Do you think the Yi knows it all, or only what WE know?

[uselesstree]

Hi

Perhaps I don't follow Jung's model fully. My understanding has always been that the collective unconcious is a level deeper than individual unconcious.

Never the less, LiSe got my meaning clearer than even I did. I think there is a universal pattern, laws, so to speak. Like the law that it is the way of nature to make full what is empty and make empty what is full. The Ching dwells a lot on this law. My original post on this thread was assuming that wisdom is such a law. In fact it is related to perserverance in the judgment on hex 1 in Wilhelm/Baynes. The wisdom of the Ching is the same wisdom as appears any place wisdom appears.

So, when we draw a hexagram from the ching we, the Ching and the one who asks, are knowing together.

 

[cheiron]

Hi - I posted but it does not seem to have stuck - sorry.

I shall try again as it may be of interest? though a little dry.

In brief: Jung's ideas have been developed by others over time. There are different 'schools'.

Sorry I cannot get to my books at the moment so this is a little rough... and my description glosses many variations of view!

The 'Californian school' Is probably the most eloquent here... It proposes three different aspects to the psyche.

Conscious

Personal unconscious

Nuministic

The last component is left a little vague...

Some see it as God... others as a collective spiritual conscious... still others leave it as a source of deep creative and spiritual energy ? like the Tao? ... but for all it is outside the individual.

Their view is that the unconscious is in dialogue with the conscious through imagery / dreams / art and such like. It serves to keep us informed about our deeper nature and being. Also that its role is to keep us tuned to a deeper self and that it is essential for good health that we are in tune.

But their most different idea is that the unconscious forms a communication bridge with the nuministic component. It draws on this deep creative and spiritual energy and 'mediates' between this and the conscious.

The 'nuministic' part is seen as a deep source of understanding and connection to something (left vague) greater than ourselves..

They get a little vague whether this is God or some deep collective connection or some idea like the Tao... after all... who knows.

Take care

Kevin

 

[candid]

In the lyrics of an old 50s tune ? the head bone?s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone?s connected to the shoulder bone, the shoulder bone?s connected to the back bone, the back bone?s connected to the hip bone, the hip bone?s connected to the etc, ect.

Each component is connected to the whole. To suggest that there?s more than one whole is difficult for me to imagine. If this whole has a consciousness, visualized as God, its omnipresent and omnipotent. Its complete in itself and consists of the sum of every existing part.

What I?m hearing here in this thread is that there is something other, such as atman, which serves as an individual and personal god, or God-man. This isn?t a difficult concept. Its what we might call, soul or spirit essence. But I?ve never thought of this individual essence as being synonymous with unconscious mind. Rather, I think of it as our individual essence. But this is not what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious mind. At least not what I?ve read from his works.

Perhaps Jungian thought has evolved since his death, but I don?t believe that gives us license to redefine his terms. And like the Yi, the original archetypal imagery is still the closest to the original intended meaning.

 

[louise]

Hmm, well I think i must be very odd and alone in my view of Yi, not as God, not as the collective unconscious, not as reflection of self - but a self - a being whose form we cannot describe or know with our senses - who nevertheless exists on some dimension as a personality. Way back up the thread someone mentioned the 'personality' of Yi.
Thats why I don't think of Yi as the 'all that is'- I reckon it has a personality like you or me.
I don't think its a mirror. This perception doesn't cause a problem for me as I accept there are many layers of being other than our own and they can interact with us. Of course I accept I may well be utterly wrong and I wouldn't bother to argue about it - but in a way i feel that
perspective gives me a healthy bit of distance from following Yis advice. Sometimes if you have a good friend you know what advice they'll give you because you know them - know what their values are, but maybe they are not yours and you don't choose to follow them. Sometimes with Yi I think "well you would say that wouldn't you".
I fully accept that you will all think i am completely beyond reason, but i don't mind.

 

[louise]

So in answer to the original question heading the thread "does Yi know all or only what we know" I think it knows more from a different, higher, wiser perspective but we can only unlock it with our own minds so even if it knew everything it couldn't tell us. I think it knows more, but knows from its own personality, its own, very wide persective. Much the same as say Candid or Lise may know much more than me about some things, but what they know is still filtered through the personalities of Candid and Lise. Maybe our process/purpose here is opening our minds wide to meet its mind.

 

[cal val]

Candid...

