I Ching
Presented on: Thursday, July 9, 1981
Presented by: Roger Weir
Great Spiritual Classics of the Orient 2500 B.C. to 300 A.D.
Presentation 2 of 13
I Ching
Fu Hsi and the Pa Kua, King Wen and the Hexagrams.
The Ten Wings and Contemporary Works
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 9, 1981
Transcript:
The date is July 9th, 1981. This is the second lecture in a series of lectures on a great spiritual classics of the orient from 2,500 B.C. to 308 A.D. by Roger Weir. Tonight's lecture is entitled The I-Ching, Fu His and the Pa Kua, King Wen and the Hexagrams. The ten Wings and Contemporary Works.
This will be the second in this series, and I'm trying to pay attention to two aspects simultaneously. One is to present each week some basic information and orientation. So that you could on your own address yourself to these classics and find some relational understanding. Hopefully improved from these lectures. The second and more, personal complicated activity is there are great many who come continuously and for whom these lecture series constitute a hermetic questing pattern. And this is not simply information or data or interesting episodic subject matters, but rather is a field of inquiry that they are endeavoring to link together through experiential patterns. And to set in motion, a rather complex interfacing of intuition and thought, feeling so forth. So, while each lecture will have its own specific subject matter and presentation, for those who are linking these together and not have deference to them, I will always try throughout the presentation to try and tailor and sculpt the insight for the purposes of the information towards those people.
So, in keeping with that, for those who came last time and we talked about The Rigveda, you remember how out of the general scheme of natural life, a circle, an annual cycle of ritual ceremony had been carved out over some long durational time. With some influx from Sumerian civilization about 2,700 B.C. And that in this circle of ritual, there was a parallel development on a language level expressing the meaning, the important, the phenomenon of the ritual. So, that we have ring of annual cycle of ritual and a ring of mythology. And that the two rings of endeavor interlaced together and followed each other around rather like the sun and the moon following themselves around in their apparent motions. And that the purpose of the ritual and the mythology and their interlacing was to create for the individuals and for the population as a whole an experience of a central presence. From which their insight reach out, permeate through the cycles of ritual and mythology back into the general field of human experience, nature at large. And that the purpose of this was to have a completeness to the ritual and mythology. But at the same time a kind of permeability, a transparency, through which ones cognizance or feelings or a sense of mystery or awe could proceed and experience to flow back into the general tone of life. And this was characteristic of the early Indian experience and **inaudible word** civilization.
The Chinese experience was similar in many regards. And the earliest development of Chinese civilization. This is the largest map I could find **inaudible word or two**. I hope this will do. Thank you Chris. The earliest locations of Chinese civilization was in the Wei River Valley, circled by the chalk. And Ill try to go to the board. You can just see it, circled by chalk here about in the center from the top. About 600 miles from the Seacoast. And it also was **inaudible word**. I'll leave this up here so that later on those of you that are interested in this cartographical perspective can check it. About 600 miles in the from the coast, the Wei **inaudible word** the Wei River Valley is carved between very tall mountains, about 13,000 hundred feet. And modern-day Xian, quite a large city. This is not the scale. Which was the capital of the Shang dynasty under the name Changan, was a small village at this time. This is about, oh somewhere around 3000 years ago. Now the Wei river, even though it is a major river, is small compared to another river that comes from central Asia and scoops in a large arc up into the inner Mongolia and comes down. And just about where the Wei river comes through makes a tremendous right angle turn because of a curious combination of mountain abuttons. And the proceeds through these mountains and back out, it goes up a little bit near modern day Beijing or **inaudible word** and empties out of the gulf of Ohia.
This pass is called the Hangu Pass. And it was a feature of historic Chinese civilization all the way through. When Lao Tzu was riding West and retiring, he dictated The Tao Tu Ching to the keeper of the Hangu pass when the great An Lushan Rebellion ended up in the depth of about a third of Chinese population within one year. The seal of that passed according to some of Du Fus poetry was the dividing line between those who had a chance to live and those who are just mercif
unmercifully eradicated. The Hangu pass is in a deep Gorge, I believe that there's a dam that was built about 1958, 59, 60, ostensibly for hydroelectric power, but the heavy silting of the Huang Ho, the yellow river, forbade it ever to be usable.
This area of China was very instrumental in developing the mentality of the I-Ching. And outside of the pass, up on this this North Chinese plain on Yemen was the Capitol of the Shang Dynasty. And the Shang are known for their ritual bronzes and their tremendous warrior like aspect. At the very end of the Shang dynasty, the last Shang emperor. A man named Cho Xin or sometimes its pronounced Zhou Xin. A great man. A capable man. But one who unfortunately got himself enveloped with a very licentious lady. This seems to reoccur in Chinese history from time to time. And fell into complete disregard for his kingdom. The man who came in and administered a large section of the Shang **inaudible word** Was a man known officially as King Wen. And King Wen was one of these fantastic human beings who from time to time seems to appear in civilizations and reinstates an order.
