Excerpt from:
Stephen Karcher, How to Use the I Ching, A Guide to Working with the Oracle of Change (Boston: Element Books, 1997).
Part One, pp. 3-10.
Change is the very essence of living. Our lives change, our
dreams change, the seasons change, our world changes. Some changes are
predictable, some unpredictable. Some are sought after, some avoided. Some
bring joy, others bring grief and sorrow. The I Ching is an attempt to understand and work with change.
But it does not describe change; it participates in change. It shows the way
change occurs because it is part of the process it models. By using it, you
participate in change rather than being its unconscious victim.
THE ORIGINS OF THE I CHING
A Book and an Oracle
The I Ching is first
of all a book. It was treasured as a key to the mystery of transformation. It
was elaborated and interpreted over 3,000 years of Chinese history.
The
book consists of 64 Chapters or Figures that are a combination of linear
diagrams and short, vivid, mysterious sayings. We might call them the 64 Shapes
of Change. But, unlike other books, you do not simply read the I Ching. You ask it questions and it gives you answers. For
the I Ching is more than a book:
it is an oracle. It ‘speaks’ to your situation. It gives you a mirror of the
hidden forces at work in the changes you are confronting.
Bamboo Shamans
Most of the words used in the I Ching grew out of an oral tradition of songs, chants,
sayings, omens and symbolic events used by the shamans and diviners of ancient
China. The written words first appear carved on ‘oracle bones,’ prepared
tortoise shells and ox shoulder bones used in divination by fire. They were
later collected into ‘Books of I’, written on thin slats of bamboo. The use of
these texts was carefully guarded and the diviners who used them were called
‘bamboo shamans.’ This sort of oracular consultation reflects a particular
approach to the experience of the spirit.
CONNECTING TO THE SPIRIT WORLD THROUGH ORACLES AND
DIVINATION
Oracles and divination are not sorcery. They are an inner
process that can show what is at work in your unconscious. The ancient world
called this unconscious world of the spirits. It is like the ocean of images
you sometimes see in your dreams, where you are ‘unconsciously’ connected to
other people and things.
Oracles
and divination can show us this hidden side of our lives. They can mirror the
spiritual and psychological forces that are at work behind the scenes of our
lives. But oracles are about questions, so rather than describing what they do,
let us ask a simple question and imagine the sort of answer we might get. The
question is: ‘What time is it?’
A Special Kind of Time
In normal life we look at the clock for an answer to this
question. According to the dictionary, the clock shows us a particular kind of
time, a ‘non-spatial continuum in which events occur and a system by which such
intervals are measured.’ The units of this time are identical and
interchangeable. One minute, hour or day is like any other. So we get an answer
like 12:35, 17 July 1997. If two different people ask the question at the same
time, they will get the same answer.
However,
when we turn to an oracle, we learn about a different kind of time. The answer
to our question might be something like this: the time of your life, the right
time, the moment of truth, time out, behind the times, making time, bedtime,
doing time, keeping time, in time, out of time. All these expressions give an
individual quality to time that depends upon the person asking the question. If
two people ask this question at the same time, they will get quite different
answers.
Now,
we all experience both these kinds of time, but we see them as incommensurate.
One goes on inside us, the other goes on outside us. Historians of science have
called this split in time the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ It marks the point
where myth, imagination and spirit were split off from what we now call
‘scientific reality.’
Putting Time Back Together
The old world, however, the world before its
‘disenchantment,’ told time differently. It ‘told’ you into a story of the time by connecting your experience with
images and symbols. These images represent forces in the unconscious that
connect the inner and the outer worlds.
This
interconnection comes through imagining. It characterizes what we usually call
‘superstition’ or ‘pre-scientific thinking.’ For, in our normal world of cause
and effect, the connection disappears. So the answer to our question is really
another question: not ‘What time is it,’ but ‘Which time is it? What is the
dynamic quality of the time? How does this particular kind of time change
things for me’? These are the sorts of question oracles can answer.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIME
The I Ching is the
oldest divinatory oracle to survive the ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Each of
the book’s 64 Figures acts as a mirror for the unconscious forces shaping a given
problem or situation. They are an invitation to a dialogue with the ‘spirit of
the time’ and begin a creative process that adjusts the balance between you,
the questioner, and the energies or forces behind your situation. It can warn
you, encourage you, describe possible outcomes or reveal hidden dangers.
In
traditional terms, the I Ching ‘provides
symbols’ which ‘comprehend the light of the gods.’ It produces an echo that
‘reaches the depths, grasps the seeds and penetrates the wills of all beings under
heaven’. It can discern the seeds of future developments and move the dark
psychological places where we are caught or ‘hung up.’
