Steps of Yu (new material from Stephen Karcher)

[yidiot]

actually it seems like a pig, now

but the duel still's up

 

[cheiron]

Hi Yidiot

Welcome back - Good to see your still kicking

The question is not whether it is an elephant or a pig but what that means to you and why... No?

I think Stephen is on very firm ground with his idea of trying to "activate the liminal / creative space" (the place where dream dialogue takes place.

Safe ground insofar it is the core of the 'Jungian' approach.

By doing this we can bring to bear our deeper self - that vast not conscious mind and so work directly with the material rather than stay with the conscious /cognitive. This leads to a deeper dialogue and internalisation.

But to do this we need a symbolic language which really speaks to us.

The symbolic language in the Yijing is of another culture and time (though at one level still rooted in a common archetypal imagery).

Many of us learn the imagery of the Yijing in time ? took me many years and there are many parts I still struggle with.

So I guess I see his approach as one of finding imagery which is more accessible to the modern western mind.

Just another way of turning the crystal ? another approach - but still looking through the same crystal.

Mon Dieu ? Le Yidiot knows everything. This he has told us ? Ah, so it must be a mischievous Yidiot today - n?est ce pas?

Cheers

--Kevin

 

[yidiot]

Dear Kevin

You say: "I guess I see his approach as one of finding imagery which is more accessible to the modern western mind"

then there must be something wrong with me (I mean, wronger than what's obvious), as I only see more confusion, grounded on something I dont find particular relevance upon, namely Wen's sequence

But please, dont let my thoughts discouradge you

We all need to search for what isnt there ocasionally, and who knows, maybe you'll prove the Yidiot wrong after all

 

[cheiron]

Hi Yidiot

Oh, absolutely right... I have spent years going down dead ends... occasionally I find a path which is new to me and fruitful... and, well, I learn from the dead ends too? on a good day.

I was overstretching my abilities with the bigger cycles? Hey but a good stretch loosens me up nicely.

Do you prefer another sequence?

Wanna' tell?

Perhaps in the Cycles Thread?

I have learned many great things from idiots but long since learned not to try to teach them anything

Chuckling

--Kevin

 

[hilary]

La différence?

Amongst plusieurs other things, that Stephen is interested in divination, and that?s what all his work is for. No big system, just paths and new ways for diviners to explore ?dancing in the abyss?. Always on the assumption that there?s more going on here than we can know. Chris has a BIG SYSTEM within which, à son avis, everything can be known. Not much to do with divination.

As far as I can understand him, Stephen doesn?t think the old dragon is broke, he just thinks it can do more and fly higher than we?d imagined. Whereas Chris, as far as I can make out, reckons he can fit the dragon and everything else inside his state-of-the-art space shuttle.

The biggest similarity I can see is that neither of them has got to grips with the interesting formatting tools <FONT COLOR="ff0000">for</FONT> <FONT COLOR="0000ff">this</FONT> <FONT COLOR="119911">forum</FONT>

The more I look at King Wen's sequence, the more profound good sense I find. I don't much care who created it or how old it is.

 

[yidiot]

Cher Hilary,
It may be that Stephen is interested in divination and Chris is not. What I find is that neither has helped ME the slightest bit in that respect (maybe my fault)
Some of us may prefer the old original, some of us may feel they can re-invent the wheel
Who am I to judge?
I think Karcher's work would interest me more if there was some vague hint that he was unveiling some lost intention underneath the modernization of the Yi, but I fail to understand it like that.
I mean, one who searches for meaning, always finds some, but was it the original meaning?

But I would forget all that, if it recognised what slight benefit there could be, for divination or otherwise, to think of hexagrma changes in the way Stephen does. It may be an interesting intellectual paradigm, but it does nothing to poor Yidiot, other than giving him headaches

Oh, and about good old King Wen, its not that I dont find the sequence meaningful, its just that I dont find that we need any sequence at all, in order to use the Yi. It is ultimately a sequence-free oracle, and all the rest is just scenery

 

[midaughter1]

Dear Yidiot, Mr. Karcher, Chris and all,

I must agree with Yidiot in his ideas about how Stephen approaches things. Its like he adds another 'layer of meaning' not especially helpful to me. It may be to others of course...These models are too left brained for me. I seek wisdom between the thoughts, and the words - deep immersion in the natural world of Fu Hsi especially using the eye.

On the whole I find that Karcher;s methods place too much emphasis and importance on words as though the word would be an end in itself - a word is always an imprecise model of the thing it is supposed to describe. Of Stephen's methods, the Sage says Hexagram 38, which for me would say that he tends to think in oppositional pairs (although he is careful to say the pairs are complementary).

With that said, he speaks deeply to some who are now making the effort to learn his teachings and I think in courtesy, one should allow them to have this valuable opportunity.

I apreciate his Confucian morals and ethics and Stephen is a credit to the I Ching.

