I Ching Represents Fundamental Elements Of Life, Reality, And Consciousness

My translation/interpretation of the I Ching:

The I Ching represents all manners in which life or consciousness expresses itself. The Universe functions and evolves through the cycling of these 8 ways of being, or of experiencing reality. You can perfectly understand life and reality through understanding these as being the 8 fundamental processes. Note that each of these are general attitudes, or approaches, so do not take them to be ‘things’ that are words with associations. These are the 8 fundamental, irreducible approaches to reality and life.

TRIGRAMS
Meaning of the position of the lines, in relation to consciousness
Top Line: External Reality
Middle Line: Activity
Bottom Line: Self

Order of writing lines: top-middle-bottom

Earth: yin-yin-yin: nothing to observe, no activity, no self-expression
Translation: Pure emptiness

Mountain: yang-yin-yin: something to observe, no activity, no self-expression
Translation: Awareness. In awe of the magnificence of what is naturally there.

Water: yin-yang-yin: nothing to observe, activity, no self-expression
Translation: Immersion. “When writing, just writing.”

Wind: yang-yang-yin: something to observe, activity, no self-expression
Translation: Read and react. Play-acting. Maya, illusion. Lila, reality-as-a-play.

Thunder: yin-yin-yang: nothing to observe, no activity, self-expression
Translation: Passion. Intense and complete expression, without regards to potential reactions. Inner self-expression, with no representative object nor activity to express it.

Fire: yang-yin-yang: something to observe, no activity, self-expression
Translation: Watching and feeling, but doing nothing. Self-expression fulfilled through observation.

Lake:yin-yang-yang: nothing to observe, activity, self-expression
Translation: Self-chosen activity. Conscious decision-making.

Heaven: yang-yang-yang: something to observe, activity, self-expression
Perfect unity. Personal preferences guide actions, and it fits perfectly with the situation you are in, and the people, who are in full agreement.

Cool. I've never messed with I-Ching before nor even studied it at all. Recently I downloaded Terence and Dennis McKenna's "The Invisible Landscape" and got my first look at it. They use an ancient system called King Wen which has 64 hexagrams. I still don't know anything about it, but I will be reading more soon. Thanks for posting this; I hope you don't mind if I save it to my hard drive for reference...

Originally posted by visualmiscreant
Cool. I've never messed with I-Ching before nor even studied it at all. Recently I downloaded Terence and Dennis McKenna's "The Invisible Landscape" and got my first look at it. They use an ancient system called King Wen which has 64 hexagrams. I still don't know anything about it, but I will be reading more soon. Thanks for posting this; I hope you don't mind if I save it to my hard drive for reference...

I'm a big Terence McKenna fan, and I admit it is largely him, and also my interest in the Tao, which sparked my desire to understand the I Ching. I'm glad you liked it and would like to save it to your hard drive. I noticed that I forget to put the sequence for heaven, but I edited it with it. yang-yang-yang

There is something in what you are saying. I will test it as I have been using the I Ching for various things for decades.
Is there some parallelism in classical writings to what you are saying here?

All I know is that classical theory says the middle two lines of a hexagram represent human beings, the bottom two the Earth, the top two Heaven (in Taoist cosmology). The same was stated about the new hexagram coming from the "seed trigrams" and the "seed hexagram." The "seed trigrams" of a given hexagram are from Lines 2, 3 and 4 (counted from the bottom), then Lines 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

With that is mind, one parallelism does not exclude another in this thinking, many more parallelisms are brought in to explain a given hexagram.

For beginners: King Wen is the person who arranged and numbered all the 64 hexagrams in the order we know today. It is possible that this was not one person but the work of many people was summed up in one mythical figure. This came way before any explanations or commentaries.
McKenna was wondering for years about why the sequence is the way it is, and he found may rules but nothing was mathematically perfect. That is how he arrived at the idea that perhaps the King Wen sequence itself was somehow the "paradigm of life" or "organic time."

