I Ching A Unique Interpretation of the Book of Changes

By Michael Doherty

The I Ching is based on three simple ideas: no situation stays the same for ever
change is driven by the ebb and flow between extremes
all change goes through never ending cycles

The I Ching is a tool to identify where we are in any particular cycle
This book will:
help you discover where you are in any particular cycle in your life
show you what to do and when to do it to give the most favourable outcome
help you learn when not to act, because to act will cause misfortune
show you what may happen if you follow the advice.
show you what may happen if you don't
help you discover more about who you are and why you do things

The oldest book in the world, the I Ching has been used by ordinary people, military commanders, business leaders and governments for over three thousand years, and is still used widely today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Doherty
• Release date: Mar 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370409068

Michael Doherty

Michael Doherty has led a very eventful life. A bizarre childhood set the scene for Michael to become a 'Stranger in a Strange Land', an outsider, an observer. After completing his education at a tenth-rate, boys-only private school, straight out of a Dickens novel, where only the maths and sciences were taught, no art, no sport, no physical education, nothing practical, and with almost daily canings for many of the unfortunate pupils, including him, he began his life's journey in this alien land. As a mature student (although some would question the mature part), he obtained a Physics degree. He has worked as a teacher, a soldier, a salesman, and has owned a small manufacturing business, to name just a few. He is now retired, and busier than ever. His interests include writing, blogging, reading, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, self-help, personal development, healing, eastern philosophies especially Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, and anything to do with understanding what makes people behave the way they do. He is a lover of language, is occasionally accused of being pedantic, which he doesn't deny, and does admit to being somewhat of a 'Grammar Nazi'. His background in Mathematics and Physics, and his studies of Eastern philosophies, allow him to be a bridge between these different ways of understanding reality.

Book preview

Imagine knowing that somewhere there exists a very wise entity, who has knowledge of the past, the present and all possible futures.

Imagine also, that when faced with a difficult decision, you had a means of contacting this entity, who would guide you, not by telling you what the future holds, but by telling you how to behave in order to achieve the best possible outcome.

Wouldn't that be powerful?

The good news is that such an entity does exist…. deep inside the unconscious minds of each and every one of us. And the I Ching is a tool that allows us to communicate with that being.

This tool, in a variety of forms, has been used by ordinary people, by people in authority, by military commanders, even by governments for over five thousand years. It is in use today, by leaders of industry and by national governments, particularly in the East, whenever difficult decisions have to be made.

If this is true, and it is, then perhaps we should examine this treasure, with an open mind, in order to see how we could use it to further our lives.

What follows is more a manual than a book. An instruction manual on how to use the I Ching, in simple terms, in 21st century language, so that newcomers to the text will be able to use it to ask for guidance about life situations, and to receive answers that can be readily understood and applied.

The title I Ching (pronounced yee jing, more or less) is probably best translated as 'The Classic of Change', although it is now better known as 'The Book of Changes'. It is based on the concept that the only certainty in the Universe is change: nothing remains the same forever.

This manual will attempt to explain what the I Ching is, what it is not, how it works, why it works and how to use it. Lifelong scholars of the text may make the objection that this is a very superficial interpretation, but it is not intended for scholars. It doesn't pretend to be a total explanation of the text. I would be incapable of achieving that anyway.

Its aim is to allow newcomers to access its wisdom, without the confusions caused by the archaic language of the original. I have tried to produce an interpretation that can be used by beginners. At every stage I have consulted the text for guidance, and I have been given that guidance. I hope that the reader will find this manual of use, as an introduction, and that you will be encouraged to both use the I Ching and to study it further. A list of books for suggested reading appears at the back of the book.

Important

You don't need to read or understand the following three chapters in order to use the I Ching. You can go straight to the chapter 'How to Use the I Ching'. I hope that you will want to read them at a later time, to increase your understanding of this amazing text.

Outline of the History of the Text

Although modern scholars no longer accept the traditional explanation of the history of the I Ching, it will be used here, as most modern interpretations include this version, even though it's based on myth and legend rather than hard evidence, which in any case is in very short supply.