I've found and old Chinese rubbing of King Wen and interesting enough, it presents him with his wife. Instead of the great warrior on his horse. Or the emperor on his throne. Or a mystic at his temple. King Wen is presented with his wife. And the two of them together on a beautiful rug, beautiful pillows with an attendant in the background and the great floral drapes above. An image of the great family man. The man for whom they household is the universe in miniature and his relationship with his wife one of cosmic significance.
King Wen helped crown the Chou dynasty or Chou. And an early name for The I-Ching was The Chou-E, The Book of Chou. And this is due to efforts of King Wen and several of his relatives, his sons in particular.
At a time when King Wen had been suspected some intrigue from the last Chang ruler. He spent time in a prison. Most likely it was not a jail but perhaps held in some pavilion, some court incommunicado. And it was at that time that it is supposed that he re-organized the hexagrams of The I-Ching into the order, which they passed in traditional classic form. And also rearranged the basic pattern of the trigrams. The three-part figures, the tris, that make up the basic components of the hexagrams. And I'll come back to all this. And we'll get, we'll get to The I-Ching.
King Wen instituted the notion that a lineage should follow from generation to generation. So that the eldest son should be the one to take over. And this would forbid a lot of palace intrigues and ostensibly that, that held. One of his sons who is known in history as the Duke of Chou also helped create some of the order in The I-Ching. Now they had a few basic traditional materials that had been in currency for maybe 2000 years to work with. And I think perhaps the best way to go back to that is to start with some experiential element, which we can all recognize. And I think I would like to read the statement in here from, this is a book on The History of China by Richard Wilhelm, who was the great translator of The I-Ching. And this History of China is about 50 years out of print. I think there've been a few reprints of it, but this one **inaudible word** in 1929. He writes about a legendary figure named Fu Xi. Also known sometimes as Fou Hsi and various other spellings. But Fu Xi will do. And he quotes from The I-Ching. One of the commentaries called The Ta Chuan, The Great Treatise
Anciently when Fu Xi had come to the rule of all under heaven, looking up he contemplated the brilliant forms exhibited in the sky. And looking down he surveyed the patterns shown on the earth. He contemplated the ornamental appearances of birds and beasts and their susceptibilities and suitablilties to different places. Near at hand in his own person, he found things for consideration. And the same at a distance in things in general. On this, he devised the eight trigrams to harmonize with the secret powers of the spirit like intelligences and to classify the qualities of the myriads of things.
In other words, we were given a legendary figure about 5,000 years ago, named Fu Xi. And I have a slide later on to show. Long fingernails. Long wispy beard and hair. Wearing a leopard tiger skin with feet that have claw like nails. And he's looking down at a tortoise and a drawing in the sand that has the eight basic trigrams. They are in an order, which is referred to in the commentaries on The I-Ching as it's the sequence of earlier **inaudible word**. And the Chinese always notationally will put South at the top. And at South or at the summer solstice, because there are correlations all through this material, is three lines. Three lines unbroken lines or three yang **inaudible word** lines. These lines come from a realization that if you have any phenomenal form manifest itself, it must present itself durationally in time and space in order to be apprehended. And the simplest notation for this phenomenal occurrence is simply to denote it by just as if one would gesture and say, meaning something is in time space. And because we can do that, we can also intuit that there is some kind of opposite to that, which does not phenomenally occur in time-space. But rather in a complimentary mode allows that to be. So, the notation for the compliment or the opposite is that, leaving a gap. So that we have a motion, and we have nothing. Not nothing as nothing whatsoever, but nothing as suchness. A quality, which allows, and let's name it receptivity, phenomenal form to come into be, come into manifestation. This we'll call the yang, and this will all the yin.
So that these line notations some 5,000 years ago came into a position of consciousness in the personage, mythologically, of Fu Xi. The broken line could be represented as this kind of a comma figure and yang as this kind of a comma figure. Combined together the Tai Chi. So, taking this portion and like that. And taking this portion like that. But because of the radical interface of phenomenal form and it's possibility for manifesting. Because of the radical interface between the two there is always a transformational seed possibility contained one within the other. So that they are linked and hooked rather like that Hermetic great chain of being. That every link in that living time motion has its thread of continuity, not in some other realm, but in the fact that there isn't constant interchange. The interchange itself, I guess we'll do it this way for those whove been following this for about a year. The interchange itself creates the continuity. So too with the Tai Chi. And so too with this notation of Fu Xi. So that we may have a pairing. We may have two of that. And we may have two of **inaudible word** because pairing and complimenting and polarity is a fundamental process. We may have combinations where this can obtain, and that can obtain. The younger yang or the younger yin.
So that we have four pairs of lines and our notation has branched out from a simple quality of presence, a mystical intuition, into the beginnings of a notation of form descriptive, hopefully of natural processes, which are true at any time and space. Realizing this notation Fu Xi made of extraordinary intelligence realized that his own quality as a man, as a human, as a mediator between heaven and earth, needed to be taken into consideration. Because if one is working at universal levels, one might as well include completeness. So, one's self, one's own quality, the human quality of perception is included in the notation. Again, the same notation, on the same horizon of meaning as any phenomenal manifestation. Thus, adding a yang line to each one of those. And likewise, a yin line to each one of these creating eight trigrams. So that we have moved from a basic quality of realization and insight into a notation using just two elements and that expressively developed into a series of eight trigrams.
