An open letter to Chris: Defend your methodology!

[Sparhawk]

I have not delt with Ron since I was thrown off the hex-8 list in the late 90s (see his archives). If his work is 'recent' then perhaps my work posted on his list had an conscious/unconscious influence in the direction of his thinking! ;-)

That eviction was a classic example of values before facts.

Chris.

Chuckles! Yes, I remember well... Ron had a short fuse as a sysadmin... You may be on to something there, who knows... He published a book last year: Mind Performance Hacks

 

[dobro p]

No - what iDM covers is what the I Ching is based upon and so the ability to introduce I Ching PLUS in that the work shows the full spectrum of the universal I Ching that lifts the traditional from the 10th century BC perspective to the 21st century AD.

AS such the traditional I Ching is a SUBSET of the categories that come out of self-referencing - a small world network reflecting the customisation of the properties/methods of self-referencing and the relabelling of such to fit the local, ancient chinese context. In that customisation a LOT was left out due to lack of understanding self-referencing and the brain. Through IDM we bring out clearly what is missing and so can be used to make the IC more than what is currently presented.

Chris.

Chris, even if the traditional Yi is a subset of what you're doing, it's still the Yi. And what you do is *not* the Yi. If you rewrite Shakespeare and call it Shakespeare, people are going to think you're losing touch with reality. If you can write stuff that's better than Shakespeare cuz it has a bigger context that Shakespeare ever had, then do it. But don't call it Shakespeare. And if you can provide a context that includes the Yi as a subset, then do it. But don't call it the Yi. Harmen's right. The Yi is a work of literature as well as an oracle. If you change the words in a drastic way, then you're rewriting it, and it's no longer the Yi.

 

[lightofreason]

dobro - are you practicing some sort of selective attention? For YEARS I have emphasises I CHING PLUS - even in the post to Harmen I did that and what do you do, you IGNORE it! I ALWAYS differentiate 'traditional, 10th century BC' mindset from the 21st century mindset. I always CLEARLY, infuriatingly to many, make the distinctions of IC+ from what you and Harmen work with - traditional IC.

The point is that IC+ contains within it the IC as well as unrecognised properties of the method used to create the traditional IC and so brings out what the IC is capable of WAY beyond the existing system.

All I see in this post of yours is desparation to try and maintain the traditional IC in a position of a stand-alone entity, a clinging to something you have put a lot of work into and dont want to have to come to grips with the fact that you and Harmen have missed so much in your reflections upon the IC - all due to not understanding the properties and methods of meaning derivation as brought out in IC+. It is not your fault you missed this - circumstances dictated such.

How you can then try and shore-up your perspectives by ignore XORing features or the Emotional I Ching dynamics is stunning in its attempts to protect something that is now shown to be limiting. The XOR material CLEARLY, REPEATEDLY, shows properties of the I Ching YOU or Harmen have been TOTALLY unaware of, and your now trying to say that your being unaware means that the IC is not the IC? The XOR material is a property of self-referencing. Since the I Ching is derived from self-referencing so XOR is a part of the IC BUT what you are saying is that since YOU did not know that (nore many before you) so XOR cannot be a part? LOL! What conceit. What arrogance. What ignorance. It is like me showing the Earth to be round and you insisting that that has nothing to do with maintaining your belief in it being flat and you intend to continue as such and ignore, MUST IGNORE, any insights of the IC derived from IC+ ! LOL! Based on the prose you have written, there is no way you can incorporate any interpretations of mine or others based on IC+ methods due to them not being mentioned in the traditional texts - LOL! THAT is true fundamentalism - rigid, sterile, dead.

Sure Harmen has put a LOT of work into his considerations re the 10th century BC mindset. Now we find that there is more there than previously realised and that discovery comes from outside of the I Ching (and so IC+). This will be distressing to those who, like Harmen have immersed themselves in the 10th century BC mindset. TOUGH! If you insist on being fundamentalist then I feel sorry for you - and will repeatedly remind you of your limitations so I suggest you block your seeing any of my posts to the list - after all we would not want you to be corrupted do we?!

