Have you read what Wilhelm says about this hexagram under THE IMAGE? It connects well with your question, "What is the important point of I Ching?"
"Egotism and cupidity isolate men. Therefore the hearts of men must be seized by a devout emotion. They must be shaken by a religious awe in face of eternity--stirred with an intuition of the One Creator of all living beings, and united through the strong feeling of fellowship expressed in the ritual of divine worship."

to dispell illusions -

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/lofting/x110010.html

The point, the point ... going to the ancestral temple to meet with the spirits of our ancestors?

Who are our "ancestors"? Ancient or timeless beings perhaps that are our ancestors in an inner sense. Or deeper,"older" parts of ourselves.
If I take the words "ancestral" and "ancestors" more metaphorically (not necessarily referring to my grandgrandmother, although she might very well be in that temple too ) it makes a lot of sense to me.

If you like - and this will probably appeal more to the light of some reasons - you can also interpret "ancestral" as referring to our species, our biological heritage. And to basic neurological mechanisms that we have in common with the animals from which we descend.
The only thing left to explain then is how a "random" cast can give an anwer like this that doesn't seem to be random at all.

martin said:

The only thing left to explain then is how a "random" cast can give an anwer like this that doesn't seem to be random at all.

Click to expand...

Because, dear Martin, the WHOLE of the IC is applicable to every moment and ANY hexagram derived through 'random' casting will be found to be meaningful given the question ;-) (or forced to be so by consciousness ;-) - no question, no meaning, ANY question, meaning - and so in this context ALL of the IC hexagrams will 'fit' the question!)

If one spends time tossing coins, yarrow-sticking, or any other miraculous/random methodology one will miss the point, and the depth, of the I Ching (or should I say miss the Universal IC as compared to the 'Traditional' IC)

ICPlus IC questions -
Emotional IC questions -

The questions methodology comes out of consideration of how our neurology derives/processes meaning. This puts us squarely into the realm of the particular-general. The coin-toss/yarrow etc methodologies come out of not considering what is behind expressions, focusing only on the uniqueness of individual consciousness where that uniqueness will naturally share space with the notions of the random/miraculous.

The focus is .... Know thy self - given 3000+ years of research into our nature as both a species and conscious individuals I think it is time to move on. and consider 'precise' methods in conjuction with the 'approximate' methods.

you can toss coins to give you some possible perspective you have not considered in application to the whole, but it will not give you consistant results compared to what is possible given the questioning method re what is the 'best fit/worst fit' orderings of hexagrams for some particular moment.

The work covering the particular-general dynamics shows how it is that we get value out of the IC - but it also shows how we can improve on that at the price of focusing less on the 'magical' ;-)

To emphasise the point about randomness - the tossing of coins etc in the IC is the equivalent of our consciousness selecting behaviour for the individual.

The realm of the singular, the unique consciousness, is isomorphic to Darwin's 'mutation' where an individual can change the world due to the unique perspective. As such each of us as singulars share space with what is random (or miraculous). Each of us as PARTICULARS are genetically-determined members of a species and so can have those buttons 'pushed'.

The IC without coin tossing reflects us as particulars and so each of us can 'map' to some hexagram for life. The IC WITH coin tossing adds-in the agent of mutation, the random, that can elicit some 'unique' perspective that either works 'really well' or is a total failure (this is positive feedback dynamics).

Chris.

Yes, of course, any hexagram fits more or less or can be made to fit.
And probabilities can be very misleading, so it is easy for us to see meaningful coincidences (synchronicities) where there are in fact none. How probable is it to get 5 sixes in a row when you throw dice? Or 3 times the same hexagram in a row? Or how probable is it that among - say - 30 people in a room two have each exactly one dog and two cats?
The answer to such questions is: probably much more probable than you probably think.

Still, I'm quite sure that in the case of oracles there is (also) something else going on. And, based on probability theory, I don't think there is any reason to shut out the possibility that something is happening there that is essentially non-random. The arguments for "it must be random" that I have heard till now are all easy to refute.
If you look at the hexagrams that somebody gets over a longer period of time, for example, you may very well see a random distribution. But you cannot conclude from that that each individual cast is random.
If you observe a crossing for a few months and it turns out that on average 50% of the cars turn left and 50% turn right, can you conclude from that that every driver tossed a coin to decide if he or she would turn left or right? Obviously not. Yet people come up with such "arguments" when they attempt to prove that oracles are nonsense. And then they wonder how someone like me, who appears to be reasonably smart in some areas (excluding soccer) can be so stupid to believe in "such things". Ha!