There are various versions of this traditional view, but who did what is not important. What is important is that this powerful tool is available at all.

Legend has it, that over five thousand years ago (c. 2900 BCE), before the introduction of writing, there lived a Chinese sage, or wise man, named Fu Hsi (Aka: Fu Xi, Bao Xi, Mi Xi, Tai Hao). He is credited with being the first man to unite the warring states of the region.

A brilliant scholar, he surveyed the workings of the Universe and of all human behaviour. He developed a mathematical model to describe the human condition. He found that everything in the Universe went through cycles, including our lives, and that during our lives, we went through many cycles. He compared these life cycles with the seasons: Spring - a time of growth: Summer - a time of fullness: Autumn - a time of slowing: Winter - a time of rest and recuperation, ready for the next Spring, and so the cycle repeats.

He believed that it was possible to identify where we were in a particular cycle, so that we could adjust our behaviours accordingly. For example, if in a particular cycle, our life situation was passing through the Autumn phase, then it would be counter-productive to attempt to promote growth in our endeavours. The correct behaviour would be to wait until the Spring part of the cycle, and then go for it. The I Ching knows where we are in a particular cycle and advises us accordingly.

Fu Hsi described the Universe and all its contents, including us, and our cycles of change, as being controlled by eight forms of energy, the symbols for which consist of eight 3-line trigrams, which he named:

Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, Earth

The names may seem strange, but they don't refer to things that we normally associate with these names, but to energies:

Heaven, the Creative energy

Lake, the Joyous energy

Fire, the Clinging energy

Thunder, the Arousing energy

Wind, the Gentle energy

Water, the Abysmal energy

Mountain, the Keeping Still energy

Earth, the Receptive energy

(You will see that there are two trigrams representing water, Water and Lake. The reason for this is that water can manifest in two forms, one the raging perilous river, which is called Water, the Abysmal, signifying danger or peril, and the other called Lake or Marsh, which signifies calm, peace and joy.)

In the time of Fu Hsi, writing had not been developed, so that teachings were handed down by word of mouth, often in the form of poems, and frequently couched in florid language, in order that the teachings could be passed down the generations with as little distortion as possible.

About three thousand five hundred years ago, (c. 1500 BCE), writing began in China and the teachings were inscribed on 'oracle bones', many of which still exist to-day in museums. In about 1200 BCE there was a brilliant scholar called Wen, whose son, King Wu, overthrew the ruling emperor of the Shang dynasty and established the Zhou dynasty, which lasted almost 800 years. King Wu honoured his father with the title of King, who, although he had never ruled, was thereafter known as King Wen.

King Wen is credited with pairing the eight trigrams in all possible combinations to produce the sixty-four hexagrams. (Some scholars believe that the pairing was done by Fu Hsi). He named the hexagrams and appended short pithy Judgements, and his fourth son, the Duke of Zhou, interpreted the meanings of all the lines of the sixty-four hexagrams. By about 1100 BCE the I Ching was considered complete and has been handed down to us more or less in its original form.

Over the millennia, many scholars have added comments and interpretations, perhaps the most significant being around 500BC, when Confucius (551-479 BCE) (Aka: Kong Qui, Kong Fuzi, Kong Zi, Zhongni) is said to have written many commentaries which add to our present understanding of the text. A later edition was produced around 1700AD when the best commentaries of that period were added.

That edition was translated from the original Chinese into German in the early part of the 20th century by Richard Wilhelm, a Protestant missionary based in China. In order to reach a wider audience, it was rendered into English by Cary Baynes under the supervision of Richard Wilhelm, and after RW's death, by his son Hellmut Wilhelm, who has also written two important works about the I Ching. The English edition was first published in two volumes hardback in Great Britain in 1951 by Routledge & Kegan Paul, and the work is currently published in its third edition in a one volume paperback by Penguin Arkana.

However, as this and other full versions of the work have been translated more or less faithfully from the original Chinese, newcomers to the text will find difficulty in following the arcane language and obscure references. For this reason they would be advised to start with an introductory text, such as this, which has been interpreted more in keeping with the modern world.