 

[cheiron]

I was looking for a particular line today... I could remember the wording of some of it but not the Hx. number or line number... searches on my notes database proved inadequate... too many mentions of the key word... so I asked the Yijing... It gave me the exact line...

So for me this demonstrated, yet again, that it is an oracle and not merely a model representing human nature and condition.

Or I got lucky at 384:1.

But this happens constantly with the oracle as many here know.

This is why I have trouble with a ?western world? which seems to close its ears and eyes to what is demonstrably true.

It saddens me greatly... we could, as societies and individuals, gain so much by accepting these resources which we have, or which are open to us.

That is why I am intolerant of cognitive modellers... I speak as one with many years training in psychology and someone who is trained in two different cognitive therapies... ( as well as psychodynamic / depth therapy). Yes, I use them every working day of the week and they are effective for what they are intended.

Neuro science and cognitive mapping is useful... no one I know in these fields take these as truths for the whole person... they just are not developed enough yet... and that is the view of the field leaders... they are just good tools getting better.

I shall rant on (softly) a little longer. The cognitive approaches, in the real world of applications, are used because they are quick and cheap. I can get a client to make needed (difficult) key connections in 16 hours whereas using depth techniques we could be talking three times that. However all in the field recognise that cognitive modelling can only achieve so much. It cannot reach into deeper more established patterns or disturbances and also does not elicit the numanistic or deep unconscious energies which we all draw upon in more intense times.

Now I am a right brained guy (Hi Mary)... Stephen's ideas and methods were difficult for me at first... like all more complex tools they take a while to learn... think bicycles and cars (automobiles)? Power drills and hand drills?

Not every time do you need a power drill or a car.

But doing a little work to learn to drive that sort of oracle does not make it right brained.

(Not attacking you Mary... You made a good point, nicely

)

Having worked with his ideas for a while I find that I get that more intense 'connection' feeling whilst doing readings. Also I get that more often.

Also when I use them for readings for others I get more responses from folk of awed understanding as the message reaches through their cognitive levels to a deeper knowing. A feeling / response all of us know who have been in depth therapy.

Stephen uses, for me, a lot of Shamanistic symbols. I prefer to mix my own more personally...Though I have taken some of his on board.

He is, for me, not pushing a different system so much as saying? ?get past the words?; get into symbolic meaning and dump the cognitive? (ego); ?enter into a dialogue with your inner self which ONLY uses the language of symbols?.

I like a bit of cognitive in my soup too? Marshall?s research was great and Bradford?s Matrix? Well, I?m always going on about that

But many others here make great intellectual insights ? I cut and paste from this site in my sleep now.

A lot of what he is doing is not new... (see the Square Games thread)?. Or Bradford?s research? or Chung Wu? and many.

My experience of it is that he offers an extension into a wider repertoire of techniques which can yield more depth of experience and understanding of an oracle. These are ancient techniques in the main.

My last experience to share is that for everyday matters I do not use these... I do series of readings as 'dialogues' with the Yi in under ten seconds for that... time and place. However for deeper exploration I find the tools which he has reclaimed, invaluable.

Not every crafts person has to use the same tools or use any tool in the same way? thank the Yi? I hate Shaker and Chipendale furniture

To repeat... I, like others here, value our differences of approach and exploration... in the main

And what about that big world out there which thinks that statistical likelihood or a quick prayer to a God to appease a guilt (for a deed which in likelihood may be repeated) is the only reality?

I like Clarity and the rich mix here (some of whom might kill me on sight ? chuckles ).

Most of all I would like a site where an unconfident person just beginning to explore the Yi can come without feeling it is a battle zone or where someone is going to lay their trip on them.


--Kevin

I have to go away now for a few days? so any posts after 1000 UT / GMT? US 0500 Eastern Time ? I will reply in a few days.

Peace and love to you lovely bunch of ?weirdos?

 

[chrislofting]

Hilary,

according to our analysis from our shuttle computer (or would you prefer something more trekkie? ;-))...

>
> The more I look at King Wen's sequence, the more profound
> good sense I find. I don't much care who created it or how
> old it is.
>

It was created using recursion of the root qualities represented by hexagram 01 and hexagram 64. THAT is WHY there is pairing. All of this is covered in http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/cracked.html

When you look at BOTH King Wen AND Fu Hsi you are looking at PARTS of a greater whole, a whole that is cut using recursion and so self-referencing. Thus all of the sequences present aspects of the whole and as such you can sense the whole in them - prism material, looking into a cut diamond where each 64-hexagram sequences is a facet....

The template for all of the qualities is the abstract cells derived from recursion, as covered in the binary tree diagram http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/btree.html The QUALITY for each cell is PREDETERMINED by our genetics, our species-nature. We overlay symbols to represent those qualities and then link them to a context to bring out variations in the form of labels that give is a languge to use to communicate that specific context.

At the core level, level 2 where we define the dichotomy template of A/NOT-A (yang/yin) used to analyse a whole, ANY dichotomy can be inserted to give you all of the parts expressed in hexagram forms. Thus the 'whole' can be tao cut into yin/yang and the method is also applicable to EACH hexagram as a whole - reflecting moving through the hexagram from bottom to top to derive all 64 line position mixes.