I repeat, I work with an IC+ perspective that includes the original 10th century BC perspectives and extends them by consideration of 3000+ years of research into neurosciences, psychology, etc etc to give us the 21st century AD perspective. This perspective is more consistant, more reliable, more understanding, more pragmatic, than the miraculous/random methods. It is NOT 'Chinese' or any other specialist perspective, it is species-wide perspective and so applies to and so covers all members of the species - there is no need to learn/use Chinese terms but the notions of yin/yang are useful and retain a sense of 'mystery' for those who need such. We still use trigrams, hexagrams, dodecagrams but we also use XORing and questions in methods and so the PLUS componants of I CHING PLUS. XORing etc are properties of the method used to create the I Ching and so come with it even if you have not identified it. Because YOU or other traditionalists have not recognised it does not mean it does not exist as a seeding of perspectives.

I think the issue here is of scope - the traditionalist perspective is the IC as a whole, whereas the IC+ perspective shows the traditional to be but a part of something 'bigger'. What this realisation does is marginalise the considered value/importance of the traditional IC. tough. That happens in evolution through scientific research where we have to go back and review what we cherished as whole to now discover as part. Change does that. Live with it, adapt to it and so keep moving ;-)

Chris.

 

[lightofreason]

Yeah, I said all this in the proceeding pages. I do like Chris's work but the key blindspot - apart from all the assumptions and selective responses in this thread - seems to be that he cannot or will not countenance the possibility of other ways of seeing reality, which is connected with his own perception of the world.

the neurology determines all communication in that it gathers sensory data and responds to such through emotion. Your senses are restricted to frequencies, wavelengths, amplitudes. ALL perception that is communicatable is dependent on general SAMENESS across species members, our sensing of wholeness, partness etc and THAT comes out of differentiating/integrating and the self-referencing of that dichotomy. ANYTHING you can IMAGINE covers the dynamics of imagining and that is through our neurology - imagine you see something and your visual areas 'light up'. If you perceived something outside of our sensory realm it would be described from WITHIN that realm and appear as paradox - as such we are born to argue in that you say A and I say NOT-A and our brains will instinctively try to resolve the paradox of A/NOT-A existing in the same spacetime - see the paradox page:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html

The perceptions of uniqueness, of difference, are overlayed by the species 'need' for sameness - we see this in stereotyping etc. What we also see is the emergence of unique consciousness from refined differentiating where we can transcend the stereotyping. The issues then become those of increased differences trying to communicate with the 'everyday sameness'.

Jung made the point covering increased differentiation leads to sharper sense of consciousness vs decreased differentiation maintaining the 'primate' level nature that is our social being "The more unconscious a man is, the more he will conform to the general canon of psychic behaviour. But the more conscious he becomes of his individuality, the more pronounced will be his difference from other subjects..." p83 On the Nature of the Psyche (RKP)

We see this in education systems moving us from primary through secondary to tertiary. As we develop individuality we move from the symmetric focus of the species to the asymmetric focus of the singular consciousness (and we also move from basic adding/muliplication of whole numbers (and so a symmetric bias) to the advanced mathematics of octonions etc (and so an asymmetric bias where the division algebra breaks down))

the 'universal' I Ching is GENERAL, VAGUE and maps to the symmetric. THEN comes customisation to give us each our unique forms - BUT we can make such more efficient by understanding the general.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

The point is that IC+ contains within it the IC as well as unrecognised properties of the method used to create the traditional IC and so brings out what the IC is capable of WAY beyond the existing system.

In other words, IC+ contains the Yi, but it is not the Yi. You say, "[it] brings out what the IC is capable of", in my own words: it shows a specific kind of usage of the Yijing.

I'm still baffled by sentences as "IC+ contains within it the IC as well as unrecognised properties of the method used to create the traditional IC". You don't know for one bit how the Yi was created.

Sure Harmen has put a LOT of work into his considerations re the 10th century BC mindset. Now we find that there is more there than previously realised and that discovery comes from outside of the I Ching (and so IC+).

Who is 'we'? In every age 'there is more than previously realised', even within the Yijing. Studying the Yijing from the 10th century BC mindset gives a wealth of material which could be of interest to many - even to you, because you still like to use parts of this "10th century mindset". On your website you use the traditional names of the trigrams and hexagrams, well, you could certainly need a 20th century AD update on that! . Quoting the Eranos Yijing with outdated etymology like 'sprouts or vapors rising from the ground and sunlight, both fecundating moisture and scortching drought' (for Qian 乾) is also very 10th-cBC. You also do not give the text of the Yijing - that's not 10th-cBC, that's even 12 to 15th-cBC! But without the text it is not the Yijing. It is clear that you are not interested in the text of the Yijing, well, that's okay, but without a proper rendering of the Chinese text you do not connect your material to the complete book. IC+ is, as you say on your website, a concept - nothing more.

