Heaven is far from the things of earth, but it sets them in motion by means of the wind.
– Wilhelm, hexagram 44
A crane calling in the shade.
Its young answers it.
I have a good goblet.
I will share it with you.
– Wilhelm, hexagram 61
The difference between religious writings and what Carl Jung called “psychological phenomenology” is that of evidence and belief. They are not the same thing.
Jung used logic in his work, saying you can’t solve a problem at the level where it occurs. It becomes triangulated, which Nietzsche described when people meet. Two minds generate greater wisdom. In addition to mythology and symbolism, Jung was influenced by Nietzsche. He described his therapy as alchemy, where both he and the client were transformed.
A third force is needed, and arises, as a consequence of two different factors. One person believes in a deity, other people do not, but it’s the same thing. Affirmation or denial proves nothing about an unalterable other. Two forces, and a possible third, are an important part of the I Ching.
We read about yin and yang, trigrams and hexagrams, the philosophy implicit and not always clear. The Ten Wings provide some explanation. Helmut Wilhelm, son of Richard, said they are where “the vitality of the myths and symbols is still pristine” and different from “secondary mythology” (Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching). This is the basis of the I Ching as a philosophical system.
In The Primary Way Chung-Ying Cheng says the book is a “generative ontology and dialectical methodology.” His language is formal, not always easy to understand. He means this as the structure of reality, generative in a vertical plane with opposites in the horizontal plane. There are opposing and harmonising factors in a normal situation with varying outcomes. Good, bad, indifferent, contracting or expanding the field of influence. That could mean money. In a higher sense, the field one discovers means greater awareness.
The Primary Way describes I Ching “psychological phenomenology” with careful detail. This is different from normal Chinese writing fixated on the past. Martial art schools proclaim themselves “traditional kung fu” with lineages tracing back to a founder. But in academia and other subjects, a teacher’s teacher is largely irrelevant. It’s not a sign of inherited competence. In early I Ching culture, people thought they were speaking with spirits of the dead. This confuses knowledge with superstition, the past for the present.
There are different I Ching methods, one sometimes more useful than another. I like the five element system as another layer of interpretation. It wasn’t part of the original I Ching, but corresponds to the lines and trigrams. The elements are a variation on yin and yang, with the same methodology of change.
In The Primary Way Chung-Ying Cheng summarises the I Ching as a system of six ideas:
- It is powerful enough to generate a manifold and simple enough to reduce or return to oneness.
Taoism and the I Ching describe a wu chi origin of nothingness from which the tai chi polarity derives. Yang and yin interact, one changing to the other, becoming bigrams, trigrams, hexagrams, then the “ten thousand things.” It’s a complexity model, where simplicity also exists.
- It is capable of adducing similarity among things and yet capable of accounting for rise of differences among things.
This describes categories of being where trigrams for example are primarily yang or yin, according to the structure. Trigrams with two yin lines, and one yang line, are designated as yang. Trigrams with two yang lines, and one yin line, are designated as yin. Trigrams share a polarity, but are also different. Man and woman are categories, within which variations occur.
- It is capable of comprehending an infinity and presenting a unified totality of the infinite.
Infinity implies movement and differentiation, which is different from unity. Unity – one thing – means you’re not moving from one place to another across time. The I Ching recognises both, as a metaphysical ultimate and practical reality. The eight trigrams are placed around a centre. As the Tao Te Ching advises (chapter 11) the emptiness at the centre of a wheel is what makes it useful.
- It is capable of preserving our sense of reality (concrete yet general and non-transitional) and our sense of transition to one and many at the same time.
Western philosophy asks the question what do we really know. Bertrand Russell enquired about a table. Does “table” exist as an idea? We say, with certainty, our kitchen will exist for tomorrow’s breakfast. We can also say this is not ultimately true or philosophically correct. The simultaneous reality is built into the I Ching.
- It is capable of identifying all individual things as individuals and relating them to reality and all other things, to allow each individual thing to contribute meaning to other things.
Trigrams are singular, but part of a functional eight. Hexagram lines correspond to different layers of society and psyche. The Path of Least Resistance, by Robert Fritz, describes a psychological system where structure is the important factor for change. Popular self development methods focus on supposed problems to solve which is a different and (he says) insufficient approach. The I Ching is structural, identifying separate but connecting parts.
- It allows meaning to be related to truth (in the objective sense) and understanding (in the subjective sense) at the same time.
Since Darwin, Nietzsche, then Foucault, truth became a contest to the extent that it supposedly doesn’t exist. But the argument is subject to its own analysis. This returns to the first idea of Chung-Ying Cheng’s six principles, the Taoist idea that what you say is not the Tao, and Bertrand Russell’s analysis of “table.” If thought and power is contingent, all thought and power is contingent. This doesn’t mean however, nothing else exists.
For the I Ching, meaning and truth are phenomenological not abstract. We need subjective understanding, like breakfast tomorrow. Nietzsche is famous for remarks which collapse the conceits of wrong philosophy. He also said “we are human, all too human.”
His Superman is like the “superior man” of the I Ching. It’s an ideal when we live with meaning and the meaningless, clarity and uncertainty, woven together as human experience: the central lines of a hexagram with heaven above and earth below.
I write like this is a magazine column. With research, references, and a lot of time. If you like it, perhaps you would support me.