The Way of Change
The I Ching does this
because it is more than a book and an oracle. It is a ‘way,’ a tool we can use
on our spiritual journey through life. It continually opens a path that we can
follow. Through its symbols and the connection with the spirit they provide, it
enables its users to ‘follow the order of their own nature and of fate.’ It
opens a dialogue with a deep inner voice that seeks to keep us connected to the
living world, the ‘on-going process of the real.’
WORDS THAT HELP YOU FIND THE PATH
Tao or way
The I Ching uses
certain key words to indicate this path and how it works. The first is tao or ‘way.’ Tao permeates, supports, moves and changes everything in our world, seen
and unseen. The word itself means ‘way’ or ‘path,’ and is made up of the graphs
(symbolic drawings) for ‘head’ or ‘first’ and ‘walk’ – the first motion in the
universe. It is the ‘on-going process of the real,’ a great and mysterious flow
of energy that animates, moves and shapes the world. It offers a way or path to
each thing in this world, and gives it its potential identity.
To
be ‘in’ tao is to experience meaning. It
brings joy, connection, freedom, compassion, creativity and love. The two basic
divinatory signs used in the I Ching
reflect this distinction. One term indicates that the way is open, that an action or direction
accords with tao and thus
releases good fortune and transformative energy. The other term indicates that the
way is closed, that
an action or direction is not in accord with tao and will cut you off from the spirit and leave you
open to danger.
The Two Fundamental Powers
The tao or way
articulates as two basic qualities. These two qualities reflect dark and light,
moon and sun, water and fire, soft and hard, dissolution and creation, love and
hate, dream and waking, death and life, female and male. The people who made
the I Ching ‘saw’ each thing as a
particular mixture of these qualities and could thus predict the way they would
move and develop. The oldest words for these qualities are the terms great and small or strong and. They later became known as yin and yang.
These
words describe ways to orient your will. They indicate the most basic thing you
can do to be in accord with the spirit of the time.
YANG POWER OR BEING GREAT
Certain times and situations call upon you to be Great and strong, to collect your strength, have
an idea, impose your will and act. The Great person is someone who has done this
consistently and has thus acquired power and influence. This orientation
represents the influence of the Great in someone’s life.
YIN POWER OR BEING SMALL
Other times and situations demand that you be Small and supple, that you let go of your
importance and adapt to whatever crosses your path. Small people can adjust to whatever happens in
a flexible and spontaneous way because they are not impeded by a sense of
self-importance. This represents the influence of the Small in someone’s life.
ACCUMULATING TE OR POWER AND VIRTUE
By voluntarily adjusting your will to the time, and seeing
the spirit value in the events of life, you accumulate a special power
and virtue called Te, which comes from following the
way. This power and virtue, which can directly influence others, enables you to become
who you are intrinsically meant to be: a true individual or accomplished
person.
THE REALIZING PERSON
Someone who follows the tao or way and uses the Change to accumulate
power and virtue is called a realizing person, a ‘child of the leader’ or most
important thing. This person is on the way to becoming realized or accomplished
through contact with the spirit of change. She or he uses the oracle to help in
this endeavor.
HEAVEN AND EARTH
The I Ching portrays
a dynamic yet timeless world. This world grew out of the landscape of northern
China: plains, rivers, valleys, the wide earth stretching to a mountainous
horizon, the arching sky full of tumbling clouds and sudden storms. There are
farms, fields and simple huts, villages, fortified cities surrounded by circles
of dwellings, magnificent royal palaces and tombs, all separated by forest,
mountains and wide tumultuous rivers. The wilderness between things is full of
unexpected encounters and mystic retreats. Wandering groups of nomads and
herdsmen roam the borders.
This
is a place where a wide variety of people live and work. We can see peasants,
nomads, merchants, nobles, kings, husbands and wives, courtesans, slaves,
children, wanderers and soldiers as they eat and drink, love and hate, work,
hope and scheme, make war and peace, despair or find enlightenment, face
disaster or are full of joy.
This
beautiful and constantly changing world was called Heaven and Earth. It was sometimes seen as a great
turtle, swimming through the fertile seas of chaos that surround us. Heaven and
Earth was filled with the Myriad Beings, the 10,000 things, all going their
individual ways, each linked to Heaven and Earth which nourishes and sustains
them.
The Souls and Spirits
Heaven and Earth is full of other beings, too, the Souls
and spirits. These
are gods, demons, angry ghosts, ancestors and nature spirits, many of whom can
enlighten, guide and give power to human intelligence. The landscape is dotted
with points of close encounter with these beings: field altars, shrines,
towers, grave mounds and temples of all kinds.
Living in tao
These spirits are messengers - they announce how Heaven and
Earth is moving and participate in its power. Any action, even just living and
enjoying your life, only has a real chance of success if it connects with the
spirits. What we now call meaning, or a meaningful experience, is just such a
connection. The people who lived in Heaven and Earth would have called it being
or living in tao.