But you use so much assumptions. When I read on your website "The traditional I Ching (Book of Changes) is about change, about processes and sequences", then I think, that's an assumption. When I read on another website of yours "The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest books in existence, even older than the Bible", then I think, wow, that is an outdated sentence I haven't read in a while. Or, "the book comes from a time when rich metaphor ruled, where a lack in quantitative precision favoured the use of geometric forms to express meaning and so value" - there was hardly metaphor in the 10th-cBC.

You have an image of the 10th-cBC which could do with a 20th-cAD update. But since you are not interested in the 10th-cBC or even focussed on showing that interest in the 10th-cBC is not good for studying and using the Yijing, you stick to old material which substantiates your assumptions.

Ah well, said it all before. No point in repeating myself.

Harmen.

 

[hilary]

there was hardly metaphor in the 10th-cBC.

All discussions with Chris apart, I don't get what you mean by this. It sounds Rutt-ish: as if every time someone received Hexagram 16, they had to have been asking about elephants for it to make any sense. Surely if the oracle worked at all back then, it has to have been understood metaphorically?

 

[lightofreason]

All discussions with Chris apart, I don't get what you mean by this. It sounds Rutt-ish: as if every time someone received Hexagram 16, they had to have been asking about elephants for it to make any sense. Surely if the oracle worked at all back then, it has to have been understood metaphorically?

You will have to forgive Harmen, he lives in the 10th century BC and so finds it difficult to differentiate the literal from the figurative.

He obviously is as ignorant of brain dynamics and the creation of metaphor as the ancient chinese were. The use of history/legend/myth is a common trait in primitive cultures when trying to describe feelings of meaning - and so the rich metaphor used by primitive cultures as they try to be precise. WE can, do, do better.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

All discussions with Chris apart, I don't get what you mean by this. It sounds Rutt-ish: as if every time someone received Hexagram 16, they had to have been asking about elephants for it to make any sense. Surely if the oracle worked at all back then, it has to have been understood metaphorically?

No, that's an assumption. After all, we don't know if the Yi was an oracle back then, and even if it was, we don't know how it was used, with which intention(s). It might just be a book of anecdotes. If we say that the Yi is a book from the 10-cBC, then we have to treat it as such, in the same way we treat other writings from the same period. The language of the Yi hardly contains metaphors, it talks about very concrete things. But using the text metaphorically is a different matter.

I say the text hardly contains metaphors, but of course there are instances in the text where the text only can be a metaphor for something. Like the 4th line of H63: 繻有衣袽, "between the new clothes are rags". But to me these instances are quite rare. I start with the assumption that the text talks about a real event, and that these real events can be used as metaphors. If that is the original purpose of the Yi I don't know. Fact is that in other 10-cBC text we do not find metaphor - maybe in portions of the Shijing, but that's it, as far as I know.

Harmen.

 

[hmesker]

You will have to forgive Harmen, he lives in the 10th century BC and so finds it difficult to differentiate the literal from the figurative.

Chris, you ignore the Chinese text from the Yijing which is supposed to be from the 10th century BC, so you don't know what you are talking about.

Harmen.

 

[lienshan]

really? and what did they use to study and so make distinctions about those shells - their feet or their brains?

They used white and black pebbles according to the exavacations in Jiahu, Dawenkou.

The order comes out as a sequence of 64 symbols from 000000 to 111111

The order of your IDM and XOR material comes out of 000000 to 111111 numbers, but the order of Yi symbols comes out of the numbers 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Exavacations have shown, that every line of the hexagrams was of origin one of five numbers. The lines were not 0 or 1 binary numbers. A line was as a archaeological fact either number 1, 5, 6, 7 or 8.

This tells me, that the IDM and XOR material is rooted in and belongs to the Eastern Zhou nummerology school

 

[lightofreason]

I'm still baffled by sentences as "IC+ contains within it the IC as well as unrecognised properties of the method used to create the traditional IC". You don't know for one bit how the Yi was created.

