Symbols as Operating Cores of Presentations in Tao Te Ching, I Ching, and Manly P. Hall's Encyclopedia
Presented on: Thursday, November 13, 1980
Presented by: Roger Weir
Symbolism
Presentation 7 of 12
Symbols as Operating Cores of Presentations in Tao Te Ching,
I Ching and Manly P. Hall's Encyclopedia
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, November 13, 1980
Transcript:
**inaudible word** who is one of the happiest figures in human history. He was a Tibetan. He was, uh, just an interesting figure. He was said to have written 100,000 songs after he had his, uh, uh, wonderful, **inaudible word** full resounding enlightenment experiences. He, uh, always talked in sort of a song after that. And they were beautiful. They are beautiful. Most of them were remembered and recorded. This is one of them.
Oh, good patrons if you wish to realize the essence of mind you should practice the following teaching. faith knowledge discipline. These three are the life tree of mind. This is the tree you should plant, foster. Non-attachment. Non-clinging. Non blindness. These three are the shields of the mind. They are light to wear, strong for defense. And the shield you should pick up, meditation, diligence, and perseverance. These three are the horses of the mind. They run fast and quickly flee. If you look for horses, these are the right ones. Self-awareness, self-elimination, and self-rapture, these three are the fruits of the mind. **inaudible word** the seeds, ripen the fruit, refine the fluid and the essence emerges. If you look for fruit, these are the fruit you should seek. Sprung from yogic intuition this song of the 12 meanings of mind is sung. Inspired by your faith continue with your good practice my friend.
We are looking at The Tao Te Ching today. We are looking at Mr. Hall's big book again. We are looking at The I-Ching today. I brought my old set here, the old two volume set. And what we have in mind to come to some resolution, even if just temporary, for ourselves at this juncture, particular juncture, of what it is that we are doing when we require of ourselves to conjure up symbols to encourage our, our mind to think in this way. Our sensory apperception of the world to, uh, generate this way. Our living design to manifest this way. And it turns out to be quite an interesting and distinctly human phenomenon. In, uh, some classical religions they call it ascension, but I think we can stick with the word human.
In other words that as we engender for ourselves a world, we have a tendency because of our mind to want to collect together, bring together, into juxtaposition, into aggregates, into collection, and finally into shape and form those aspects of perception, which are most like each other. Or which string themselves along certain basis. And this tendency is a tendency characteristic and natural to the mind. It always will do this. Always does this. And we at times whether we're in **inaudible word** circumstances or in positions where we would wish to quiet the mind, have to work with this particular tendency. Um, and it is that which we would refer to as the dragon, uh, the giant, uh, serpent. Those forces within with which we would have to work. There is in effect no phantom of the opera loose in the structure. There is no boogeyman inside. There is no particular wonderfully well **inaudible word** or infamously robbed demon inside. It's purely a tendency of the mind to collect, to bring things together, to want to, um, focus.
And this symbol and symbolic thought we encouraged the conscious arena of our minds to take the leap, as it were, in this natural process of bringing things together. And in symbolizing, we encouraged this natural process and even help it along. And as you can see from having come here, most of you for some time now, that by enriching the base the nutrient image base of this process and, uh, refining the conscious attentiveness to this process, we actually take eventually a leading part in guiding this tendency of mind to bring things together. To bring the world together again to shape which more and more participate in the wholeness of the world, that which we can understand and that which we would, I think **inaudible word or two** sat on the shelf of mystery. There was a touch of **inaudible word** that **inaudible word**. There are synchronicities that occur. There are happenings that are just too staggering to mark off to coincidences. And as these, um, collect in our experience, as we symbolize them, more and more we began to almost have the perception as if a camera moving back from its object, we begin to see that these focuses of meaning float freely in a context other than this world out there or the world of the mind. Because the very structures that are necessary to make that kind of integration or are already in play. The contents of the mental world are already being used. But we can have the experience to see that there is something else there. And we are loathe to say something.
Rather we take a cue from The Tao Te Ching, and we might use a phrase, let's see how Lao Tzu would say it. Chapter 11, he uses this kind of terminology. This is in the translation here.
30 folks are made one by holes in the hub by five vacancies joining them for a wheel view. The use of clay in **inaudible word** pitchers comes down from the hollow of its absence. Doors, windows in the house are used for the **inaudible word**. Thus, we are helped by what is not to use what is.