Now the arrangement of those trigrams according to the Fu Xi was based on a natural annual cycle, a ritual cycle. Because he would have been used to an annual ceremonial cycle and any expression worth considering would have mirrored that kind of form to him. So that the creator, the **inaudible word** line were positioned at the summer solstice, the fullness of the year. And its compliment **inaudible word**, the receptive was placed at the winter solstice. At the equinox hill horizon perpendicular to this solstice line were the notations for two elements. And each one of those trigrams was given a natural element. And we'll come to the **inaudible word** in a minute. Fire and water were placed at the equinoxes. The Autumn is water, and the spring is fire. So that you had a way of going in your inner realization, in your comportment.
At the time of Fu Xi about 5,000 years ago in China, the recognition that we are now about July 9th, we have just passed by the summer solstice, the notation of Chen, of the purely creator. And we are moving towards a trigram situation called Soon the gentle, which is (writes on chalkboard). So, heaven is the image for the summer solstice and moving towards the image of winter. Sometimes it was wood and Soon the gentle. And eventually when we come to the autumnal Equinox, we will approach the quality of Khan, the abysmal or water.
Now what makes this intelligent? Other than the fact that we could say is this quaint Chinese history. Or quaint Chinese mythology. What bearing does it have for us? And in how do we bring this kind of quaint imagery into connection with this profound beginning from the Tai Chi, from the sense of duration and the sense of suchness behind the creative and receptive. In this way, that if we arrange a progression. A progression of manifestation this yang line, which is at the bottom of this triangle in its next phase rises in the form. That is, it rises in the notational form, but it rises also in its universal manifestation. Just as in arithmetic we moved from two to three to four, we have different qualities of possibility. And if we have a mathematic to include that notational system in, we can describe reality. And by holding that description firm in our understanding actually moves the world with it. The same here. This primitive Chinese notation of a movement of this yang line up in the expression until it finally comes to the top. And then it is completed in the fullness of three yang lines together. So that the changes is a change in pitch of a creative line that is in its adnominal duration within an expression that takes in the universe as a whole and positions one creative moment in its progression through various pitch changes. And this beginning is called the arousing. And this middle is called claiming. And this top is called keeping still. And its foundation is the creative.
The same type of creative happens to the unbroken line are the receptive. It begins at the bottom as Soon the gentle and moves to the middle where it becomes Kahn, the abysmal. This **inaudible word** to the top. And we have our position up here at **inaudible word**, which is the **inaudible word**. And of course, its final development into the receptive. The book of change, being the transformations on one level in the notation that we're using to describe reality, the mathematics of natural cosmology. And it means just these kinds of changes, the movements of the lines within the expressive forms. And as these move up, as the yang line moves out and its position here. Or the yin line moves up in its position here. At this level of equilibrium, understand the stage.
At that level of equilibrium, a very curious development happens. The claiming tends to be perfectly interchangeable with the abysmal. That is to say heaven and earth form a very nice comfortable polarity. And mountains and lakes form a nice polarity. And wind and thunder form a very nice polarity. But fire and water tend to be so equal that they would tend to either cancel each other out totally, or they would exchange. They would transform easily. And this is the point in the progression in the changes of the trigrams where fire and water tend to act sometimes as if they are in each other's progression. And that observation is included in the form of the Tai Chi. This notation here gives us to understand that in the progression of changes, fire of the yang sometimes operates as if it is in the yin mode. And the water operates as if it is in the yang mode and creates that necessary nuclear interchange, where transformational energy actually has a notational and physiological and mystical bridge across which to flow unimpeded. This transformational quality is included every time we see the notation of the Tai Chi. And of the hexagrams is based on this and well get to that just a little bit.
So, Fu Xi developed the trigrams. And the collection of the eight trigrams together is called The Ba Gua. BAS. Each trigram in Chinese is called a Gua and Ba, eight so The Ba Gua. He also developed this sequence of earlier heaven where their arrangement was given a annual cycle based on summer solstice being creative, the autumn being water, the abysmal. **inaudible word** at the winter solstice receptive. And spring **inaudible word** fire **inaudible word**. So that this notation and clockwise motion implies also that the Tai Chi itself rotationally creates time. the sense of time. And its time is linked to a well-known pattern, that of the seasonal year. So that it's notation on how time is structured philosophically can be based on this natural cycle and lifted off abstractly and recognized by the philosophic consciousness as a template to use to structure our understanding of any time sequence. So that we can take this rotational quality of temporizing and apply it in many, many different situations. In other words, its becomes a tool.
A second quality of this form is its radiational import. And also, there is a movement of implosion also implied. And this radiance creates the sense of spatiality, space. And time and space are related relatively in the way in which this, these two kinds of dynamics interpenetrate and create the fabric of what we call reality. Time and space, rotation and radiation. All of this was lurking in this development by Fu Xi. All of this was simmering in the Chinese culture for about 2000 years. So that when we come to the Chou Dynasty, King Wen and the Duke of Chou we don't come to Western barbarians as they were described by many historians. They were not Western barbarians. There was as much time between Fu Xi and King Wen as there is between Narmer, who founded the Egyptian dynasties and someone like **inaudible word** in classical Athens. All that time. All that intelligent, humane time. Developing people like ourselves. No different. So that the penetration and the influence of this material was almost universal at that time. So that what King Wen and the Duke of Chou did was not so much to discover something, but to refashion a fabric of intuition and natural mysticism and philosophic notation into that book, which we have today, The I-Ching. They took that basis.