It makes no difference of the local method since all meaning is determined by the neurology. Thus the creation of the IC MUST, to WORK, be done in a way SHARED by all others, otherwise it would not be understandable. I can make ad hoc assertions that appear to have no relationships but over time they will link up to give the formal I Ching - this is a standard method of meaning derivation that leads to the formation of a rich associative memory. It is what allows the I Ching to describe itself through the use of XORing. ANY useful metaphor will take on these forms derived from self-referencing. period. This is due simply to the hardware, the neurology where it reflects adaptation to the environment.

... On your website you use the traditional names of the trigrams and hexagrams, well, you could certainly need a 20th century AD update on that! .

No. The old is combined with the new to establish the path from old to new. You dont find dualmindedness or singlemindedness in the traditional names of trigrams/hexagrams. You dont find the refinement focus on trigrams differentiating their lower vs upper positions (e.g. mountain in lower is self-restraint, mountain in upper is discernment). The focus is on the passage from old perspectives to new ones due to understanding the methodology behind the I Ching - something you obviously dont understand.

Quoting the Eranos Yijing with outdated etymology like 'sprouts or vapors rising from the ground and sunlight, both fecundating moisture and scortching drought' (for Qian 乾) is also very 10th-cBC.

The Eranos I Ching has been updated since 1994 in the form of the 2005 version (no longer with Karcher, Ritsema (late head of the Eranos foundation) produced it with Sabbadini - )

http://www.amazon.com/Original-I-Ching-Oracle/dp/1842931490

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Ritsema

I find no issue with the representations and the one for hex 01 covers the sense of mediation rooted in the heaven trigram. As such it is fine enough to cover the 'vibe' of perseverence and singlemindedness.

You also do not give the text of the Yijing - that's not 10th-cBC, that's even 12 to 15th-cBC! But without the text it is not the Yijing. It is clear that you are not interested in the text of the Yijing, well, that's okay, but without a proper rendering of the Chinese text you do not connect your material to the complete book. IC+ is, as you say on your website, a concept - nothing more.

I dont need to give the chinese text since the focus is on the qualities that the text tries to communicate. you seem to think the expression is the thing - it isnt. The expression is attempts to communicate qualities - wholeness, partness, static relatedness, dynamic relatedness etc etc. where such are what our brains deal with. In fact the IDM/IC+ material offers more information in describing hexagrams than you perspectives offer - and all of that through the simple task of getting the I Ching to describe itself - something you and all of the other 'gurus' of the I Ching have failed to do.

But you use so much assumptions. When I read on your website "The traditional I Ching (Book of Changes) is about change, about processes and sequences", then I think, that's an assumption.

so to you the traditional I Ching is not about change?

When I read on another website of yours "The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest books in existence, even older than the Bible", then I think, wow, that is an outdated sentence I haven't read in a while. Or, "the book comes from a time when rich metaphor ruled, where a lack in quantitative precision favoured the use of geometric forms to express meaning and so value" - there was hardly metaphor in the 10th-cBC.

delusion. the brain is all about metaphor. We cannot communicate without it since we need symmetry and emotion to do such.

Chris.

 

[lightofreason]

Chris, you ignore the Chinese text from the Yijing which is supposed to be from the 10th century BC, so you don't know what you are talking about.

Harmen.

I have been through the characters and their translations and know well what they represent in our brains - and THAT is where the meaning is, in our brains as they interpret symbols through consensus where the consensus is derived from qualities of wholes, parts, static relatedness etc etc. you are WAY out of your depth in trying to understand all of this Harmen, too specialist and so too focused on the trees to see the forest.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

so to you the traditional I Ching is not about change?

Yep.

I have been through the characters and their translations

When I see your website I see you have mainly dealt with the translations - not the characters.

you are WAY out of your depth in trying to understand all of this Harmen, too specialist and so too focused on the trees to see the forest.

That's an assumption. But's that's okay with me.

Harmen.

 

[lightofreason]

This tells me, that the IDM and XOR material is rooted in and belongs to the Eastern Zhou nummerology school

your confused - you put the Eastern Zhou numerology school AHEAD of the billions of years prior to such that has elicited 000000 to 111111! They tried to work WITHIN the bounds of the IC with no understanding of 'in here' and so struggled, perspectives were at best adaptive rather than innovative.

The people of ancient china had in general the same brains like ours, with a little less differentiation ;-) Those brain developed from basic neurons etc predating our amphebian/fish days.

The lack of understanding of 'in here' by our ancestors ment that perceptions were ad hoc, we did not fill in all of the patterns, just bits n pieces that over time began to link up such that now we have identified the basics and so bring out the patterns in the form of IDM and XORing.