The number of 64-hexagram sequences is large and includes the 'King Wen' ordering in that the recursive roots are obvious whenever you can see pairing in the sequence.

Our brain does this, it derives parts from a whole using recursion and treats the derived sequence as if a 'smooth line' from A to B - it isnt, it is in fact 'lumpy' due to the pairs!

BUT high resolution differentiations reduces the 'gaps' to being so small as to eliciting a sense of a 'continuum' (we use the SAME methodology in working with Mathematics, MBTI, human emotions etc etc)

For those into geometry, note that (a) recursion links all parts into a whole and in doing so puts the whole in all parts such that is it recoverable from any part, and (b) each ROW of recursion can map to some form of geometric pattern - ultimately arriving at a dodecahedron format reflecting the differentiation of 4096 qualities. (we could go to 16+million but is too much to remember/feel)

As the brain reflects 'small world' dynamics, so those dynamics are reflected in the IC and so in the change dynamics. Sociology limits itself to a rigid linear perspective, not yet realising the fractal nature in this material.

Chris.

 

[chrislofting]

MidD,

if one understands the METHODOLOGY of how we derive meaning then it becomes obvious on what 'path' someone is on.

ANY focus on dichotomies, and that can be yin/yang or hexagram to hexagram, you will find TWO dominating perspectives.

The SUM of these perspectives reflects mind at work where the oscillations in our brains, their timing determined by a mix of nature and nurture, will show preferences for one perspective over the other IN GENERAL and for a whole suite of perspectives derived from recursion of the two.

The properties and methods of HOW we derive meaning is determined by our species-nature over millions of years of development. BUT that material is holistic in that it is rooted in our instincts and as such is not serially communicatable nore refinable at that 'immediate' level of expression.

The development of consciousness has allowed us to take these 'immediate' forms of expression, draw them out over time, refine elements of them, and then 'respond' to a stimulus in a more 'refined' way. - we move from parallel to serial processing.

The ancients had no idea about neurosciences etc where neurological processes mold a focus on 'differentiating/integrating' such that consciousness in its musings would associate symbols, sounds, to the different possible expressions and in doing so introduce a rich realm of metaphor, all localised, and so all 'different' - the movement from species to conscious species is reflected in the story of the tower of babel. (the bible, koran, tao te ching etc are full of rich metaphors, statements of science encoded in the only manner the ancient knew - IOW they lacked the precision we have these days and so had to encode meanings through lots of associations, general associations, 'waving of hands' stuff that IMPLIED what they wanted to say precisely) - thus a LOT of decoding is required due to the figurative language.

KNOWING how 'in here' works PRIOR to dealing with the figurative allows one to get a rough idea about what is being represented and so learn the language quicker simply due to the fact that the method of meaning derivation determines all possible combinations of qualities derivable and so used as source qualities, as general qualities, refinable in the LOCAL context.

The main dynamic in our brains means our dichotomies will take on a perspective that is (a) competitive and (b) cooperative. This dynamic is reflected strongly in specialist thinking in that the intent to clearly differentiate A from B means to PUSH AWAY one from the other and as such reflect a more competitive dynamic, a dynamic needed in clear identification as well as clear precision in that precision means to keep REPLACING the current with something 'better', more 'precise'. Overall there is a focus on trying to identify 'universals'.

A specialist focus OVERALL means an 'automatic' focus on things from a competitive perspective but being aware of that is possible to adjust.

What recursion shows us is that as a species the range of possible sources of interpretation of reality is, from the IC perspective, mapped to each hexagram in that each is both a part of the whole but also interpretable LOCALLY as whole in its own right - we can 'live a life' from one hexagram and in doing so come up with patterns local to that perspective and so not identifiable CLEARLY at the specialist level - the attempts to achieve clarity actually CUT links essential to the expressed meaning!

Here we start to get a grasp of the true WHOLE that interacts with reality 'immediately' - we see emerging qualities etc of our species nature.

Stephen seems to be unaware of the scope of what we are dealing with but in his specialist perspective comes across findings that to his isolated perspective are 'universals' that are, in reality, mear parts of a greater whole that the IC can, does, reflect, and that whole encapsulates all specialisations, and that includes the IC.

As to Stephen being a credit, as I have said before, in the context of 'magic', of divination, so his credit is to the traditional I Ching but that IC is NOT the TOTAL I CHING. His focus on the eight hexagrams as something 'fundamental' is a fundamental error is analysis in that the scope of what is being delt with is HUGE and as such his eight are but one PART in a set of PARTS expressed as octets that serve to aid us in our understandings of IC and of reality. One needs to understand the Science of the IC to appreciate it in toto. Stephen has a lot of work to do if he wants to grasp the WHOLE of the IC.

Chris.