I remember when I cast the I Ching many times after good meditation experiences in my twenties, and I got Fire, usually double, but sometimes with another trigram. Fire was always in it though. I was wondering at the time because the meditation I did was anything but firey. The only thing I consistently felt true from the readings was that one is following something, the experience of inner light, and the symbolism of the cow (which is sacred to Indians where I got my meditation from).
Your system would explain it though: much to observe inside (self), no activity - or less and less at the body level - and things happening outside.

Here is the address of a neat online I Ching:
Warrior's I Ching
The explanations are classical Wilhelm-style, but the site sometimes uses Castaneda's shamanic terminology quite fittingly.

reply to post by Kokatsi

And Casteneda is my favorite reading. I picked up the first few books at a used book store, but couldn't wait to find the others and ordered new ones to finish out the collection. I was so captivated I used to read them at lunch, and everyone thought I was weird; except the Mexicans. Some of them were doing the same thing...

I downloaded perhaps 600 books in the past few weeks. I'm probably going to lose my internet connection for a short while, and wanted something to read. Dang, maybe I am weird...

Here is the foreward by Carl Jung. I bet you guys will love it.

www.iging.com...

Originally posted by Kokatsi
There is something in what you are saying. I will test it as I have been using the I Ching for various things for decades.
Is there some parallelism in classical writings to what you are saying here?

All I know is that classical theory says the middle two lines of a hexagram represent human beings, the bottom two the Earth, the top two Heaven (in Taoist cosmology). The same was stated about the new hexagram coming from the "seed trigrams" and the "seed hexagram." The "seed trigrams" of a given hexagram are from Lines 2, 3 and 4 (counted from the bottom), then Lines 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

With that is mind, one parallelism does not exclude another in this thinking, many more parallelisms are brought in to explain a given hexagram.

For beginners: King Wen is the person who arranged and numbered all the 64 hexagrams in the order we know today. It is possible that this was not one person but the work of many people was summed up in one mythical figure. This came way before any explanations or commentaries.
McKenna was wondering for years about why the sequence is the way it is, and he found may rules but nothing was mathematically perfect. That is how he arrived at the idea that perhaps the King Wen sequence itself was somehow the "paradigm of life" or "organic time."

After this interpretation occurred to me, and then I checked the theory with the trigrams, I thought it definitely made sense and there was something to it. After looking into the hexagrams a bit, I realized I was going to have to look a bit deeper to understand the trigrams. I felt what I had discovered was significant, though, and didn't want to get discouraged by instantly feeling I 'wasn't done,' and had to figure something else out, so I just left it as is for now. Trying to understand the hexagrams should be enjoyable, though, and I'm guessing its a similar general principle, just a bit more 'subtle' in the specific lines interpretation.

Just to add some info...

The I Ching (Wade-Giles) or "Yì Jīng" (pinyin), also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts.[1] The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.

Traditionally, the I Ching and its hexagrams were thought to pre-date recorded history

en.wikipedia.org...









This is one of those systems of information that are so old that we can't accurately tell where it came from, who actually invented what, and what for.

The Hebrew tree of life, the Asian one, ect....the west's geometric systems, the old kingdoms, everything...

It all has one source. We were once very great and endowed with much understanding. What we have left is a few bits of information from a once complete system of, well everything.

These diagrams and wisdom charts, divinations methods, ect are all based on the same source of consciousness.

You are correct in assuming that it is being rediscovered, but not because of what was preserved, but rather from the constant search for greater truth. The source mind will reemerge once enough of its hosts remember and tune into the one mind. Their self expression, the ones self expression will manifest and fill in the blanks to these once eternal wisdom systems. They really are everything since everything made them.....Love this subject.

I-ching is a great thing we still got. Love it, live it, learn it. It will help you understand all other systems of wisdom. The tree of life and tree of wisdom are both to be ours finally together now that we WILL become ready. Exciting times.