Those patterns are in our brains and we externalise them to communicate reality. From that came the recognition of self-referencing and so analysis of it that brings out XOR etc. In other words deriving anything through self-referencing guarantees the properties covered in XORing. As such there is NOTHING to do with the I Ching, it is to do with self-referencing.

Chris.

 

[lightofreason]

When I see your website I see you have mainly dealt with the translations - not the characters.

Dont need to. The IC+ and IDM material is about the general and so what SEEDS expressions. I use eranos etc to bring out the many associations with some hexagram to then tie in the really general of 'blending, bonding' etc to show what is BEHIND the expressions. I dont need to use LOCAL customisations to bring out the general patterns that seed such. The sense of 'sharing of space' as covered in bonding trigrams (lake and mountain) covers general patterns that are then customised, localised, through labels fitting the local context and so fleshed out with all of the associations to an ideogram etc. (or a french or german or japanese word). There is thus no need to focus on nuances of some ideogram simply because we have identified the patterns in the neurology that that ideogram is trying to represent. The LINES of hexagrams are the representations of the mental generation of meaning - no need for words/ideograms as such since the lines/trigrams/hexagrams etc represent the meaning 'free' of local nuances. In other words you can remove all of the chinese to leave the hexagrams/trigrams/dodecagrams symbols since THEY represent the generic meanings when mapped to brain dynamics.

the reason the Emotional I Ching can work so well is due to this representation of QUALITIES, not specific words. Emotions communicate through emotions - it is consciousness that then adds precision through serial representations using words. The hierarchy in the neurology allows for communication with emotion and the use of emotion to elicit an image in the form of a hexagram - and no detailed words used, just generic labels for hexagram lines. You seem to miss all of this due to your focus being so specialist that you cannot see past the trees. In so doing you will never be able to pick up the essences of meaning and the structuring of the IC as a language derived from the more general qualities covered in IDM and so you will not be able to flesh out the hidden qualities within the IC.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

the hidden qualities within the IC.

Oh, the hidden qualities. I already found these. Piece of cake.

HM

 

[lightofreason]

Oh, the hidden qualities. I already found these. Piece of cake.

HM

Looking at your work to date - no way. you have failed and will continue to do so as long as you rigidly work in a 10th century BC mindset.

your failure to identify XORing and the ability to describe the IC through the IC brings out your failings and being too stuck in the 10th century BC box to be able to see past your nose.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

Looking at your work to date - no way. you have failed and will continue to do so as long as you rigidly work in a 10th century BC mindset.

Hmmm.....I have failed in doing what?

your failure to identify XORing and the ability to describe the IC through the IC

But I never tried that. So how can fail in something which I never tried? Needless to say that I will never try it; it is not about the Yijing, it only uses the Yijing.

brings out your failings and being too stuck in the 10th century BC box to be able to see past your nose.

But what a fine nose it is! I'm sorry, the way you repeat yourself and the fact that you find it necessary to insult people is hilarious. I can only laugh about your fundamentalistic dogma's. But hey, each his own way. I study the Yijing from it's 10-cBC origin. That's it. No more, no less. I don't prescribe how people should see or use the Yijing.

Harmen.

 

[lightofreason]

.... Needless to say that I will never try it; it is not about the Yijing, it only uses the Yijing.

An idiotic comment. The I Ching is derived from self-referencing yin/yang, thus the properties of the self-referencing are inherent in the I Ching. One of those properties is the ability for the I Ching to describe itself through XORing. To NOT recognise such is to fail to recognise the full spectrum of the I Ching where such has not been fleshed out in 'traditionalist' schools.

But what a fine nose it is! I'm sorry, the way you repeat yourself and the fact that you find it necessary to insult people is hilarious. I can only laugh about your fundamentalistic dogma's.

look in the mirror dude - there you will see fundamentalism and dogma.

But hey, each his own way. I study the Yijing from it's 10-cBC origin. That's it. No more, no less. I don't prescribe how people should see or use the Yijing.

you have done that repeatedly in your prose by saying that anything other than YOUR perspective is NOT the I Ching. I have more choices since I cover the full spectrum; you are limiting your choices by excluding XORing etc etc. and so 3000+ years of research into meaning derivation and that includes the I Ching. I have focused on this, and so the full spectrum from 10th century BC to 21st century AD. To bring the IC into the 21st century AD, to be used in current times in a better manner then it has been to date requires full spectrum understanding, something your obviously finding difficult to do (or more so have no intention of such).