What It Is and What It Is Not.

The I Ching is a language. It is a means of communication between the individual conscious mind and the individual unconscious mind, and also the collective unconscious that we all share.

If these terms and concepts are unfamiliar, consider an analogy. Imagine you are standing on a hill overlooking a valley, which is full of thick mist, and poking out of the mist are the tops of trees. Consider the top of one tree. This appears to be separate and individual, and equates to the individual conscious mind. But, out of sight below the mist, is the trunk, which equates to the individual subconscious and unconscious minds. But at the base, the trunk grows out of the earth, as do all the other individual trunks. The earth equates to the collective unconscious, the shared unconscious, what some would call the Universal Mind. This means that we are but outgrowths from a single entity; that we are all interconnected. We are all one. See below.

This may seem a bit mystical, so has modern science anything to say about this? Let's take a piece of rock, which is obviously solid, and made of stuff, and then let us examine it under a very powerful microscope. (Here the word microscope includes many different techniques for examining the very small). As we increase the magnification, the smooth surface becomes rougher and rougher, and then disappears. We see a crystal lattice structure. (I know not all rocks will be like this, but the argument is not affected). We see atoms hanging in space in an orderly arrangement. When we see diagrams of lattice structures, the atoms are usually connected by lines, but they don't exist in the real world any more than there is a line on the ground or on the surface of the sea around the Equator. The atoms in the lattice are held there by invisible force fields. So our solid rock is made up of a lot of empty space with lumps of matter in it.

Now let's zoom in on one of the atoms. When we do, it disappears, and we see a central mass, called a nucleus, surrounded by a number of smaller masses, called electrons, orbiting round it. Compare this atom with the Solar System, and think how much empty space there is between the Sun and the planets. The Earth is about 4000 miles across, but is 96,000,000 miles from the Sun. From the perspective of the atom, the distances are just as vast. In fact, the atom consists of about 99.9999% empty space.

(I know that atoms are not like small solar systems, but this book is not for physicists and it doesn't affect the outcome of the analogy)

So, there's not much left of our lump of rock. But guess what happens when we zoom in on the matter that is left, the nucleus and the electrons. You've guessed it. They disappear. They are just packets of energy.

So the material universe is not material; the physical universe is not physical. The universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets, the oceans, the sky, the mountains, the plants, the animals, including us, in fact, everything that exists, is made of non-stuff, just energy. Theoretical scientists propose that there exists, and has always existed, even before time and space came into being, a quantum field, a sea of infinite possibilities out of which anything could manifest into form or objects. This is not mysticism, this is science. We are all made of the same non-stuff. We all come from the same source; we are all interconnected.

We are all one. See above.

Having briefly considered matter and space, let's now consider time. The concept of the flow of time is a construct of the conscious mind. It is our logical way of explaining change.

We think of past, present and future, with the present moment, the 'Now', as the thinnest dividing line separating the past from the future; the boundary where the future flips back to become the past. But, there is another way of looking at this: that the present moment is forever renewing itself: that the 'Now' moment is eternal. After all, we can only ever experience the 'Now'. When we remember the past, or plan for the future, we are not experiencing them; we are remembering the past or planning the future in the present moment. There have been isolated tribes whose languages have no words for past or future. They don't envisage isolated events, only continuous processes. They would refer to a house as 'housing', a tree as 'treeing', a dog as 'dogging', a cow as 'cowing'. We too are a process; a continuously changing process. Life is a process. To live is to be. So perhaps we should call ourselves beings? We do.

It turns out that our unconscious minds have no concept of the flow of time either. Past, present and possible futures all exist as one, and as this collective unconscious is shared with all living creatures, we have a source of knowledge which is all encompassing. Surely then, if we can, we should learn to tap into this inexhaustible fount of knowledge.

The unconscious does communicate with our conscious minds, in the form of dreams, intuition, flashes of insight and sometimes through just a deep sense of knowing. It also communicates through coincidences. But these are all a bit hit and miss.