But did Jung have it right? His is just a theory too. And I don't believe he copyrighted, trademarked, registered or patented the term...or did he? And frankly I think he missed the point too. I don't like his definition at all. He defines it as inherited 'knowledge.' He also says it's composed of a bunch of archetypes. Way too static for someone like me. IMHO, he sounds to me like someone looking way too hard for sameness. I like my definition a lot better, and mine coincides closely with Lise's and UT's. I like to use the term for lack of a better one to define how I visualize my connection to the rest of mankind. It beats collective synapses energy output. I'm too old to use that many words in one breath.

If you think about what collective means, it means (to quote M-W) assembled or accumulated into a whole. Of, relating to, characteristic of, or made by a number of people acting as a group: a collective decision...or a collective unconscious.

Personally, from my experience, I feel it's on the same level as the personal unconscious, and the personal and collective unconscious flow into one another. We're like the rivers that flow into the ocean, and it's a two-way flow. The ocean flows into the rivers as well.

Ciao for now,

Val

 

[kiya]

Louise, you say "Sometimes with Yi I think 'well you would say that wouldn't you.' I fully accept that you will all think i am completely beyond reason, but i don't mind."

That strikes me as a completely within-reason way to view your responses. How perfectly sane and sensible you are. Common sense is a wonderful quality!

Kiya

 

[candid]

I agree, Kiya. Louise's perspective often provides a good dose of common sense.

Val, my point was largely semantic. I don't know if terms can be copywriten or not. Its a lesser point compared to what's come from this conversation, started by Pedro.

Jung's thoughts have always resonated well in my being and I personally have found no need or reason to revamp or morph them. But for those who do, that's they're own equally valid perspective.

 

[binz]

look within
look past the ego
look past that which has been told
look past that which is in the books
look past all this and you will perceive the truth

when you have perceived the truth
this does not make others perceptions of truth wrong

there may be one absolute truth
but there are as many perceptions of this truth
as there are conscious beings in the universe

 

[candid]

Right on Binz.

Many fields have not felt my feet,
and the sky has not yet felt my wings.
I see a strange reflection
on every raindrop,
and I think:
its all a reason
that I don't understand.

 

[pedro]

uh, so much to reply, so little time

Just a few notes:

I think its pretty consensual that the Yi doesnt give answers. It gives symbols, which in turn WE convert to answers. Two different people would derive two different answers from the same symbol. So there's no way we can take our minds off the equation. We can even misinterpret the symbols, and arrive at answers that satisfy us anyway. Who answered? The Yi, or ourselfes? Humans are known for seeing not what there is but what they believe it to be

I also read (I think its on that extensive Yi books reviews on midaughter) of some guy that argued ANY answer was valid, and claimed to hav proved it by giving people the wrong answers and watching them go nuts anyway. Although this shows a bit of how the answers are derived by us (from ANY hexagram), it doesnt show that that was THE BEST ANSWER, as one often finds from using it properly. So there must be something else at work here, call it syncronicity or whatever (Im not a great fan of Jung's theories anyway, I find them over simplistic, and seems he still saw the universe as human centered)

Bottom line, I think that the Yi allows us to tap into our hidden knowledge, but still its answers arent carved in stone, cause it can only be as precise as we are human. There is still a human factor involved, and thats why I dont believe the Yi speaks God's truth but something lesser. It doesnt even refer to the answers as final, it just shows where we're heading. Take our minds away from it and the Yi just says "Mu".

But in the end, even if the answers need us to be there, they wouldnt emerge without that symbolic seed in the first place, like an oyster needs a grain of sand to build a pearl

I just recall that my main purpose in starting this thread was to know if I should blindly trust the Yi's advice on specific matters (nope, we better keep our minds sharp, just in case). Sometimes it just tells me to do something that doesnt conform to my own reasoning, or promises things I cant see myself attaining, and in those case Im not sure I should believe it. Who is telling me this, the voice of the all mighty, or my own perverted side?

PS: Re: Binz "Birds sing to mark their territory and to attract mates": Dont we all? music in humans still serves these two primary goals (come to think of it, what else is there to do in this life?)

 

[hilary]

Eat.

 

[lindsay]

Drink, and be merry!

 

[candid]

Pedro, Jung saw the universe as "mind" centered. Not necessarily human centered.

Secondly, I have a question regarding your statement: "There is still a human factor involved, and that?s why I don?t believe the Yi speaks God's truth but something lesser. It doesn?t even refer to the answers as final, it just shows where we're heading."

Do you imagine God's answers to be final or ever evolving?

Besides one there can be no other. It can only be divided into two... then four... then 64.

 

[cheiron]

Hi Candid

Can I (briefly) butt in here?