 

[bradford_h]

Hi all-
Without taking sides in this debate, let me provide some historical context here, for those who have little.
Yi studies (Yixue) evolved in a number of distinct pulses. Each pulse added what I call structural dimensions, or ways of analyzing the diagrams, first to generate text and then to extract meaning from text. Although the Early Heaven binary patterns didn't appear until the Song Dynasty (11th cent ce), this is the perfect expression of the Yi's binary arrangement, and so all valid structural dimensions exhibit patterns in this sequence, no matter when they arrived historically.
First were the Zhouyi dimensions, or those which were evidently a part of the thought processes of the original authors, These are much fewer in number than commonly supposed, but they also include dimensions not noticed or discussed until the last century. They do not, for instance, include Correctness or Holding Together.
Next came a handful of exigetical or interpretive techniques developed in the centuries to follow, seen most clearly in the Zuozhuan, and including such things as Nuclear Trigrams and Zhi Gua. It is also possible that this was a period in which a rational original sequence of the Gua was 50% scrambled into the half random Ken Wen order to conceal the structural dimensions from obsessive types.
Next came those ideas which make their first appearance in the Ten Appendices oe Wings, either as conjecture about the original authors' thought processes or as freshly minted algorithms and exigetical techniques. These form much of the basis of the Tuan Zhuan and Xiao Xiang commentaries, but are often misleading as to the meaning of the original text.
Then come the Han Apocrypha or the Yiweishu dimensions, those which first appear in the Han dynasty apocryphal works. This is where we start to see the really wild extrapolations of the Image and Number school (Xiang Shu Jia), especially work with calendars and attemts to integrate the 5 Movements into a binary system.. And infinite correlations of the Yi to everything that can be numbered.
After the Han, the structural dimensions took a back seat to philosophical and linguistic studies of the Yi (Xuanxue and Yili) until the early Song, when Chen Tuan brought out some of the underground structural work of the alchemists and Fang Shi (medicine men), leading to the work of Zhou Dunyi (father of the Taijitu) and Shao Yong (father of the Xian Tian, Early Heaven or primal arrangement). Others in the Song, such as Cheng Yi, continued the Xuanxue and Yili focus.
There is also a modern wave of structural specuation that has its foundation more in the properties of binary systems than in the Yjing itself, and here the two are often confused because the Yi is a subset of binary systems, not the other way around. For example, all the marvelous connections made between the Yi and DNA do not establish any kind of connection between the two except by way of reference to a shared binary math. These are properly considered Binary Studies, not Yi Studies.
All of the above contributions can lead to deeper understanding of the larger Yi. But not all of this will contribute to an understanding of the minds of the Zhouyi's authors or of the original text. For those who have a limited lifespan, it should be remembered that Image and Number (Xiangshu) analysis is infinite in permutation. You can spend a lot more years than you have working out these puzzles. Only a small portion of these will contibute to one's understanding of the Yi in any meaningful way. It is important to know when and where to stop if you want to keep calling what you are doing "Yi Studies" and not "Binary Puzzle Solving."
Of course our knowledge is advanced in such extreme specialization, but I still think it's important to remember to do the Cost-Benefit analysis too, Personally, I picked my priorities long ago, and tried to focus on those dimensions which added to my understanding of the original text. For those not familiar with it, this work is summarized in my Dimensions chapter and charted in the diagrams. But obviously this is not the end of it.
b

 

[cheiron]

Hi Brad - This is a crossed post...

Chris

You never seem to deal with the unconscious... I am talking more than your old whore the ?Species Nature? here.

Are you frightened of the unconscious?

Do you have any paradigms of what it really is?

Paradigms mean nothing without human experience.

BTW - When you do get out? Do you get beaten up in bars an awful lot?

For your ignorant proselytizing when folk are talking?

Yes, web chat is open? I think you abuse it.

My bottom line is not to behave in a way that would get me damaged in a bar where folk are direct.

I think you might be a coward/bully on this thread.

Get a perspective.

--Kevin

PS I was disgusted at your comments re. English (Pom) Pomposity? Racism is really ugly? I live in a high Aussie / Kiwi area of London? You would have few friends here small man - And we both know how your countrymen would deal with you in a bar (Face to Face life)... Think on that.

 

[dobro p]

Brad -

"First were the Zhouyi dimensions, or those which were evidently a part of the thought processes of the original authors, These are much fewer in number than commonly supposed, but they also include dimensions not noticed or discussed until the last century. They do not, for instance, include Correctness or Holding Together."

Can you elaborate?

 

[chrislofting]

Kevin,

>
> By Cheiron (Cheiron) on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 01:05 am:
>
> Chris
>
> You never seem to deal with the unconscious... I am talking
> more than your old whore the ?Species Nature? here.
>
> Are you frightened of the unconscious?
>

I in fact DO talk about the unconscious, it is just that you have never gone through my material so you miss out.

Lets, see, something small that you can deal with - umm - try

http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/jungcollect.html

The archetypal forms get encoded into instincts and so enhance species-nature, customise it by adding universals, ideals.

