The Great Vessel Blog

Flying - Predicting the Future

The other day I again I heard the assertion that the Yijing cannot predict the future. This was from someone who had been studying it for a number of years and who also seemed to have a good knowledge of various Eastern philosophies. When asked, “Have you ever tried?” They replied that they hadn’t because they knew it could not.

My usual response to people who say this sort of thing is, “try it and see what happens.” It seems to me that this is a reasonable test for folk who eschew divination whilst advocating the firm ground of scientific fact. It is like someone looking at an aircraft for the first time and asking, “Does it really fly like a bird?” Well the simple answer is, “get in and try it, see what happens.” Maybe some folk are worried that one of the Ten Wings will drop off.

I don’t think the Yijing is about predicting the future as such, just like a plane does not fly like a bird. But it does do other things, perhaps more remarkable things... Based on my own experience I will assume three things in order to explore this:

• That people have some facility to understand more than is perceived by thinking about words or events. For brevity I shall call this deep intuitive understanding.
• That there is a font of information, knowledge and understanding, which is generally just beyond our perception.
• That using the Yijing is a process which links our intuitive understanding to this ‘font’.

These would seem to be the minimum three assumptions for divination to be able to work fully. In practice it does not matter that the “font of information, knowledge and understanding” might be a God for some, the spirit of the Yi for others or, for others still, merely their own knowing soul.

Without the first assumption, that we have an intuitive understanding, the act of divination becomes severely reduced. Many people use the Yijing this way and they report getting ‘good results’. It would appear that they cast the oracle, read the text and gain a cognitive understanding of their situation and their choices within it and perhaps also an intuitive sense of its aptness. I have done many readings for people who think this way and there is nothing wrong with it per se. One such person, whom I read for from time to time, told me that it was very helpful and that the Yi gave him a deeper understanding of the issues at hand, more sensitivity to other perspectives and a dose of good ‘Eastern Wisdom’ on which to reflect. This person is definitely meeting the ‘flying’ criteria. Additionally he is not looking for a fixed prediction which might curtail his thinking, but seeks choices linked to 'oracle indicated potentials' and ways of doing what is best. This seems all well and good.

What really turns the Yijing into something extraordinary; something more than a look up book with added wisdom, is the use of Xiang and of deep intuitive understanding. I have continued here in the hope that you will give your views and experiences.

The Roots of Western Mysticism

Some months ago I was talking to a specialist bookseller. She was quite unusual in that she seemed to have read nearly all of the books she was selling. The conversation turned to Mysticism and Peter Kingsley. It would be easy to describe him as a scholar of ancient Greek works, but this would be to miss the depth and spiritual knowing which he brings to his work.

His books begin by exploring the writings of Parmenides who is credited as being the father of logic and the foundation on which Plato claims to have built. These are the roots of our modern world. In this extraordinary work Peter Kingsley re-translates Parmenides showing how and where he has been misunderstood in the past. He successfully re-claims this great work from the logicians and replaces it where it belongs as a major work of mystic wisdom.

Parmenides' world was one of using dreams and divination to heal and to govern. It was a world where wisdom was master and where the ‘real’ was something larger than the concrete world we measure today. So what has this to do with the Yijing and divination? The Yijing is itself a wisdom divinatory system, so what need of more wisdom? Parmenides poem is a report of a conversation he had with the Goddess. She explains much about the nature of the world and our lives within it. All the way through I found myself nodding and ah-ing. It forms an outer layer of a universal understanding in which the Yijing fits very comfortably. What’s more it is of the ancient root of western culture which had gathered knowledge from Mongolia, Nepal, Tibet, India and Persia before eventually being murdered by the Platonist logical world view. It survived by slipping across to Alexandria to be preserved by the Hermetic orders in Egypt.

Peter Kingsley writes exceptionally well. He manages to evidence his work whilst preserving the imaginal nature of the piece. Reading it is a curious experience. One moment he takes the reader through the evidence of how he came to this view or that and the next he lifts us into an imaginal realm where the ideas can be felt and appreciated. At times his sharp wit had me roaring with laughter.