And as we progress along and expand our capacity to generate more and more cosmic symbols and find great **inaudible word** in the use of symbolism. And we develop the, uh, symbolic mind characteristic, Mr. Hall would say of the philosopher. That is that the, who is in quest of meaning and understanding, and, uh, will go anywhere and suffer through anything and participate in any joy to find this. As we do that more and more, we find the experience that those symbols, which are meaningful to us, suspend themselves in our experience. And we may visualize them mentally. We could go through all kinds of discipline processes, both East or West, and we could sharpen up so that we could visualize in full color in great detail amazing symbolic structure that can be done through. Or we can address ourselves to various mandalas. There's one behind here. We've seen them in here before.
The number one characteristic, which should draw our attention now is that these symbols are suspended in a context which is not. In a spatiality, which by its nature allows us to have a sense of the ineffable. Which permeates ourselves, permeates the mind and the symbol and frees us gently little by little from a crutch like dependence of the kind of ideational world wherein we are trapped with our awareness within symbol and within structure. Instead of beings finding ourselves as an individual holy encased in some grand plot, where we find ourselves somewhat helpless or somewhat a prisoner of this integration. We find that more and more that this phenomenon actually takes place within a space that we perceive initially as our mind. And as we move on from that we realize that the mind itself is but a flow like a stream in the ocean. It's almost as the same material, and yet it has a specific kind of vectoring channeling **inaudible word** which temporarily makes it the thing from the general universal contact. Vision in your mind, a river flowing into the ocean, say the Gulf of Mexico Gulf stream, flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. Where both water they are distinguished by a little bit of difference in temperature. Mainly in the fact that the one body of water is a flowing vectoring. This is the individual. This is the individual mind. This is the temporary shaped phenomenon. When we find ourselves presented.
And in that flow as we more and more receive a way and we find that symbols are suspended within us. This, uh, has led us as beings, in the past, consciously, to engender actions and patterns of action which would express this to ourselves and to others who are akin to it. Whether they are from our family, our tribe, or as we constitute ourselves in the late 20th century here, we are rather, uh, a hunting group after meaning. Our nutritional aspects are taken care of so we're not hunting for food, but our meaning aspects are not taken care of. And we are, we constitute a hunting group for meaning.
Now, one way to express this in terms of a Western perspective is the organizational way in which Mr. Hall prefers to set up the major arcana of the tarot card. That is the 21 cards of the major arcana with the developing patterns of relation ability are set in the context against the fool card, which is zero. So that the entire mathematics of meaning in the tarot are visible by virtue of the fact that they participate with the zero context constantly. And although zero itself does not immediately participate as a thing in any particular card, it is always that receptive quality in the background, which allow whatever it is that we're addressing ourselves to be. To present itself. To manifest. This is the same way in which we finally come to understand symbol in our minds. That the mind turns out to be more and more transparent, as the phrase is. I think that's a very good phrase. The first time I ever saw it used in reference the mind was D.T. Suzuki, uh, having his first Zen experience at the age of 21, about 1896. He said that he felt, um, transparent. And I think that's, that's the way.
So that the mind, instead of being some kind of a culprit jamming up perception and skewing inception and engendering what I think in common **inaudible word** now is, uh, neurotic, uh, knots. We more and more see that the zero mind, the impartial sage like quality of universality around this more and more to tied bows of meaning rather than knots of neurosis. And these bows with meaning float suspended in our experience. So that when wherever we move somewhere or, um wish to participate in some time-space phenomenon. Or to participate in some human situation. We carry with us a, like a book defined rain cloud, these universal collections of symbols of devote meaning, which allows us to pick and choose with **inaudible word** freedom, exactness and quickness and mobility, what it is we would live with this particular moment to bring in the play. And then as any good magician will do when the play is finished you fold the cards and everything **inaudible word** flows free, and you are unencumbered and move on until some other situation at your choice. This is the knack. This is the trick. This is the essence of the wisdom tradition.
Now it's a, it's a very difficult thing to not hear this in terms of philosophic meaning about to participate in a life sequence situation. Because that is the area which we find truncated most in our lives today. We don't feel do as well as other people have done. We think better. We see more. We hear more. But we don't do. That is, we are used by now to such surrogate and vicarious lives and experience that it's almost a shock to us to believe that we are in fact really living this and not what is quote valid or viable or sound. So that presenting a, an array of sophisticated meaning like Mr. Hall's Encyclopedia and The Tao Te Ching and even Moby Dick we need to have as an out-rigger to that vessel of venturing, a ritual basis for starting or doing. And that's why the emphasis has been here on The Book of Hopi, not as a **inaudible word** but as a resource by which individuals on their own are investigating ceremonies for themselves. Which at sometimes they will bring it into play here. And all the individuals together will do this for **inaudible word** would be a whole, a ceremony to be. Which will not be made by me. Or my mind. Or anyone else's mind, but actually made here by our doing, by our experience. That's the most difficult thing in this course of events. And that's the one which I watch with the greatest of care, uh, because that is a feeling tone that will be remembered next year and the year after that, that will gives you really a chance to float free. A lot of the other information that increasingly will become apparent to you.