> Do you have any paradigms of what it really is?
>
> Paradigms mean nothing without human experience.
>

IDM is about the source of meaning and so what we use in experience with 'out there' as well as 'in here'. The relabelling that goes on WITHIN the specialisation is of no concern in that the focus is on a basic meaning engine ;-)

Thus the QUALITIES associated with the unconscious are the SAME as those associated with consciousness. Their elicitation is from the context such that archetypal responses to a stimulus, developed in the species, can spring upon an untrained mind and scare the hell out of them - or get them to come up with all sorts of fantasies - see for example http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/angels.html


> BTW - When you do get out? Do you get beaten up in bars an
> awful lot?
>

Never. Too gregarious for that. My background was in Rock music prior to computers etc and so worked in LOTS of bars dealing with all sorts of drunks etc so I can handle my self (6' in height and a bit on the heavy side these days ;-)) if need be but that has not occured - although there was one instance back when I was singing in bars in Thailand during the Vietnam war where I was shot at a couple of times, but that was due to the bad aim of the shooter who was trying to kill the lead guitarist for 'shmoozing' with the shooter's girlfriend! ;-)

Only other time was in school where I got into a fight and hit him so hard I broke my hand! -- all other aggression was limited to the Rugby Union and Hockey fields! ;-)

Oh yes, one other occasion of a drunk US Marine who did not like my attitude - but a mic-stand aided in 'calming' that situation down.

I think you are trying to identify me without knowing me so you will exaggerate some bits! ;-) In the MBTI I map to XNTP although my work alone gives me results these days of XNXP - half way to an XXXX! ;-) Jung would love that.

> For your ignorant proselytizing when folk are talking?
>
> Yes, web chat is open? I think you abuse it.
>

tsk tsk Kevin, a little 'upset' are we? Chill dude, just because I have layed into Karcher and that in turn reflects on your efforts does not mean the end of the world. snap out of it! get a grip!....


> My bottom line is not to behave in a way that would get me
> damaged in a bar where folk are direct.
>

I never have been - but then perhaps I dont go to the sort of bars you go to - or perhaps I dont abuse alchohol enough to get myself into that sort of problem.

> I think you might be a coward/bully on this thread.
>
> Get a perspective.
>


whatever.

> --Kevin
>
> PS I was disgusted at your comments re. English (Pom)
> Pomposity? Racism is really ugly? I live in a high Aussie /
> Kiwi area of London? You would have few friends here small
> man.
>

this shows your ignorance of the concept of *race* as compare to *culture*. My comment was cultural and exaggerated to make the point re the 'aristocratic' tone in that email. I am not racist, never have been, probably since I have lived in so many different cultures where I have been, from a racist perspective, a minority that one starts to get the idea that any issues are issues 'inbetween our ears' rather than skin etc. My family background is more Pom in fact, I am a 'black sheep' so my attitude to those who puff them selves up is a little 'cut them off at the knees' ;-)

... and as to the relationship of Poms to Aussies, you need to chill - as far as we are concerned (OZ) you are all a bunch of basta$ds and we will happily defeat you on the sports field again and again and again - letting you win one now and then just to avoid you developing too much of a case of learnt helplessness! LOL! ;-)

The writer of the email I responded too (anon99 or something) has some real issues in discussion where focusing on how someone spells and ignoring totally any discussion on the facts at hand reflects an 'aristocratic' perspective - there is a broomstick up his/her ars@ !

Chris.

 

[dobro p]

Chris -

You have a huge confidence, and you celebrate it by bashing people, telling them they're wrong or stupid. You say you're 'communicating with I Chingers' but you write long, extremely difficult to understand posts that talk over the heads of most people. In other words, you do little to enlighten people and you do a lot to hurt their feelings.

If you really cared about the people here or what they understand of your ideas, you wouldn't take that approach, which bears all the signs of a really low EQ. In demonstrating to people how much you know in one area, you show them how little you know in another.

Chris, run some IDM on that for me, okay? What do you come up with? I know I can count on you.

 

[chrislofting]

Bradford,

small world network follows the binary sequence in social expression - and yes it is 'lumpy' in that there are 'jumps' etc

The root dichotomy is egalitarian(yin)/aristocratic(yang) and the dynamic is from yin to yang, yang is 'overthrown', yin turns into yang, yang into yin, and off we go again. BUT the overall development of universes means an increasing contextual bias to the aristocratic which can lead eventually to a 'phase transition' due to all of the power laws that pop out with increasing universals! ;-)

The TIME span for the development will depend on LOCAL chance events, accidents, contingencies, but the path is inevitable.

BTW since the sequence is in fact fractal so the WHOLE sequence is manifest in each PART and so more details in development ;-)

Chris.

 

[chrislofting]

>
> By Dobro (Dobro) on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 03:00 am:
>
> Chris -
>
> You have a huge confidence, and you celebrate it by bashing
> people, telling them they're wrong or stupid.

you obviously have not been around for too long. I can be generous, I can be angry all depending on the context. THAT is what you dont get, CONTEXT.