The first book, “In the Dark Places of Wisdom” lays out some of the ideas arguments and background. To some degree I found it a little repetitive and frustrating though it does lay a good foundation to his second book, “Reality”, which is extraordinary. He sums up what he is doing in his work here.

This work is an uplifting journey of soul discovery.

Who is Kuan Yin? - And drinking tea in Wales

I will be away on holiday, up in the Welsh mountains, for a week. Meanwhile I have posted two articles. The first is Entering the Ghost River – The World of Change. Amogst other things the article explores the way pairs of hexagrams interconnect. The other article is Behind the Red Door. It explores some of the nature and background of the Goddess Kuan Yin and the Chinese oracle associated with her. I enjoyed this article a lot! All I have to do now is pack a weeks supply of my favourite tea and then to try and not get lost.

Which Yijing? Thoughts over coffee continued

With my last cup of coffee I turned to thinking about those Yijings which are essential for the serious student, or for those who want to reflect on spiritual matters, or work with their deeper psychological processes.

For the serious student an ‘essential’ is Ritsema & Karcher’s Vega edition, 2003, the Eranos Foundation text of that time. It has three major qualities. Firstly it is possibly the best English translation which grew out of 8 years of focussed full time work by Stephen Karcher drawing on a lifetime of notes provided by Ritsema. Only the Hexagram figure and the changing lines have any commentary. However after each block of translated text are the ‘Associated Contexts’. These are short list of other possible meanings for each Chinese character. It is not a dictionary, each of the English words has been chosen as a possible likely alternative. This is very useful; when the Yijing is read in Chinese the reader will have ‘fields of meaning’ for each character, not just one English word. These lists are as close as we can get in English. Then there is the concordance. It is used by looking up a word in English and it gives all of the places where that word appears throughout the Yijing. When the meaning of a word is unclear it is very helpful to go to a different part of the text and see how it was used there. If you think you might like a copy of this then grab one now! I understand it is not going to be re-printed, so when it is gone it is gone. Hillary Barrett’s review and a purchasing link is here.

Lastly there are two Yijing’s which are rather different: First is Wu Jing Nuan’s ‘Yi Jing’. He studied the earliest characters found on the Oracle bones in an attempt to get back to a simple Pre-Confucian text. A text devoid of the noisy Confucian moral imperatives. Each Chinese character is given along with its phonetic and the nearest English word. His commentary is a delight. Its concise, but evocative. Like a few words spoken quietly by a sage. It is a joy to read.

Then there is Stephen Karcher’s 'Total I Ching': Stephen tried a radical experiment. He realised that people were getting hung up on words and somehow the dialogue with their inner world was getting lost. So first he brought together disparate parts of the Yijing to inform the ‘translation’ of its parts. Then he added a section, for each hexagram giving the myths, stories and songs which that hexagram evoked and which any Chinese scholar would have in their mind when trying to understand its meaning. Lastly he focussed on symbolic imagery which spoke directly to a deeper level of the psyche just in the way that dreams do.

The first time I picked up a copy of the Total I Ching (TIC) I quickly became angry. It took me a little while to realise why. I was used to reading the text, thinking about it and then imagining it. With this book I was challenged to enter into the hexagram itself, to make it come alive in my imagination and to feel the many different tones and themes which it held in its field. At first this felt like drowning in images, but in reality the only thing that was drowning was my rational mind which had been taught that it should govern everything, a Western mind! It took me a while to get used to the TIC, but for in depth experiantial understanding nothing comes close to it. One of its side effects was to start a process of the liberation of my intuitive nature. More and more these days I sense the time and its nature seeing the images in my minds eye. I instinctively adjust my actions or position to accommodate the time. I think this is the real gift the Yijing bestows, not a book of answers but a path or process.

Just a note here: The Total I Ching was completely re-edited and expanded and it is the new text which we use in our program Total Yijing. We are in the middle of re-publishing the introductory chapters on this website. They have been rewritten and expanded for the sake of clarity.