This thread covers methodologies and the IDM/IC+ methodology is better equipped to deal with modern times than limiting oneself to the traditional. You dont understand that since you refuse to consider it at all - and so reflect the fundamentalist approach of the traditionalists and their sticking to magical/random methods - you guys and gals must be getting old - you believe one cant teach old dogs new tricks! (or old dogs being capable of learning new tricks - a delusion on your behalf).

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

The I Ching is derived from self-referencing yin/yang

That's an assumption.

you have done that repeatedly in your prose by saying that anything other than YOUR perspective is NOT the I Ching.

I have never said that.

IC+ methodology is better equipped to deal with modern times than limiting oneself to the traditional.

Maybe. But as I said earlier, IC+ is not the Yijing. And, as I said earlier, I study the Yijing. IC+ - and this becomes clearer to me with every word you write - is not Yijing, it is only something which partly involves the Yijing. You do not use the Chinese text of the Yijing, and since the Chinese text is part of the Yijing IC+ simply is not the Yijing, only a derivation from it. If people want to use the Yijing they should not use IC+ because that simply isn't the Yijing. In the same manner, if people want to use the Yijing they should not use Yijing cards etc., because that is only a derivation of the Yijing. Your system falls in the same category - a derivation of the original, and therefore not the same as the original. And maybe your system is better - but it is not the Yijing. And I study the Yijing from it's 10-cBC origin, or at least what we know about it. Something which could easily be incorporated into your system, but which you choose to ignore. Fine.

Harmen.

 

[lightofreason]

A main feature of the self-referencing and XOR is in the 'genetics' of such. It is like a seed - plant it in poor topsoil and it will grow into a plant but poorly expressed. Supply better nutrient and all of a sudden the 'poor' plant blossoms into a fully fledged, rich, 'living' life form.

The I Ching has 'genetics', expressed in the spectrum of hexagrams derived from XORing (it in fact reflects the same method used to derive the genetic code from self-referencing the purine/pyramidine dichotomy)

The planting of the IC in 10th century BC topsoil was a planting in poor to medium nutrients. The moment we plant it in 21st century AD topsoil all of sudden the plant fully and repeatedly blossoms and so reaches its fullest expression and has access to actualising its potentials.

Given the full blossoming of the plant, something NOT seen before, does that mean the plant we see is not the plant we used to see - the problem has always been one of context and nothing more?

The 10th century BC topsoil stunted the growth of the plant and that stunted growth we called 'the traditional I Ching'. Refine the topsoil and a lot more emerges but according to Harmen we must reject such development since the 'truth' is only in the 10th century BC topsoil!! Get real Harmen.

Chris.

 

[hmesker]

Nice metaphor, but wrong applied. You have not 'refined the topsoil', you have just uprooted a plant, modified it, decorated it with all kinds of stuff, planted it back in different soil, and you are claiming that it has become a better plant. It is like taking the colour red, adding some blue to it, and then saying it has become a better colour red. While actually it is purple. A nice colour, but nevertheless not red.

Oh, and I have never said that the 'truth' is only in the 10th BC. But I do believe that a proper understanding of what the Yijing originally might supposed to have been involves a study of its origin. I also believe that for using the Yijing the book does not need any additions or modifications or so-called improvements. The book is fine as it is, and if you're not able to use it in a way that satisfies you, well, that has nothing to do with the book, but all with your perception and usage of it.

But, as I said, you don't use the text of the Yijing, therefore what you make of it is not the Yijing. To me the Yijing=text+hexagrams. If one of these is lacking it is not the Yijing, but only a part or a derivation of it. It would be nice to see how the original Chinese text has a place in your system. I mean, you do it with the names of the trigrams and the hexagrams, so why not with the complete text? What is withholding you from that?

Harmen.

 

[Tohpol]

the neurology determines all communication in that it gathers sensory data and responds to such through emotion. Your senses are restricted to frequencies, wavelengths, amplitudes. ALL perception that is communicatable is dependent on general SAMENESS across species members, our sensing of wholeness, partness etc and THAT comes out of differentiating/integrating and the self-referencing of that dichotomy. ANYTHING you can IMAGINE covers the dynamics of imagining and that is through our neurology - imagine you see something and your visual areas 'light up'. If you perceived something outside of our sensory realm it would be described from WITHIN that realm and appear as paradox - as such we are born to argue in that you say A and I say NOT-A and our brains will instinctively try to resolve the paradox of A/NOT-A existing in the same spacetime - see the paradox page:

That's all assumption operating on one interpretation of SENSES.