Now, one other discovery, interesting enough, and I'll just pass over it because you can find all this information for yourself. Fu Xi apparently got a lot of his insight he said, according to mythology, from watching a tortoise crawl out of the Yellow River. And supposedly with dragon lurking in the clouds he saw this map in some form or another in the back of the tortoise. It's apocryphal, but it's interesting and useful. And this Yellow River map, I guess I should write that up here. **inaudible few words** Yellow River. Yellow River map very useful for portioning out numbers and relation.
This is a one, yin two, three yang, four yin. Five for the Earth, the center. Six, seven, eight, nine and ten written this way. This kind of a notation using numbers this way gives us, I believe it's 30 numbers for yang and 25 for yin making a total of 55 numbers. And you'll find in your I-Ching a discussion of this in The Ta Chuan, the great treatise.
And weve not arrived at a moment here where we should describe where we are and what we are doing instead. Were still with Fu Xi. We're still with the origins of the conception that led to the development of The I-Ching. But now we're coming up to The I-Ching itself and we have to take a look at something in here in order to find out how to link this together.
The I-Ching as a book has two separate books actually was published in two parts. My original edition of it, which I fortunately still have was in two books. Book one is the text, which gives the 64 hexagrams and various commentaries on them. And then in the middle of the book, and it's the middle of the book that you should start with if you buy The I-Ching and you're looking at it, the material. And in the material are various commentaries, classical commentaries. There were 10 of them. Actually, the first eight are usable. The last two not so interesting. And in fact, in the first eight, the first three have two parts. So there really are only five really excellent treatises or commentaries included here. The third one is called The Ta Chaun. Ta means big. The character for Ta is like man only man stretched huge. Ta. And in The Ta Chaun, we have this, on page 309 of your I-Ching, if you're keeping notes you can look to it and find that out. Playing around with this notation this way. Fu Xi and his friends came to a very interesting understanding. In order to use The I-Ching for divination to find out which hexagram applied to a given situation. They would use the stocks of the yarrow plant. And you can find yarrow seeds and grow your own. Very nice little flowers and so forth. And they would take 49 yarrow stocks and they would be divided into two piles. And one would be taken from the right-hand pile, put between the ring finger and small finger set aside. Then the remaining stack would be separated by fours until you got down to where you couldn't take any more away. And there would be just so many left and those would be put between the middle finger and the ring finger. And you would do the same to the other step. And so that you would end up in your hand with a certain number of yarrow stocks. And generally, they would add up to either nine or five. And there wasn't a notation for this. You would do this and then through the, you would go through this approximately three times and you would come up with one change, the numerical value for one change.
We neednt go into this in great depth, except just to point out that in this process of creating numbers out of divination relating back to all that we've said about the Tai Chi, the trigrams and the experience of the moving lines, the non-moving lines. They came up with a very interesting situation. And that is, if you went through this divination pattern, the creative total out of its total possibility, its whole matrix of possibility, totaled 216. And the yin totaled 144. So that, that was the ultimate matrix if everything was counted. All the movable elements of this divinatory system were taken into consideration. This is what you came out with. Well, this was started because if you add it together, it makes it very familiar number. It makes 360 exactly. Which are the degrees of a circle. Which are approximately the days of the year. And you can imagine sitting on the bluffs over the Yellow River 5000 years ago, this is very, very formidable. You had in your hands, a template, which not only related mystically to nature and philosophically to the very processes of your consciousness, but you could begin to play with understanding the entire cosmos by what had appeared at first some sort of a, of a trip.
Incidentally, later on. And this is of interest to those of you who are familiar with the, the Chinese. When all of this has been done six times, for there are six lines of a hexagram the total of the remainders is 24 times six, 144 stalks and so forth. The numbers of the stalks and the two parts amount to 11,520 things. Because all together in the book of changes there are 192 lines of each kind, 384 lines total. And 64 times six gives us 11,520 from which the phrase 10,000 things comes from. If you remember the beginning of the Lao-Tzu Tao Te Ching, the 10,000 things. That bifurcation is the mother of the 10,000 things. So, this is where that phrase comes from.
Now, the development in The I-Ching by the time of King Wen and the Duke of Chou reached a quality where this earlier sequence of heaven was replaced by another sequence. So that **inaudible word** claimed fire was placed at the south at Summer solstice. And Khan, its compliment directly, the abysmal, water was placed at the winter solstice. And between the gentle and **inaudible word** the arousing were placed at the equinoxes. And **inaudible word** and **inaudible word** were placed over on this side of the diagram and Soon and **inaudible word** were placed on this side. **inaudible few words**.