What we need is a way of communicating with the unconscious when we need to. The problem is that the unconscious does not use our language, which is logical, linear and sequential, another construct of the conscious mind. It uses a holistic form of language, consisting of symbols and archetypes. So we need a language that we both understand; a language based on symbols which we must then interpret. But this is true of our written or spoken language.

What you are reading is a series of symbols or letters, black blobs on a piece of paper, or a screen; but because we have agreed that these symbols have meaning when grouped together in various ways, i.e. words and sentences, they form a common language. However, there is a problem. When I write or speak a series of these symbols, I intend a certain meaning, and then I hope and trust that your interpretation of them agrees with my original intention, but frequently this is not the case. We have all said or written things that have been misconstrued. Offence is taken where none was intended. We can never guarantee that our meaning has been transmitted accurately.

How much more so when we are using very basic symbols as our means of communication. In China, there are hundreds of different dialects. People from one area speak what amounts to a different language from people living close by, even though the written form of the language is the same. So, when we are considering a means of communicating with the unconscious, we have to bear in mind all the difficulties inherent in the use of a symbolic language. Probably the most all-encompassing language ever developed for this purpose is the I Ching.

The I Ching started as an oracle, i.e. an agency or means of providing advice, guidance or prophecy. Most of us have consulted an oracle, even if only using the toss of a coin to make a decision. Oracles function by using seemingly chance events to predict the future, or to guide future conduct.

The word seemingly is important. The western mind is scientific. It analyses; takes apart; conducts experiments and tries to establish cause and effect. It sees things sequentially; i.e. event A causes event B which causes event C. If no causation can be established, then the events aren't connected. But the eastern mind sees things differently; sees each moment as a totality. Every part of each moment encapsulates the whole.

This may sound unlikely, even nonsensical, but consider a western scientific discovery that we use all the time - the hologram. At its simplest, an object is photographed using a split beam of laser light which is recombined to form an interference pattern. When this pattern is illuminated with laser light the image can be projected. But what is important about the hologram is that the film can be cut in two, and either half can be used to project the original image. Each half contains all the information required to project the image. Amazingly, we can carry on cutting the film into smaller and smaller pieces, and each piece still contains all the information required to project the original image. Each part encapsulates the whole. (See previous paragraph). This is western science, not eastern mysticism.

To the eastern mind, when two or more events occur simultaneously, they are connected. What about the western mind? In the last century, C. G. Jung, a pioneering psychoanalyst, furthered our understanding of the workings of the subconscious and unconscious minds. He also produced a scientific paper entitled: 'Synchronicity, an Acausal Connecting Principle', which sought an explanation of coincidence. This too was science. He also spent many years working with the I Ching and wrote the foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes edition. So we have a world renowned scientist from the western tradition happily taking on board the eastern approach.

For a more recent example, consider the current work of Dr. Deepak Chopra. An Indian by birth, he works in the United States. He is a leader in the field of endocrinology, and was Chief of Staff at Boston Regional Medical Centre, as well as being a university lecturer in modern western medicine. But, he is also a world exponent of mind/body medicine and a leading authority on the ancient Hindu teachings of Ayurvedic medicine.

Additionally, he has been closely associated with the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation. So, we have another leading western scientist who happily accepts eastern concepts. Because of his eastern background and his western training, he has been able to incorporate the understandings of western science with ancient eastern teachings.

Also, recent advances in quantum physics suggest that the eastern model of reality is the one nearer the truth, or at least, that it must be incorporated into our understanding of the Universe.

So, let's consider the seemingly chance result of the tossing of a coin. Ignoring the unlikely possibility that it will land on its edge and remain upright, when we toss a coin, there are two possible outcomes: 'Heads' or 'Tails'. We choose which meaning we attach to the way it falls. Remember this statement; it will be important later.

Let's say we choose that 'Heads' means 'Yes', and 'Tails' means 'No'. That may answer some questions, but life situations are seldom so simple. We need more than Yes and No. So let's add a second coin and choose that the first coin depicts the present situation, and that the second depicts the future, that is,