I have ignored comment on the rest - not worth the energy.

'hugs and kisses'

Chris.

 

[dobro p]

Yeah, I'm sure you're a nice guy with a whole range of context. But you're dodging my question. You say it's not worth the effort to respond to it. But is what you're saying in the rest of this thread worth the effort then? Cuz if it is, why would somebody who's concerned to get a message across continually shoot himself in the foot by talking above people's heads and cheerfully insulting them at every opportunity? I mean, it doesn't seem a very bright way to get things done. Not if successful communication of ideas worth sharing is at stake, I mean. Maybe IDM could help you figure it out, is what I was suggesting.

 

[chrislofting]

Dobro,

IDM would focus attention on the competitive nature of the discussions and note that at the level of intensity so eight hexagrams come to notice reflecting the issues at hand:

01 - singlemindedness
43 - spreading the word (selling the one 'true' faith)
14 - leading from the centre (setting the direction to develop)
34 - invigorating (active motivation of others)
09 - making small gains (adding up past bits to stand upon and be noticed)
05 - calculated waiting (waiting for an opportunity)
26 - holding firm (trying to maintain order through staying with traditions)
11 - harmonising (or, from a dark perspective, imposing of order)

focus clearly and you can see it all going on! ;-)

Chris.

 

[bradford_h]

Hi Dobro-
The dimensions chapter IS my elaboraton.
In sum, tho - I think the original authors used:
* the Names (Gua Ming), operationally defined, often relative to dimensional counterparts (most obvious in Increase and Descrease). I think they had the sense that they were defining Gua Names as terms to be used for their own purposes.
* the Direction of Change (Gua Bian, Zhi Gua and Fan Yao). In English, the Zhi Gua was first talked about be Helmut (not Richard) Wilhelm. The Fan Yao appeared in print in the seventies with Bruce Hamerslough and myself, and I just heard LiSe chime in.
* Inverse Pairs (Qian Gua)
* Opposite Pairs (Pang Tong Gua
* Hexagram Shape (Gua Xiang)
* The Twelve Moons (Shi Er Yue) for the Sovereign Gua
* Half-Images (Ban Xiang). I know it's fashionable in academic circles to say that trigrams didn't exist yet, but I call that a crock of hooey. They just were not as elaborated as they got by the time the Shuo Gua was written. There's plenty of internal structural evidence for the Ba Gua.
* Line Position (Yao Wei). Things like heads at line 6, toes at line 1. Plenty of evidence here. Kunst & Shaugnessey both have studied this and made some handy tables.
* And of course they had the now lost body of Shang divination lore with its structures and geometries , things like categories of crack shape and direction.
* Regarding all the Line Character dimensions (Yao De), possibly only Centrality (Zhong) existed to the authors. I can't find any evidence for any of the others in the original, & that includes Appropriateness (Dang), Correctness (Zheng), Correspondence (Ying), Holding Togeher (Bi), Ruling Lines and the rest. All of these first appeared in the Wings and in the Han Yweishu.

 

[dobro p]

Chris

"IDM would focus attention on the competitive nature of the discussions and note that at the level of intensity so eight hexagrams come to notice reflecting the issues at hand"

Uh-huh. That's what it has to say about the contention in this thread. But you're still evading my question. I was wondering what an IDM approach has to say about your evident lack of communication skills - your talking over people's heads and being so rude. Every time I mention it, you skitter away from it. When you're gunning for Karcher, we get long, difficult to understand, impolite posts from you. When the shoe's on the other foot, you shy away from the question. What's that about?

I believe my original post to you was both pertinent and accurate: "You have a huge confidence, and you celebrate it by bashing people, telling them they're wrong or stupid. You say you're 'communicating with I Chingers' but you write long, extremely difficult to understand posts that talk over the heads of most people. In other words, you do little to enlighten people and you do a lot to hurt their feelings.

If you really cared about the people here or what they understand of your ideas, you wouldn't take that approach, which bears all the signs of a really low EQ. In demonstrating to people how much you know in one area, you show them how little you know in another."

I don't think there's anything in this that too many people in this thread would take issue with. Not even you - you still haven't addressed it, anyway.

 

[dobro p]

Brad - thanks. I've got some reading to do. This is fascinating stuff for me. The history that you provide and the myths that Karcher's book provides are adding a richness to it that wasn't there before for me. Really useful. Cheers - to the both of you.

 

[chrislofting]

> By Dobro (Dobro) on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 05:46 am:
>
> Chris
>
> "IDM would focus attention on the competitive nature of the
> discussions and note that at the level of intensity so eight
> hexagrams come to notice reflecting the issues at hand"
>
> Uh-huh. That's what it has to say about the contention in
> this thread. But you're still evading my question. I was
> wondering what an IDM approach has to say about your evident
> lack of communication skills - your talking over people's
> heads and being so rude.