Interestingly, if you remove the sixth line of all hexagrams, you end up with 32 possible hand postures (mudras) that can be formed with both hands. The sixth line could be interpreted as a sixth element subtler than the five others (the thumbs: fire, index fingers: air, middle fingers: ether, ring fingers: earth & little fingers: water). I see the mind as the sixth element: a "yin" mind not producing the same effect as a "yang" mind when performing the 32 "fundamental" hand mudras.

E.g.: 0= unjoined fingers, 1= joined fingers & From left to right: thumbs, index fingers, middle fingers, ring fingers and little fingers).

00000 00001 00010 00011 00100 00101 00110 00111
01000 01001 01010 01011 01100 01101 01110 01111
10000 10001 10010 10011 00100 10101 10110 10111
11000 11001 11010 11011 11100 11101 11110 11111

00001 = only the tip of two little fingers are joined together
00010 = only the tip of the two ring fingers are joined together
10111 = the tip of all fingers are joined together except the index fingers.
10101 = only the tip of the two thumbs, middle and little fingers are joined together (p.y. mudra)
11111 - hakini mudra
Etc, etc...

Each hand mudras having a different impact on the whole being (thus the Book of Changes).

That is how i see it.

reply to post by TheJourney

It is definitely a worthy discovery. I will write to a researcher who spent years with the I Ching (Jim DeKorne), collecting stuff like Jungian quotes for it. Lucky for us, he is still here, though McKenna passed away.
I will ask him about some classical parallels as he is quite knowledgeable about the subject (to remain humble in an Eastern fashion).
If there are no parallels, you may want to publish in a professional and/or Chinese journal too.
At any rate I am glad you shared this experience of the I Ching with us here on ATS.
Perhaps this is how you actually publish in the 21st century... I would still ask traditional paper sources.

reply to post by D1ss1dent


Very interesting indeed! I would love to see a video demonstration.

I have determined what so far seems to be a good possible interpretation of the hexagrams. The two trigrams that make up the hexagram represents an IF/THEN statement.

IF bottom trigram, THEN top trigram.

I just threw the I Ching. First of all, the results were uncanny in its representation of my situation. Second of all, after a bit of digesting the meaning and interpretation of the hexagram, using Wilhelm's translation, I then attempted to see how my interpretation fit. Well, in this case at least, it seemed to fit perfectly.

This is what I threw, as my primary hexagram...
www2.unipr.it...

Going with my method of interpretation, it would be interpreted in this way, broken down into its two parts.
IF water. This means if something happens that you do not actively do, nor is it an active and directly observable event.
THEN thunder. This means, you go within, and find peace and stability in your grounded unattached self and its own pure, unfiltered expression.

If you read the meaning of this hexagram, that interpretation seems to fit quite nicely. We will see how it holds up, and perhaps develops, as I continue to contemplate and experiment.

reply to post by BlueMule

I don't plan to make a video...

But i made that: picture

Originally posted by D1ss1dent
reply to post by BlueMule

 

I don't plan to make a video...

But i made that: picture

edit on 12-9-2012 by D1ss1dent because: (no reason given)

Excellent, thanks friend. With that I might be able to add a dimension to my readings.

I did a little about the trigrams and their associations at uni whilst doing chinese medicine, but it was some time ago and I don't remember much!

There's a few ways of laying them out, the King Wen version (1100BC ish) is meant to describe a seasonal picture and also show the tilt of the earth's axis (unless you are a flat world person!). When the trigrams are in this configuration they are more to do with their associations, whereas when they're layed out in the more recent Fu Xi version (most yin at the bottom and most yang at the top and the other trigrams logically following that pattern clockwise) they are more to do with cyclical things - be it lunar, 24hr clock, or even menstrual!

Each trigram also relates to an organ in the body and it's chinese med manifestation. The thing I remember most is that the most 'heavenly' organ in the body is the bladder and is therefore represented by the most yang symbol. So, if you get 6 solid lines when you do your I Ching, perhaps it is a sign of imminently needing a wee? An imbalance in Bladder energy may manifest as deep depression, inability to cope, or fear of change so it could be that too. But I'd rather have a wee personally.