What this related to we neednt go into it in great depth but just to note that it was here and that there was a major change. A change akin to the kind of change that came from someone using Gregorian chants and someone writing in Beethovens script. This was based not on the natural cycle, that was apparent in nature, which was ritualistically confirmed from time and immemorial. But this correspondence of the inner person
END OF SIDE ONE
began to write and express himself on The I-Ching, even though he had had a lifelong interest in it. And though there is some contention among scholars now for the last 25, 35, 45 years, as to actual authorship at least there's every indication that they came from the school of Confucius or within a generation or two of him. And owed their formation to the fact of his intelligence, his comportment towards tradition, and bringing it together. Taking the beautiful ribbons of tradition and tying them back into bows. So that one would prize them again. That sort of thing. These are treasures. Why let them languish. Look what you can do with them. That's sort of a relational outlook.
So that the Chuan in The I-Ching, in this book, to owe themselves to Confucius or Confucian scholars. So that by the time the institution in the Han dynasty of the great bureaucratic examinations for position in the government, The I-Ching was perhaps the outstanding classical example of the continuity of maybe 3000 years of the greatest genius of the Chinese people. And even if one would say, well it had multiple authorship, it was a who's whose roster of multiple authors that could hardly be disputed. I think if you have a team with Fu Xi and King Wen and Confucius on it you've got a lot of you had a murderer's row. Right? Isn't that it?
So that The I-Ching thing by the time it came into general distribution as a textbook to be studied, to be learned from in the sense that one as a human being was being opened up and structured by its form and its intelligence, had this tremendous tradition behind it and this incredible development. Now there has been of course, another 2000 years of commentary and development. And I think in our own time, the 20th century, the works on The I-Ching have been almost Titanic.
The first wing or commentary that they include in book three. And I'd like to give you just a few quotations to give you the flavor. This is Wilhelm Bain's translation of two sections of The Shou Kua, the discussion of the trigrams. And it is a discussion of some of the material that we've looked at and this is how it was talked about in a classic commentary. In ancient times, the Holy Sages made the book of changes thus. They invented the yarrow stalk oracle in order to lend aid in a mysterious way to the light of the Gods. Remember, we've talked about several times as a view have been coming for a long time, how the, the development of insight is almost like the quality of developing a prismatic vision of what meaning is in terms of the physical reality in which we see. So that rainbows of intuition begin to occur to you. And the full color spectrum of intelligence gets a chance to shine. Well,
They invented the yarrow stalk oracle in order to lend aid in a mysterious way to the light of the Gods. To heaven they assigned the number three and to earth the number two. From these they computed the other numbers. They contemplated the changes in the dark and the light and established the hexagrams and accordance with them. They brought about movements in the firm and the yielding. And thus, produced the individual lines.
Now light and dark refers to a celestial patterning. The firm and yielding to an earth pattern. And man, what of his pattern? What is that basic compliment? That yin yang that makes man phenomenally what we are? It is integrity and compassion to put it in contemporary words. Compassion as the receptive. And integrity as the creator. That's as close as I can come ethical American English in expressing it.
They put it themselves in accord with Dao and its power. And in conformity with this laid down the order of what is right. By thinking through the order of the outer world to the end. And by exploring the law of their nature to the deepest core they arrived at an understanding of fate. It reads fate. The translation is fate. But I think a more inclusive term has an understanding of the universe. I think fate gives it sort of a 1940s touch. Let's make it galaxy and make it 1980s.
In ancient times, the Holy Sages made the book of changes thus. Their purpose was to follow the order of their nature and of fate. Therefore, they determined the dao of heaven and called it the dark and the light. Then determined the dao of the Earth and called it the yielding and the firm. Then determined the Dao of man.
And he translates it as loved and rectitude. Love and rectitude, but a footnote love in the sense of humane feeling. Let's say compassion. Let's say integrity.
They combined these three fundamental powers and double them. And therefore, in the book of changes, the sign is always formed by six lines. The places are divided into the dark and light. The yielding and the firm occupied these by turns. Therefore, the book of changes has six places with which constitute the linear figures. Now heaven and Earth determine the direction. And the forces of mountains and lakes are united. Thunder and wind arouse each other. Water and fire do not combat each other. Thus, are the eight trigrams intermingled.
And it goes on from there. This is the quality of writing. This is the quality of translation that you will find in the middle of the book of changes.
Well, I think we've got to a pausing point, if my intuition is working. So, let's pause.
I was searching through some of my material for The I-Ching and I came across these, these two pamphlets that were done and almost a little over 10 years ago, February 1971. I suppose, next year when we have lots of time and money why we will start producing these things again, and we'll have things to pass out to you. Right now, we're poor and have to work for a living.
The first page in, and this is old Fu Xi sitting there looking at his Yellow River tortoise in its shell in the Bagua. And one of the interesting observations that comes out of this, a statement here, a symbol is a unity. A symbol is a unity. A human being uses this unity to unify himself. It's like a yoga. And there is such a thing as a symbolic yoga. A yoga of symbolism. And it implies, and this is so, that we are capable of unity. Man is capable of unity. Symbols are dynamic. That means that they grow rotationally, radiational and transform. And so, man using those grows and transforms. Unfolding the symbol further and discovering, discovering, uncovering hitherto invisible aspects to things. And the more that this goes on, the more one realizes that the world was invisible. And that what you saw wasn't even the tip of the iceberg. And later on, hardly even comes into play.