It is perhaps worth looking at the historical picture of how we gained the material and ideas which we are all discussing.

Jung did not see the world as human centred.

He lived in late Victorian times. He had fallen out with the ?powerful? Freud and was rejected by his profession - psychiatry. His ideas were very radical for the time and he tailored them down a lot.

He was a close friend of Wilhelm by the way and it was the giants of the time Wilhelm / Jung / Van der Post / Herman Hesse (All massive in their field and all close friends) which ushered in our current debate against a fairly rigid Christian / Science western culture of the time.

Highly recommended is Herman Hesse 'The Glass Bead Game'... I suspect I do not need to tell you what the Glass bead game is really about

?Jung was deeply spiritual? It permeated his work his art and his poetry? (He was a fantastic sculpture and his paintings are phenomenal.)

He allowed his key students and friends to develop his ideas... The Californian School I mentioned had his full approval and indeed the forerunners there were close friends of his.

Long after he stopped publishing he was still guiding the development of 'Jungian' thought.

Jung hid a lot of this because he had been slammed and rejected by his profession ? psychiatry ? He had given his life to reforming psychiatry and was deeply wounded by this ? after which he largely hid himself away? (Worked outside the profession).

His core ideas were constantly mis-represented. He put a lot of emphasis on 'Collective unconscious' ( and evidenced it with factual anthropological research) because he was fighting against a medical model which constantly screamed 'individual' and 'brain' and 'chemistry'.

He used the Yi Jing regularly in working with patients as well as astrology.

I think if I had to say one thing about him it would be that he believed that the mind was a beautifully scintillating thing ( a diamond) which stood atop a deep and richly creative unconscious which itself was rooted to 'something other' which was beyond our ken but which sustains and feeds into us.

Reading Karcher?s work I see the same posture... the same care for accuracy... and just and indicator or two there is ?more than this'... But most of all I see the same deep commitment to us all as spiritual and human expressions of something greater.

I suspect Lise has a more accurate picture than I on this? but my understanding is that this group I mentioned were the first in ?Western Culture? to introduce the idea of deep symbolism? the idea of a positive unconscious which we can draw on, the idea that there was more than just a single God and simple Soul.

In short? this whole thread is actually a post - Jungian debate?

I hope this does not feel like a rant? I get excited.

Nice to meet up with you again

All the best

Kevin

 

[candid]

Very nice to meet up with you again as well, Kevin. Thank you for the rich tapestry on Jung, and for getting excited about it.

 

[heylise]

First everyone thanks for so many great mails.
Just one thing, Kevin says I might be 'more accurate'. ??? Accurate, I have never ever seen any picture by any human being accurate, least of all my own.
Thanks all the same for the compliment, I cherish it. But I also cherish us all making all kinds of weird and wise and wonderful pictures.

LiSe

 

[bfireman]

Hello all-

Been gone a while, yet have really enjoyed reading this thread. So many opinions and insights to ponder. To address the "who knows" question, what has been and continues to be very helpful to me is to simply constantly question everything - to a point of course, yet especially those things tinged with doubt and suspicion or anything, and also especially those things one "believes" and clings to as an "ultimate truth". LiSe spoke of this somewhere in a previous thread. With such gentle questioning, time will bring much clarity. This has proved true for me, and is definitely not an original thought. Buddha said a similar thing about his teachings. Listen, but do not blindly accept, go out and find for yourself. Tao teaches us much about perspective and relativity.(and so does Einstein!) In his book "The Mastery of Love", don Miguel Ruiz says his three rules in teaching the spiritual cosmology of the Toltecs are 1)Don't believe me 2)Don't believe yourself and 3)Don't believe anyone else. This is based on his description of life as a "dream", and the premise that ultimate truth does not change. This way, the less we cling to the clouds of our "beliefs", the truth will be what finally emerges. He says, "what is truth is true, believe it or not... Only what is true will survive, and that includes the concepts you have about yourself." Sometimes concepts and theories are easy to attach to because they seem to justify or give reason to our perceptions or make things easier to digest. My experience is that mind is so extremely powerful. In this moment, I can choose to believe anything I want. Even if it is not true, I can still choose to believe if I want to. So, and please excuse this rambling, personally I have no opinion on who/what answers when I throw the coins. My experience is yi helps to cut through much of the bullshit of what I believe and reveal some of the truth hidden beneath. That is why I use it and will continue to for a long long time. Peace to all - Brian

 

[cheiron]

Right on Bfireman

--Kevin