Firstly I have no idea re the head levels on this list, but my nature is such that my prose will naturally be 'intense' - See the realm of Thunder in http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/MBTIX.htm

(the above being link an example of IDMs ability to link perspectives)

In the enneagram format this maps to type 5 and so the focus on avarice and the need to contain, to keep things to oneself such that prose can reflect that! I assure you it is frustrating at times but when angry etc we will fall to our 'base natures' and that is mine... although as I emphasised to Kevin, I have moved from XNTP to XNXP so things are improving.

The above link covers the general persona issues (XNTP) but that said, if I see a wrong I will push for it to be recognised as such. simple. ( I will stand up and say what needs to be said regardless of the consequences - hex 25 - heaven over thunder)

As to your comments of:

"You have a huge confidence, and you celebrate it
> by bashing people,"

That is not a common trait, only when necessary and with Stephen's claims it is, IMHO, necessary. If you cannot deal with that then you need to do some more reflections on the IC! ;-) (and in doing so find our YOUR basic persona).

Chris.

 

[cheiron]

Brad

Thanks

That helped me get a better perspective.

--Kevin

 

[misterwu]

You might consider several other things:

1) "Words" in classical and early old chinese are not quite like our words. They seem to act in a different way. There a lot of interesting speculation about how these "words" acted as keys to the "inner thesaurus" of the diviner, similar to the practices in Ifa divination.

2) These "words" existed then and exist now at a border between written and oral.

3) The "words" and phrases are distributed throughout the matrix in ways that, to my mind at least, reinforce the sense of the interconnection and intercommunication of the hexagrams in the ways I have been exploring.

4) I feel that the "words" and phrases have some real similarities to psychic images, like dream images.

5) The figures of the Yi were often referred to as xiang/symbols. A xiang consists of the gua, the attached words and the (often mythic or magical) associations they evoke. They act as a matrix upon which, for example, the history of the Change of the Mandate of Heaven was inscribed (and symbolically re-enacted) at key places.

best wishes

Stephen

 

[bradford_h]

Hi Stephen-
Good to hear from you at last.
Point taken on the special functions of the words of the text, structural and otherwise, but I was just trying to focus on pure Xiangshu dimensions with my comments here. I tend to treat the words in other places in my work, and have many dozens of pages on the subject. If they are words that belong in a pattern I'll talk about them under such topics as correlative thought, pattern and scale, and I've developed the small symbol correspondences fairly extensively in my Xiao Xiang chapter.
Words in general, including the mantic formula, I treat at some length in my Intro and in a huge Glossary section.
With the structural words I'll tend to see correlative thought as the bridge between Yili and Xiangshu. But elsewhere I'll tend to treat words mainly as subjects for Yili (meaning and princlple) interpretation.

 

[dobro p]

Chris, you said -

"As to your comments of:

"You have a huge confidence, and you celebrate it
> by bashing people,"

That is not a common trait, only when necessary and with Stephen's claims it is, IMHO, necessary."

Necessary, my sainted aunty. It's almost never necessary to bash someone who has a different way of looking at things than you. But people who screw up often say it happened out of necessity, granted.

"If you cannot deal with that then you need to do some more reflections on the IC! ;-) (and in doing so find our YOUR basic persona."

Again, you're shifting the focus. A lot of your responses to me in this thread have suggested that I just don't get it. But I do get it. I get that you're out of line in this thread. I've got good reasons why I'm taking such pains with you to point it out as well. Here are the main reasons:

* I'm impressed with Stephen's I Ching work in the past and his latest I Ching - it's helped me a lot with my own divination. So I'm interested in what he has to say, and I'm concerned that he might decide not to post here if he's gonna have you going up one side of him with a lawn mower and down the other.

* I like this group and I want to preserve its health.

* I've spotted something you need to attend to. You're so busy responding to my observations that you seem not to have taken it on yet. You've got a brain the size of New York and tact the size of a sesame seed. What's the point of the former when you're hampered by the latter? So you're an enneagram 5. So what? All that says is that what you've got to learn is how to connect to others better.

 

[misterwu]

Hi Bradford

Good to hear from you! Yes, I understand. And let me say at the outset how much respect I have for your work. Now, though it may seem preposterous, I somehow see the work I do as a fusion of ili and xiangshu and a lot of it is based in how we look at the words and, of course, the particular "fantasy" of history we have. I will post some more detailed comments and questions for you tomorrow (am up to my ears at the moment in tour planning). Hilary suggested I do a sort of before and after divination to suggest how the perspectives I am working with might help deepen a consultation. I shall give it a try.

until soon

Stephen

 

[chrislofting]

> By Misterwu (Misterwu) on Thursday, March 25, 2004 - 11:20
> am:
>
> You might consider several other things:
>
> 1) "Words" in classical and early old chinese are not quite
> like our words. They seem to act in a different way. There a
> lot of interesting speculation about how these "words" acted
> as keys to the "inner thesaurus" of the diviner, similar to
> the practices in Ifa divination.
>

ANY symbolism is a representation of feelings. You cannot interact with reality without accessing emotions, even being 'rational' is more so the positive and negative cancelling out, the exaggerations suppressed and so a focus on "AS IS" compared to "AS INTERPRETED".

