primary focus it may be seen to be analogous
to the Newtonian laws of physics. Are there laws of human consciousness
that apply in relativistic or quantum mechanical terms? Yes. And we have
indication of those already. We will speak of them later but the point here
is that we have laws of consciousness already known to us. I suggest that
the I Ching actually encompasses the basic operational laws of our consciousness
quite well. Not only can and have they been computerized in a robust system
but they are amenable to empirical verification through rigorous psychological
studies, Assuming that we have an objectively oriented tester who knows
the I Ching in depth, is familiar with its system of metaphors, knows its
cycles, and understands its basic philosophy and operation, numerous subjects
would be trained to use the I Ching as an oracle and the hexagrams received
as answers to their questions and the advice, admonitions and praise received
through the changing lines in the hexagram would be compared to the person's
situation as seen and agreed on by the user and the tester. The resultant
hexagram would then be compared to the outcome of the user's situation
in question to see if it really mirrored the outcome as the user and the
tester agreed it to be. I would predict that the correspondence of the
hexagram received as an answer and its internal changing elements would
seem to grow as the tests progressed especially if the user was new to the
I Ching. This phenomenon would manifest since the I Ching, as a feedback
type of system, would also be instructing the user as the test progressed
and the learning would allow for greater subtly of comprehension and relation
to what would probably be a somewhat foreign metaphor at first. Obviously,
this test scenario only suggests a format and would probably require a much
more rigorous and refined approach. But the possibility of rigorous testing
clearly is available.
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