And the reason for bringing in the two films that you will see is to aid you into seeing how these plays of Indian experience come together. And I think those of you who were able to see Chalk last week had a feeling that when it was over, it was over. And that everywhere along the genesis of that episodic manifestation, was of interest. And **inaudible word or two** in memory then as you would look back, if you would now, towards last week, viewing the film there with a good crew of people. There were moments when you were there. Not just seeing the film objectively, but you were there with the people on the screen, as one of them. And to exclamative that experience we were lucky enough, fortunate enough, synchronistic enough, to have the son of the chief of that village there with us in the auditorium itself. Just to bring that home. That that was true. That we were just as those people were involved in that kind of situation.
Now the next film will be almost the end of the sequence and just before we reconstruct the ceremonial cycle of The Book of Hopi. And the next film will be a little difficult and yet a little more simple. The next film is about the Blackfoot Sun dance, the Oakon. And it, again is a film, even more advanced in that there are no actors or actresses just as **inaudible word** those in Chalk. **inaudible word or two** the village people being directed by a very superior, uh, filmmaking cinema graphic intelligence like Rolando had, obviously. Um, but from Oakon was made by the tribe themselves. Um, they were the ones who decided what it was that should be filmed. Um, what the narration should consist of. What kinds of sequences there should be. So, we will have an even more sophisticated experience of the ritual doing structuring symbolic, meaning rather than the mind **inaudible word**.
Now to help us visualize some ritual movement I have, uh, I put something on the board here with, I think is of interest to us because we **inaudible word or two** that before. That is to say that our, um, our Western tai chi is rather like this **inaudible word** the infinity sign that you find, say in the Tarot deck over the magicians head. Or over the woman who is strength who is holding the mouth of the lion open. Or in a number of sequences in the tarot deck. This, um, symbolic motion, like the Tai Chi, was of indefinite extent. And that if you put this kind a motion diagramically into a **inaudible word** what turns out is a double helix, like the serpents on the caduceus of mercury. What is like the guide of mans spirit to the celestial realm is always this kind of a motion put into a dynamic. And, uh, one of the great **inaudible word**scholars, uh, Maurice, Dr. Maurice Nicoll once called it living time. He said, if you have to have a name for this pattern phenomenon let's just call it living time. Uh, you can put capitals on that if you like. So, it's a **inaudible word** image of the universal continuum that is possibly present in every action, which we in engender. That's a lot. That's a big, big thing.
This here, this diagram here is a **inaudible word** fire in the center. There are two dampers that have spears. They have a shield and a spear. And it's held like this. And in the motion of the dance the spear is moved in this kind of a motion so that the shield is always a counterweight to the movement of the spear. And it forms a kind of a butterfly form configuration. And there are two dancers that dance opposite the **inaudible word**. And, uh, and this here is held at shoulder height in a charging position. And they slip along in this figure eight course both running in the same direction, moving parallel to each other. And then they charge each other by sweeping up point X with spears and charging position overhead. But just before coming together they whirl and retreat allowing the spirit to flow gracefully through the air at arms length on the **inaudible word**. They follow the figure eight course again, then the charge of each other up to Y and then retreat and so dance on. So that **inaudible few words** dance from the prairie, the **inaudible word**, the **inaudible word**, the Sioux. Many tribes used this form. You almost have the kind of movement that you have in the Tai Chi. That is, you, if you would bring the Tai Chi into a dance choreography you would have something very close to that.
Now the, probably the **inaudible word** thing for us is to realize that we're in a position now that for most people it doesn't arrive until 20 or 30 years after looking at something like the Tai Chi or The I-Chang. We're in a position to realize that if we describe in terms of language the sides of yin and yang, and we **inaudible word** them as polarities, as a contrasting element, that we don't mean are loggerhead type things, like yes and no, or hot and cold, or male and female. In terms that would make them opposite on a scale of measurement where the fulcrum would be equi-distant between them. And this is very much a **inaudible word** misconception that follows all the way through.
In fact, uh, it's just amazing. I have great veneration for The I-Ching and for the **inaudible word** version. But if you read their introduction and you come to it without any kind of a **inaudible word**, um, perception, we can be misled, uh, very, very, very quickly.