Making the Symbols
According to tradition, the Ancient Sages, the diviners and
shamans, made symbols of all these mysteries. The Sages symbolized the world for all people
through a kind of shamanic clear-seeing or deep imaginative induction. So
everything in it became a connection to the potent world of the spirit. These
symbols became the writing of the I Ching.
THE WORLD OF SYMBOLS AND THE FLOW OF TIME
Personal Time and Unconscious Time
These symbols are a manifestation of the power and virtue
that pervades the spirit world. They are connected with a particular kind of
time. We usually think of time as flowing from the past into the future. We
were born, we are living, we will die. This is personal time. The world of
symbols is connected with a different stream of time. It flows from the future
through the present into the past. The I Ching describes this in the words ‘coming’ and ‘going.’ Symbols (and the
events they describe) come from the future, casting their shadows in front of
them. Then they go away from you and flow into the past.
‘Seeing’ What is Coming
The symbols that move on this stream are ‘seeds of time’
that represent the future. The I Ching
can give us access to this flow of symbolic or ‘unconscious’ time. By ‘turning
around,’ so to speak, and seeing symbolically, we can see the probable form
things will take. Since our troubles very often come from clinging to what is
present, this helps us to let go and open a space for what will soon enter our
lives.
The Shapes of Time
The many ancient sages and diviners who made the I Ching, ‘symbolized’ anything they saw that had spirit
power, that reflected the seeds of time. This means that the actions and
objects of the I Ching are not
merely historical artifacts, but shapes of time. This world of symbols offers us
a unique and comprehensive model of the human imagination and the forces that
move it. Because these symbols tell us about the shape of our deep imagination,
they describe the flow of time now as effectively as they did 3,000 years ago.
INVISIBLE BEINGS AND SPIRIT
The I Ching takes for
granted that humans live in a world that is alive. It is a ‘magical’ world in
which we participate through words and images. This world has a purpose that
directly affects us. We share this world with many kinds of invisible beings;
they are part of us, in that they affect our feelings and behavior, but they
come and go as they please. We cannot control them. The I Ching has a special set of ideas to deal with these
spirits.
It describes the actions of the various parts of our
unconscious that influence us but of which we are not normally aware.
Spirits and Symbols
The first idea is that everything has a voice and can be a
symbol that shows where the spirit world and the normal world intersect. We see
this happening every night in our dreams. If you remember your dreams, then
watch what happens the following day, you will see this symbolizing at work
quite clearly.
Spirits and Energy
The second idea is that the spirit world is a kind of
energy, a powerful energy that helps shape the world we experience. This energy
shows itself in many ways, which are reflected in the many kinds of imaginary
beings. But the primary thing is the connection. One of the most significant
divinatory signs in the I Ching is:
there is a connection to the spirits. This means that spirit or
energy is flowing into you. You can count on deep sources of power and guidance
within you to help you through. This is a sign of truth, sincerity and trust;
humanity’s higher powers.
Shen or
Helping Spirits
The shen are ‘high’ spirits that can aid humans. They are a kind of
bright spirit or deep intuitive clarity that characterizes a ‘realized’ human
being. Sages may be said to have a shen or helping spirit. The old shamans
spoke of ‘cleaning the house of the soul’ so the shen would come to live there.
Later, philosophers saw them as embodying moral and intellectual power and
integrity. They confer power and depth on the heart and mind. Someone who
develops one of these ‘bright spirits’ can see the causes and the courses of
things and knows what to do about them. The I Ching was particularly used to follow or duplicate this
old shamanic path. It helps you contact the spirit and, over time, to find this
spirit-voice within yourself. It gives your guardian angel, deep self or
guiding spirit an actual voice in your life.
Adversity: the Angry Ghost
Another kind of spirit often encountered is described
through the word adversity. In this world, part of each human remains with the earth
and the tomb after death. When this soul is angered through neglect, when it
has committed a great crime or suffered a great injury, it returns to inflict
suffering on the living. This suffering is often a plague, an epidemic or a
highly contagious kind of psychological disorder. This closely parallels the
way we repress memories, feelings and experiences and have them return to haunt
us. These memories can pass from person to person, and from generation to
generation. This adversity, present danger with its roots in the past, is symbolized
as an angry ghost. The danger, be it anger, injustice or hidden corruption,
must be confronted, exorcized or pacified.
Ancestors
One further aspect of this spirit world is the ancestors.
Even today, each Chinese house has its ancestor tablets and shrine. Each
village had an ancestral hall. The land was once dotted with hilltop shrines
and grave mounds. The image of the ancestors offered an immediate connection to
the spirit world. You went to the grave mound or shrine not just to offer
sacrifice, but to ponder and ask guidance. The image of the ancestors opened
the door to the power and wisdom of the unconscious world.
END OF PART ONE