Man can be dynamic aware of changes, accepting, understanding. Richard Wilhelms son Hellmut in his several fine books. This one is very nice, Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes, published by the University of Washington Press. It's available on the paperback. Theres an interesting observation here in chapter three about human events.
At this point of the tape, a few paragraphs were lost due to changing the cassettes.
With that one **inaudible word** back one step into an interlin
. intellectualization of the process. And instead of understanding the interplay of forces, one begins to map out their polarities and you literally magnetize yourself to your own imagery inside. And you end up with a prize illusion, which you embellish and hold on to more and more until somebody says your out of line. And if you don't do them in and have that final attribute of humility you have to go back.
And the basic key to it is that instead of falling into this polarizing **inaudible word** making mentality, there is a complementation and interchange, an interplay, which exists in active conception and perception. And in order to keep us honed into this proper concentration, this proper sense of action, we have all kinds of aids and helps. And in fact, the structure of what we call civilization is the aggregate and the **inaudible word** of those aids and helps. This is the sacred nature of civilization. There was no other reason to make all these things. Except that we as beings need to have this kind of architecture of reminders. And we need to have it every day and constantly to pass on to our children to remember those who came before us.
And so, such a divine command can be issued to man and impose upon him a certain type of action. One must hold to a prescribed course with utmost concentration and consolidate the command by assuming a correct position. Further divine commands can determine the events through which positive or negative guidelines are set for man. If such guidelines seem contrary, one must nevertheless submit. Protection can be denied, whatever the, whenever possible, one must follow the will of heaven devoted.
So, there's constantly this reminder that we are not at the center, although we may occupy in our perspective, a needed bridge. We are not the spindle around which the cocoon of reality. We are not the axis. But we participate in essential, functional, relational mode to that motion and to its regularity and to as manifestation in the world. Largely through symbols. Largely through this. And so, this kind of a statement. I guess I'm reading my own words. The I-Ching is a symbol. That is The I-Ching. The I-Ching is a symbol of the universe. Every aspect of the process of change is symbolized in the pattern of the 64 hexagrams. Man, the harmon
harmonizer interprets the changes in the one symbolized by the other. This is part of man's nature. He interprets symbols. Its part of our natural function. Anytime we rise playing a phenomenal existence. We interpret. We are Hermeneutic.
That we interpret symbols, the invisible is accessible through the visible. In learning The I-Ching we aging is distinctly human. You could say at first distinctly human in the Chinese mode, but it doesn't take you very long to realize that we're right there too. And it is there for us also. It sold a million copies in this country. Yeah.
Each hexagram is an image of a relationship. Man as a part of things is capable of each one and all of these relationships. We span the entire gamut, the whole pattern. The hexagrams are pictures of himself in this or that relationship. Symbolic pictures because they refer back to the symbol, the entire book of changes as a unity. That is any given hexagram is an image of that situation. And it has its meaning because its referential pattern is complete. The whole book. So that any one given hexagram that one arrives at is simply that beginning thumbprint on the identification of the whole. And if one simply does The I-Ching as a divination of whether or not you're going to get what you want today. That is really foolish because there's something else there. Why settle for a pretty bag of marbles when you can travel throughout the world? You see the contrast.
So that, favorite phrase in I-Ching is that heaven suspends its emblems. That is to say that in a celestial understanding of this kind of symbolism, we can go anywhere. The coordinates will extend to any meaning horizon whatsoever. There is no limitation whatsoever. And since we are apparently going to be at home in a very larger universe, this is a wonderful, wonderful discovery for us to pack in our bag and take along. It is a mobile symbolic unity. And the symbol works because it refers back, this itself, refers back to a living universe. So, any given hexagram as an image has its meaning and integrity because it fits into this pattern. And this and its term has its meaning because it fits into the universe, as it is seen and unseen.
For a symbol to work it's organizing capacities must be true to reality. Man must also be true to that reality for the working symbol to connect up with his work. Man, and symbol jive when both are true to reality and thus to each other. So, it's a very curious thing. We find ourselves coming up with a, an image, a hexagram for a situation. And if we're not in too much of a rush to try and objectify that, to polarize ourselves and say, Oh, it's that hexagram. Wonder what that means? But to be line heaven, suspend its symbols. Hold it in our patience. Hold it in our experience. Let that complimentary energy occur. Maybe tomorrow or maybe next week some insight would come from that. Or next year.
And by refusing to let it fall into that cash of known things the imagery and The I-Ching begins its rotational and radiational meaning. And little by little, you realize that those patterns really are there, and they are alive. And that your perception of what's what begins to hone itself into an attentiveness that you begin to see almost in every day natural occurrences. Those kinds of images that Fu Xi was talking about 5,000 years ago. And you begin experiencing wind as penetration. And you hear thunder and understand the arousing and it's **inaudible word** for the dragon. That sort of thing.
As Faulkner once said about a great writing, characters cast shadows. And just so if we don't turn them into cartoon blurbs by polarizing them, universal images come alive. And we discover that their liveliness for is due to their personal relatedness for us and we find ourselves at home. And anywhere you want you're at home.