On page 27, they go into, of course, the wonderful tribute to the importance of The I-Ching. And from the, when it said here. Uh, it's called The Mechanistic Number Mysticism. And they talk about the dualistic combining a rigorous consistent dualistic yin yang doctrine with the doctrine of the five stages of change taken from The Book of History, the **inaudible word**.
It forced Chinese philosophic thinking more and more into a rigid formalization. Thus increasingly **inaudible word or two** kabalistic speculations came to devote The Book of Changes in the cloud of mystery. And by forcing everything of the past and of the future into this system of numbers created for The I-Ching the reputation of being a book of fandom able profundity. And these speculations are also to blame for the fact that the seeds of the free Chinese natural science, which **inaudible word** existed at the time of Motiva,
about 400 B.C.,
"And his pupils were killed and replaced by a sterile tradition of writing and reading books by the holy removed from experience." This is the reason why China has for so long **inaudible word** to Westernize the picture of hopeless flag nation. It simply is not true. That paragraph is not true. And I suppose the only kind of thing that one can say, and this is the best translation of The I-Ching, the only one to have, is that the orientation of it is not true. It is not true in a sense that China in its accurate history. And it's not true in terms of human spirituality, which the Chinese were not naive of **inaudible word**. This was a translation done in the 1920's. We know now, for instance, then, uh, that The I-Ching gave spawn to a lot of science. And that science led out of China was due to the, uh, Mongol invasions in the 11th century. And, uh, not to any kind of court stagnation in the 4th century B.C.
I could go on. I know this particular area very well. But the point is that all the misinformation in this perspective and this view of The I-Ching is because of a faulty symbolism. Because of the thinking that there is some kind of a stagnation here. And yet if you read between the lines, they're talking about the mystical aspects and the change aspects and so forth. At the same time, it's saying that this is some kind of a, it just really reduces down to a yin yang dualism. Well, if you read my book four weeks ago, when I talked about the dualistic tendency in Western thought, they had gotten its juices from, revved up from a **inaudible word** conference came down through Schopenhauer and on into Ernst Cassirer. The idea of a subject object. Of a phenomenon and noumenon. Those things out there are different from these things in here and back that the mind is the arbiter of that transition in those worlds.
This is all part of the same kind of ideational mistakenness, which is simply rampant in history. Today as at any time. So much so that the clear vision of a natural polarity, which is complementation, is seen to be something mystical and characterized as vague. Whereas it's extraordinarily accurate and, uh, is more specific than any other kind of cardboard **inaudible word** which the others lead to.
This particular understanding then is that when you're beginning again of thinking in terms, uh, feminine say like the tai chi. The yang line is simply a movement. It's a duration. It is a, you can, you can say it starts here and ends there but it is the movement. It is something. It is the form. But it is the form that always has its specter, as they would say in physics today, implicit in it. Never just there it is always somehow on its way. This is complementation to that. No movement but still is.
I like the language where this is called creative and that's called receptive. Because those kinds of everyday English words I think work all the way the line. That is, I can with understanding make the word receptive work for me all the way down to a point where in medication I wouldn't even have to use language anymore. And only at that point do I have to jettison the word **inaudible word**. So, it works very adequately anytime I have to refer in language or a language structure to that up there. Receptive. The way that this receptivity is engendered, the Chinese gave the term gentle. They meant the youngest daughter, but that familial image doesn't really generate for us. It's not a proper **inaudible word or two** and the **inaudible word**. And when the **inaudible word** have a change of pitch. It has a **inaudible word**. And when it has another change of pitch it is the joyous. And whatever that is that changes **inaudible word** from gentle to praise to joyous, its fullest manifestation is receptive. If it were **inaudible few words** it would be receptive. So that the receptive, this characteristic, the allowing of form to move is implicit all the way down the line. So that in the general this allowing form to move and to have its direction and have its being. Or **inaudible word or two** as it is expressed here in this **inaudible word**. And so, it's **inaudible word or two** but its spelled K**inaudible few words**. Trigram **inaudible several words**.
This **inaudible word** means that that capacity is at the beginning. It's **inaudible word**. It's in the situation where it is just beginning. And thus, we call it the gentle. When it changes it pitch and that capacity is centered it has a tendency to create a concentric vibration in reality that tends to cause us to react in a way in which we would call clingy. **inaudible word or two** centered and we tend to want to be centered with it and cling to it. And when it changes pitch again it rises to the to of the **inaudible word** or that this situation where it is top mode instead of bottom mode, it is joyous. Joyous in the sense that the Hopi Indians would say in their legends that man has to leave the top of his head open so that the songs of praise that he sends to the great spirit will go through from his mind and his head out to the spirits. And in that sense a man with an open mind who is free to sing songs of praise that he's created is joyous. And that's just what the Chinese would mean by that situation. That that **inaudible word** means that kind of joyous situation.