What if we have other means of communication and existence outside the realm of sense and mechanism? There is a vast array of evidence that that is so. Again, those focused and bias towards things that which can be SEEN and judged to be "factual" will prefer to interpret such phenomena as a product of the senses when it is nothing of the kind. Anything you can imagine is not necessarily tied to the senses and thus to neurology.

Yours is ONE expression of development only in a sea of limitless potentials whether you want to call it LOCAL, GENERAL, UNIVERSAL, genetic, Neurological or self-referencing. You may THINK you've covered everything, but it does not, CANNOT encompass every reality permutation because it is a creation of your/our LIMITED extrapolations - brilliant as it is - it is indeed drawn CONTEXTUALLY from our perceptions, from our senses. And we still know very VERY little about the how the brain or the consciousness behind the brain mechanism - works.

What of OBEs and NDEs? What of numerous accounts of experiences non-local to the brain? i.e. persons giving perfect descriptions of rooms and people not known to them and all this while they were clinically dead. At the same Countless other and more whacky phenomena that defy explanation via neurology.

Therefore, what is consciousness?

Do you KNOW what consciousness is? Does anybody? So, I guess it comes down to brain or mind? Neurology or soul? Personally I think the latter makes more "sense."

Until that is definitively known (if ever possible) all different realities, any and all systems of interpretation - including those who believe everything can be reduced down to neurology - will be steps to a greater awareness tied to a particular subjective bias. Never an end in itself, but complementary to other ways of interpreting. Diversifiction brings forth new possibilities.

Maybe, finally, all this is about people inhabiting different perceptual realities which never the twain shall meet.

Topal

 

[martin]

If I look at trigrams with a simple mind, what I see are crude drawings or pictograms.
Three whole (light) lines suggest a clear sky, 'heaven'. A light line between two dark ones, suggests a light object - such as the moon - in the night sky. A whole line on top of two broken ones suggests a mountain or perhaps a temple or a door.
One broken line and two whole ones on top of it, I can understand that this was associated with wind (which creates bands of clouds that look like that) and if I draw the yin line differently as it often appears on inscriptions, more like )( instead of - -, I can even see a tree in it, wood.
Moving up to hexagrams things are not always that clear, so you sometimes have to look at the trigrams to get 'it', but even there, hex 27 does suggest an open mouth (and associated meanings of nourishment and hunger), H34 a beast with horns (a ram), H28 a beam that doesn't have much 'hold', etcetera.

And so on, it needs a bit of imagination, but it's all there, plain and simple. There is no recursion, or selfreference, or anything like it.
So what are we talking about?
I think we have to be careful not to project our own intellectual stuff on how people back then perceived and thought about things.

 

[martin]

Therefore, what is consciousness?
Topal

Yeah, what is it?
I think that cultures that we call backward or primitive understood consciousness (and mind) much better than we do with all our psychology and neuroscience.
We have a lot to learn.

 

[hilary]

Martin, do you remember Pocossin? Tom Hood? He sees every hexagram as a picture, and is wholly convinced that this is what King Wen had in mind - not just a ram in 34, but a fox's head in 63 (I think), and so on. He got comprehensively frustrated with me because I couldn't see what he saw - thought it more of a refusal to see, I think. Somewhere online he has or had a website with the whole list...

 

[ewald]

Somewhere online he has or had a website with the whole list...

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/whitburn/1012/iching/hex/hexdir.html

 

[bruce_g]

Tom is wrong. I keep telling you, my Yijing images are the ONLY TRUE images. If you can't see that then you're immature beings, living in 21st Century AD, or thereabouts. Forget the fact that two of them are missing, still. It isn't my work which is flawed!

 

[lienshan]

He sees every hexagram as a picture, and is wholly convinced that this is what King Wen had in mind

He must have exactly the same explanation problem as lightofreason has:

because the King Wen hexagrams were made of: I (1), X (5), /\ (6), + (7) and )( (8)

These five ancient numbers don't match neither the Pocossin pictures nor the lightofreason binary system

 

[martin]

I remember him only vaguely. Thank you for the link Ewald, I will have a look at it.