Well, I've got some images on slides. We also have a request. There's always a request to do a hexagram. So, after we have the slides, we'll utilize these American quarters and see what we can find out. Let's have some slides first.
I hope some of this will be of service to you. **inaudible background chatter for a few minutes**.
Wonderful traditional dragon man. That is the interface between heaven. And the dragon is the celestial serpent who knows all about him. Theres a wonderful Chinese phrase about dear **inaudible word or two**. The phrase is **inaudible word** it means the snake of the place. Meaning that no one knows a snake better than a snake that lives in it **inaudible few words** up and below. Well, the dragon in the **inaudible few words** and old Fu Xi has at least a very close **inaudible word**
And there's the Bhagwan down in the corner. It looks like a mosquito stretched ready to bite him.
These are **inaudible word or two** actually from Anya that Mr. Hall collected. When was he there? He was there in **inaudible few words** 1923. These are in the PRS collections so I hope that many of you will take advantage of the fact that this image **inaudible word** at PRS is here. And **inaudible word or two** and we actually have wonderful collection of objects. And this **inaudible word** are here. There were mountains that were discovered.
And apparently the Chinese characters are extremely difficult to read on some of them. Some are fakes. And some have primordial Chinese characters related almost too **inaudible word** symbolism.
**inaudible few words**
This is one of the real great works of Asian art. This is my Muja. And this gives you a visually the sense of how something phenomenal comes into time space from the invisible background. How the yin and the yang interpenetrate. And how in the approximate arching of movement of nuclear reality, what we would call something objective, emergences and positions itself. Actually, in pure nothingness. Just as in this visual presentation. Well see more of this, if you like to style and the concept, more of this concept later on in other lectures in the series.
This is a traditional Chinese Sage. This is a painting by **inaudible few words**. The sage peering up to nothing in particular and to everything in particular at the same time. The movement from phenomenal to transcendental modes of perception. And stylized here the vegetation giving us the theme and the tone as if it were **inaudible word or two** for the motion of the mental forms reaching up in staggered lightening clumps **inaudible word** jumps into the nothingness. And finding nothing in particular **inaudible few words** home. Complimenting the one **inaudible word**
This again. A similar theme. Different painting, same presentation. Here we're given flight of heavens **inaudible word**.
**inaudible word or two** again. This time the sage become a recluse, a hermit. He doesn't even have to be positioned on the rock. He can be set off onto the side crossing the stream on the bridge. Once an inner perception is developed, you don't have to be stage center at all to be in the **inaudible word**. This being **inaudible word**.
Much, much later. This is almost recent. Same kind of thing. The interplay between creative and receptive is primal. **inaudible word** mountain.
**inaudible several words**. In a **inaudible few words**. Here even in a house, even in the **inaudible word** style the structure, architectural structure, in its form indicate the interplay of creative and receptive. The yin and the yang. **inaudible few words** don't have to touch exactly. And the interval creates the articulation and is part of the structure. So that the painting technique in itself is both artistic and discursive **inaudible word**. Its apropos of that kind of symbolism that comes to be second nature in The I-Ching.
And just the tone of the mystery of the way in which mountains and scenery, landscapes and mindscapes began to occur to one. They do in fact have a fairy tale, mystical quality to it. And the **inaudible word** of enchantedness. And life itself becomes an adventure.
The movement of water is almost like a disconnect. That's when water becomes like fire. Just like in the **inaudible word or two**.
Or sometimes the **inaudible word** of mist seems to envelop half the world.
These are all expressions of that interplay. That mind insight and vision **inaudible word** structure in The I-Ching.
These are the **inaudible word or two** portrayal of the Tai Chi. The tree and the water and their relationality and their inner penetration and kinship.
And now two slides that also being by Muja. The interpenetrations are what we would call today as conscious and unconscious. The conscious tiger, maybe not the white tiger of the West. Pretty fierce tiger. He's staring down. And staring back at him is **inaudible word or two** dragon. And they look to each other. They are not **inaudible word**. They are **inaudible word** of a larger **inaudible few words** intelligence **inaudible few words**.
And finally, some very sophisticated formal lay presentations. This is by **inaudible word** also. Some landscape. Just like the tiger and the dragon, here are the mountains and the mist and rivers without ends. Before us the rocks and the Hermetic thread of life as a small mountain path weaving in a **inaudible word** style fashion throughout the entirety. And man's home somewhere in the middle realm between the two realms of the celestial and the Earth. And man of course, a frequent traveler between the two realms.
This image is to help you to conceive.
Comment from the room: **inaudible few words** from the moon that are really far out.
Yes.
Comment from the room: **inaudible few words**
You want to go back to that again? Sure. Yeah.
Comment from the room: The moon is not just like in the mist or anything. It seems that it's very, very far, far, far out. A very high consciousness.
Yes.
Comment from the room: A very
almost turned into a negative. A foggy morning.
A very **inaudible word** artistic consciousness. We will see next year, not in this series, but when we get to **inaudible word** and **inaudible word** long scroll. On about February of next year, well see the great granddaddy of this whole tradition. And that kind of exoticness where lines of rocks goes straight up into the composition **inaudible word or two**.