This **inaudible word** of this background. Let's just call it background. Call this form. Form and background. Those are good terms. You can't **inaudible word or two** without form and background.
Form doesn't give us any trouble at all. We are so quick and so glib with form that when form is beginning it's like the word here is arousing and the **inaudible word** in nature is thunder. That which **inaudible word** has movement. That form when its beginning, **inaudible word**, thunder, rumbling. Not in the sense of **inaudible word** but in the sense that any time that form is introduced anywhere in the universe it has reverberations and changes the complexity, no matter how subtle, of all that is. It's like the saying one great sage will light the structure of reality. And it's true.
So, when form has its beginning, its grounding. And when it changes pitch and is centered it's called abysmal. If it has no end in that mode and the image is water. But it is abysmal in the sense that, again like clinging, it is centered and our responses, our reverberation leave us on, on the edges. It is in the center and wherever we are on the edges. It's almost like those images where there's openings at the top and bottom, the abysmal **inaudible word**.
When it changes pitch again in that form or **inaudible word or two** if I can use that type of language, when formedness becomes paramount. We call that keeping still. And the image in nature for it is **inaudible word**. Keeping still. That that which is around me and has a capacity to be abysmal has a capacity to be keeping still. And if it were to flower full and manifest itself as a un, unadulterated shade of reality it would be creative. Pure creative. And that is what is meant then in this progress of the **inaudible word**.
And the abysmal and **inaudible word**. That is fire and water, the two **inaudible few. words** of universal **inaudible word**. And in these progressions, in these series of energy modulations or reality situation modulations, they act interchangeably from time to time. Almost as if the abysmal could come over here and occupy this level and then the clinging could come over here and occupy this level.
END OF SIDE ONE
The designation **inaudible word** the symbol because the meaning is plural all the way through, **inaudible word or two** bit of yang in the yin is the abysmal that is operating over here as if it were over here. And this little bit here of the clinging in the yin occupies there. Now there are.... these are universal and so they operate on all levels and all horizons within those levels. So that sometimes at certain jargons or languages you'll hear people speak of these images using other terms.
For instance, if the clinging is the feminine center mode of receptivity is apparent in a modern Western psyche. If you're using a Jungian terminology, you might call that an anima image. And the other is animus image. **inaudible word** a phrase that Jung used is that image of a woman in a mans mind. Not just in his mind that he's thinking of someone's **inaudible word**. But it is that that is a primordial archetypal image occupying psyche reality in his unconscious. Or in her unconscious. And that, that image allows for the interchange energy between a man and women or between a woman and men. It is just one of the remarkable, uh, parallel parallelings, I should say. Not a parallelism but a paralleling that we could find in the modern world.
Now this, uh...the utility, the usefulness. There has to be usefulness as well as the beauty in all these things. And utility in this is that the Tai Chi because it does not belong to our culture. That is that we didn't, most of us didn't see it habitually as children and grow up with it. We came to it as adults and some just now coming to it now as adults. It is a very big cosmic symbol to select out, out of the thousands that could be selected out. To begin our actual experience of seeing this symbol float free in our mind, in our experience. Because it doesn't have all the millions and millions of little associative attachments, which most of the other symbols in the big book have for us. And I think enough of you can come up individually in various capacities that you begin to notice these things. That, uh, um, if someone, uh, is talking about the face of the sun, that could be extraordinarily meaningful to us. Or if someone is talking about the, um, uh, wonderful Kabalistic, uh, tree of **inaudible word or two**. You get used to seeing the patterns somehow that can be extraordinarily meaningful and central. It reverberates in ways that moving we were unprepared for.
Where something like the Tai Chi is that kind of a cosmic symbol, which we can come to with a natural image base without the net of individual association encumbering us. And very quickly, in a matter of several months, achieve the positioning of the meaning of that symbol in our experience which is something which is suspended there quite mobile and free. And this we can begin to prove to ourselves that we can do this with almost any symbol whatsoever. This is of course the, the, uh, great utility of The I-Ching and The Tao Te Ching for us. We're not going to become Chinese. And, uh, we're not going to make **inaudible word or two**. But we sure are going to be able to use the Tai Chi, uh, quite adequately**inaudible word*. And in doing so find great affinity with the Daoist energy.
I think what we should do is take a slight break here. And I am told that too many of you are cold. We can move from this room to the library, sit around some tables.
**inaudible comment from the room**
Okay. Let's take a break for a few minutes.
END OF RECORDING