ALL neuron-dependent life forms share a common set of qualities used to derived meaning. Thus the brain dynamics of the tiny zebra fish is the SAME in GENERAL as our brain dynamics in that there is a bias to focusing on the KNOWN vs the UNKNOWN, aka the PRECISE vs the APPROXIMATE (but where, someone working from the position of the approximate will consider their position as precise as compared to some other approximate)

ALL of these neuron-dependent life forms have a sense of WHOLENESS derived from the neurology's focus on WHAT, the differentiated, as they do a sense of RELATEDNESS derived from the neurology's focus on WHERE, the integrated (you need a coordinate system for processing WHERE).

These basic qualities, these basic feelings, are the foundations upon which ALL communications at the unconscious and consciousness levels rests and also are the foundations for all expression of complex instincts - simply due to the fact that it is the neuron that manages information processing and so determines the set of generic qualities possible in deriving meaning.

This issue of us is the increased complexity in the neurology, in particular the ability to derive a spectrum of a whole, that seems to have led to the development of consciousness.

Consciousness then takes the set of basic qualities, the 'universals' and associates them with a particular context and in doing so elicits a language specific to that context - and so with consciousness comes specialisations WITHIN the lifetime of an individual/species - we have internalised the principles of evolution to apply them in realtime, 'now' as compared to eons.

Thus prior to the word was the feeling and through analysis of the dynamics of the brain we can identify those feelings where symbols etc become metaphors to transfer the feelings from one species member to another through the process of resonance.

IOW there appears to have been a rich dynamic in communications prior to our focus on high precision communications - i.e. precise words. The DIFFERENCE being on the need for CONTEXT.

Basic communications at the family/clan levels integrates communications with local features such that I can indicate to local features in my communications. With the development of language so it became universal in that I do not need to be in the context to which I am communicating about - I can roll up the context and take it with me across the planet and communicate - IOW language serves as a universal and so I am free to travel and tell stories.

All of this stems from basic neurosciences, cognitive science and the qualities exist in ALL neuron-dependent life forms to varying degrees (as in resolution power) where our species is the most developed, and continuing to develop through our use of consciousness.

> 2) These "words" existed then and exist now at a border
> between written and oral.
>

earlier. The qualities are rooted in our primate nature - apes can learn languages to communicate with us and as such reflect the hard-coding of the mentioned qualities, they are just in need of refinement (there was a report of late re Rhesus monkies in research labs getting 'smarter' in that the lengthy exposure (spanning years) to the experiments etc allowed them to learn - and so reflecting the classic relationship in information processing of bandwidth and time)

> 3) The "words" and phrases are distributed throughout the
> matrix in ways that, to my mind at least, reinforce the
> sense of the interconnection and intercommunication of the
> hexagrams in the ways I have been exploring.
>

The derivation of meaning is through the process of recursion - IOW self-referencing, this reflects holographic processes. As the IDM material shows, the ONE set of qualities is applicable in deriving meaning at ALL levels of analysis, what makes the difference is the CONTEXT.

> 4) I feel that the "words" and phrases have some real
> similarities to psychic images, like dream images.
>

Deeper. The pattern tie-in with basic instincts of the species. Thus some birds have an innate behaviour in learning to duck for cover when in the nest when the SHADOW of a hawk passes over. This is an instinct and as such reflects the sort of instincts we have as primates.

The development of consciousness allows us to:

(a) modify the existing through refined habit creation ('good practices')
(b) ANTICIPATE contexts through the use of imagination to create habits prior to experiencing that context.

Our consciousness however has been naive re what is 'in here' and so has come up with all sorts of stories - thus the fact that instincts/habits are encoded into the input areas of neurons allowing context to PUSH the individual has not been understood until recent times such that a minor context change can elicit a response that the mind has no idea what is going on and so comes up with some story (as in the concept of angels etc - see http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/angels.html)


> 5) The figures of the Yi were often referred to as
> xiang/symbols. A xiang consists of the gua, the attached
> words and the (often mythic or magical) associations they
> evoke. They act as a matrix upon which, for example, the
> history of the Change of the Mandate of Heaven was inscribed
> (and symbolically re-enacted) at key places.
>

The figures are foreground to the qualities they represent that is in the background. The IC is a SPECIALISATION and as such is a metaphor for what the species deals with - WHAT/WHERE, differentiate/integrate, objects/relationships.

The basic language is describe in the context of the IC in the thread on this list of "The SPECIES I CHING" Those qualities map to an infinite number of experiences, each unique and yet each mapped to the SAME qualities to describe IN GENERAL that experience.

Thus each person on this planet can come up with an IC and although locally different will reflect the global qualities.

Chris.

 

[anon99]

IDM is a boring load of bollocks

and the grownups are whispering about shamanism with Hitler in their midst - GET REAL