And after all of that fine musing over coffee in the sunshine, I had to go home via Persephones Highway, the London Underground (Railway), a grim journey in the underworld if ever there was one.

Continuing my Leicester Square ponderings on 'Which Yijing?'

I was sipping coffee at a street table having successfully bought sufficient clothes to avoid having to do it again for at least a year when some fifteen or so young men came shouting and laughing down the road. The one at the front was waving a large, naked, inflatable, female doll. Hmm, I thought, that will be Pan abducting maidens again. Five minutes later came a similar number of young women, making just as much noise. They were wearing tennis gear and carrying rackets. Oh, thought I, those will be the protesting nymphs. Yup, I need to get out more and perhaps read a good deal less! My world, outside of work is becoming far too dominated with myth and the Yijing.

I then went back to the problem of which Yijing translation and commentary to recommend to someone wanting to go beyond the basics. I am self raised on Wilhelm and Cary Baynes. Most of my generation were. It is a beautifully written book. It’s a translation of the 18th Century Palace edition which was the result of a very successful redaction of the versions and essays on the Yijing which had grown up over the centuries in China. Modern research has made many advances since then and it is now a little dated. However its strong Confucian tone laid out 'good and proper behaviour' which was a good guide in my younger days as a somewhat confused young man trying to find my way in a world which I did not understand at all. The Wilhelm version is not at all easy, it needs work.

It was then that I remembered Jack Balkin,  'The Laws of Change'. Jack Balkin is Knight Professor of Yale Law School. He has a brilliantly clear mind which enables him to write concisely and with clarity. I am not keen on his translation, but it serves. However his commentary is excellent for anyone who wants to ponder things a little more and see more clearly how they might proceed in a matter. By dint of his clarity and self evident world experience he has managed to bring a clear and practical exposition of the Neo Confucian text to the West. It speaks good practical sense to the modern western mind and I think it a 'good guide' to life in the mundane world. Hilary Barrett has given it one of her excellent close inspections which can be read here. She says, "Karcher expects you to absorb the imagery and 'roll the words in your heart' so that an answer takes form within you. Balkin expects you to read the words like an instruction book, and go and act accordingly.This is the antedote to Stephen Karcher." I wholeheartedly agree... But I will come back to this in my next blog.

At this point a guy asked if he might take one of the café chairs which I was not using. I smiled and nodded yes. I must admit to being slightly surprised as I watched him turn the corner further up the street… still carrying the chair. One day I might get used to London! Meanwhile my next coffee arrived and still no-one had stolen my shopping bags. I will continue these 'Leicester Square' thoughts here early in the week.

Getting started - Which Yijing?

From time to time I help people get started with the Yijing. This usually follows on from me doing a reading for them and their surprise at its precision and meaning. I know from talking to other Yijing users that this is a fairly common experience when doing a reading for someone for the first time. The problem then is which Yijing to recommend. These days I usually recommend “How to Use the I Ching” which was re-published as I Ching Plain and Simple . The translation is accurate and the commentary is clear, accessible and, unlike many entry level Yijings, it was written by someone who has dedicated their life to its study.

Yesterday I finally forced myself to go clothes shopping as I was getting dangerously close to being abducted to play as a beggar in Oliver Twist or something. I rewarded myself with a coffee at a street table near Leicester Square in London. Yes I dislike shopping that much! This question of which Yijing was still on my mind as I watched what seemed like half the world and every language walk by in the sunshine. I began to think that Symbols of Love might be a better starting book for many people. Despite its awful title it is a superb book. Get someone to buy it for you or wear a false beard to go into the bookshop. The translation benefits from Stephen Karcher’s years of work re-translating the Yijing for the Eranos Institute. The commentary is clear and informed. Though it is written with relationships in mind, it is not difficult to transpose the commentary to deal with wider matters.

I had other thoughts about Yijing translations which I will cover in the next blog.