And here just to acclimate our mind, not just bamboo and writing, but yang and yin. Movement and interval. Creative and receptive. White and dark. And in their interplay give us language, both as a discursive **inaudible word** on the right and as a natural expressiveness on the left. But the unity of the two together has a family resemblance. And just so the observation of nature **inaudible word**
Comment from the room: They immediately come to me as **inaudible few word** combination of **inaudible word**.
And now a series of about seven or so slides that we **inaudible word** here. We have a wonderful, mysterious Daoist manuscript on a blue architects drawings paper. Its been in the library here for about 50 years. It's untranslated. But just to give you a sense of images of the way in which the Tai Chi and the language of The I-Ching have manifested certain recognizable, somewhat recognizable universal pattern. Just let your feelings and your mind play over the form and the relationship. Its like intuition playing. Eight **inaudible word**. Eight extensions.
Pretty close to the Tibetan **inaudible few words** and the purple squares going down.
**inaudible word or two** look at this some time. The Daoist blueprints. It's almost like a magnetic energy bomb for holding nuclear fusion. Science was very well developed in China until **inaudible word** was stamped out by the **inaudible word**. You did science and civilization in China, open your eyes to the incredible depth of Chinese science. They had calculus in the 19th century. The intellectual **inaudible word**.
**inaudible few words** quite amazing. Here it seems to be celestial constellations. But also, if you let your eye follow there is a sort of swastika motion that four-part universal season. The symbols of the heaven.
And here almost like a eucalyptus presentation. It all tends towards universality. The **inaudible word** of nature or a conception or a nuclear nature or cosmic nature. At any level of proportion of which man functions with intelligence. At any horizon of meaning. This mentality finds its home.
And here the almost did a graphic visual presentation of **inaudible word**. And the interpreting energy forms around what appears to be an atomic nucleus. Some intuitional understanding here at any rate.
So, we find ourselves at home in the universe much like **inaudible word**. A mother and her child on the tree of life occupying an intersection, an energy. Both the intersection of time and space and intersection of creative and receptive. And we have seen using those we can develop a symbolic of notation system called The I-Ching. Which is **inaudible few words**.
Sometimes **inaudible few words**.
And sometimes just at home. A couple of willows just in view down the valley.
Well, next week we go to the great Upanishads. And for those who are interested, why I think well cast one hexagram grounding for our dear friend John. But next week will be The Upanishads so thank you very much. And stay, if you wish to stay well, we'll do a little hexagram for **inaudible word or two**. I think you've been handing it over here. And **inaudible few words**.
**inaudible background chatter and movement**
I wondered where all those cassettes came from. **inaudible few words**. You need a question. Questions from PRS **inaudible word or two** foundational start years ago. 20 years from now. Alright?
Comment from the room: **inaudible few words** question.
**inaudible several words** Well try and see what happens. I guess 20 years from now well be **inaudible several words**. And see, alright?
I don't have a pen. Ill have to memorize it.
Comment from the room: Here, I have one.
Alright. **inaudible word**.
There is a kind of openness of mind that one can keep. And what it is, is not allowing for the situation to polarize itself. And its sort of like trying to learn to ride a bicycle. You follow neither right nor left. And it allows the dynamic to proceed. Somebody once described it as keeping the space between your ears open. Ive had colorful pictures.
Comment from the room: Provided **inaudible few words**.
I noticed hes not reading the famous **inaudible word**.
**inaudible comments/chatter from the room**
Now your close to **inaudible word**. You have, uour question has the, it had the receptive underneath, and it had the arousing. So, the image is of thunder over the Earth. Thunder over the Earth.
**inaudible comments from the room**
I dont do this on purpose. I really dont. I have friends at the magic castle who do **inaudible word or two**.
In the back of The I-Ching is a chart from which one can look up the construction of the hexagram. And this particular one, if we coordinate ourselves, we have the arousing on top, the **inaudible word** below. And it gives us a number here to look up. And there were two moving lines, so we'll see what that is. And hexagram 16 is styled **inaudible word** or enthusiasm. Enthusiasm. The arousing over the Earth. A Strong line in the fourth place is that of a leading official meets with response and obedience from all other lines, which are all weak. That is, there are five lines in this hexagram that are yin and only one that is yang. And the one that is yang is in the fourth place. If it were not yang, the entire hexagram would all be yin. The hexagram two, the receptor. But because there is a yang line, that is because there is a phenomenal motion in this patch at that particular level or pitch in this hexagram something has come into being. It isn't purely receptive, but something has manifested. And what has manifested at that particular pitch is enthusiasm. Rather than an objective thing, it is a quality. And the quality is that have rising. And the image of thunder or arousing, **inaudible word** is just like when one begins to sense an intuition or a feeling or a recognition. That kind of a feeling just as one begins to become conscious of that, Oh, it's like that, that kind of surprise. That's the arousing. That, that feeling tone of Oh, like that. So that the quality of this particular hexagram takes its notational designation from that feeling tone, enthusiasm. And the judgment here. This was from one of the, this is from The Tuan Chaun. Judgment, enthusiasm. It furthers one to install helper and to set armies marching.
Lets let it be at that.
Comment from the room: That sounds good.
Yeah
END OF RECORDING