Move on? If you prefer to build hexagrams in other than what you call "magical" ways, go ahead. I think that is perfectly okay. But I wouldn't dismiss the ancient methods so easily. Old or ancient is not the same as backward or superstitious.

Doesn't "random" imply "meaningless"? If all answers are appropriate, then no answer is *uniquely* appropriate. Why would anybody consult an oracle if they believed the answer is going to be essentially meaningless? "Meaningless" in the sense of having no particular or special relevance to their concern or the situation at hand. Wouldn't the I Ching in that case be just a book like any other book? Wouldn't it be just as effective to "consult" a dictionary or a novel by some random method?

I don't think any believer in divination would admit the process of obtaining a reading is random. What is important is that the method be incapable of direct influence or manipulation. We do not want to think we are responsible for selecting the result. The result has to be independent of our desires or will. The rest is up to the gods.

The premise of oracles is that something in the universe is willing to answer our questions. The Yi is a tool for communicating with the Other. It doesn't matter where the Other has its being (inside our heads or outside in the world) or why it chooses to respond. The Other is the Other, ineffable and beyond rational apprehension. We can "feel" it or "sense" it, but we cannot define or describe it. In my opinion, to seek a rational justification for divination is like trying to prove the existence of God. Misguided and pointless. Haven't we learned anything after two millenia of Western rational philosophy? Reason has its limits.

Lindsay

lindsay said:

Doesn't "random" imply "meaningless"?

Click to expand...

No. It means no cause detectable and so no history. The notion of the random and the miraculous share the same space - and so to some an event is 'random' and to others 'miraculous'.

These notions share space with the activities of individual consciousness in that the uniqueness makes it unpredictable, we can work off 'whim'. It is this choice emphasis in the realm of the singular that allows for extreme highs or absolute lows - positive feedback dynamics at work.

This is the realm of psychotherapy, charismatic leaderships, innovative ideas, and psychosis. It is not 'scientific' since Science needs to make comparisons and the uniqueness stops that. Thus the only Science applicable is that of Freedom - aka issues of Ethics. Husserl's Phenomenology operates here, as does Existentialism and religous/secular fundamentalism (and so "psychoanalysis" etc etc) and so a lot of Philosophy.

The I Ching free of the divination element IS open to Scientific investigation and the focus is on the dynamics of the particular/general and the IC as metaphor for mapping properties and methods of self-referencing. In this realm you DO find 'prediction' elements but not so strongly focused on the singular; more the particular/general and all linked to cause-effect but the dynamic can span generations. The individual as such is a 'particular', and serves the collective in achieving its purposes - and so each has a begin-end but it is associated with 'like minded' individuals, not unique consciousness.

The divination aspects of the IC reflect the divination nature of consciousness as it tries to interpret reality and so a plethora of perspectives that can put icing on a cake or burn it in the making! Positive feedback favours distancing and creation of unique perspectives WITHIN some collective and so maximising the information bandwidth of that collective.

OTOH negative feedback works on getting close and close to "X". This is a realm of learning 'good' habits etc.

If you use any random/miraculous manner in dealing with the IC the WHOLE of the IC applies. Using questions the same applies BUT you can get a better sorting of the hexagrams into best-fit/worst-fit, and consistantly so.

The 'delusion' aspect is in the perspective of the ancients re what they were dealing with - we now know better and so can utilise the IC in more efficient, consistant ways.

There no 'issue' as such tossing coins in that it can give you some aspect of the current moment you may not have considered BUT the result is not necessarying the 'best fit' for the moment - it is the traditional perspective that plants that idea.

Martin - review Markov Chains.

Chris.

lightofreason said:

The 'delusion' aspect is in the perspective of the ancients re what they were dealing with - we now know better and so can utilise the IC in more efficient, consistant ways.

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Can you explain this further? How exactly were the ancients delusional and how exactly is your method not delusional? And when you say "we", to whom exactly are you referring? Many of us here respect the ancients, because without their wisdom, we wouldn't be here. You yourself would have no discernible viewpoint if you hadn't learned and incorporated views from your ancestors. What makes you think that your method is better than anyone else's? Maybe it works for you, but it's delusional to generalize one method as the be-all and end-all and to ignore or forget your roots. Every method of divination is just as good or bad as every other method. The test of its effectiveness or ineffectiveness is in the diviner, not in the divination system.

(1) the term 'delusion' refers to the maintaining of a belief past its 'use by/best before' date. E.g. those who believe the world is flat are delusional - but only in the context of that particular belief. The more beliefs you maintain that are 'past it' so the more delusional one is.

(2) The ancients were not 'delusional' since for their time their belief was valid, what I said was the ASPECTS were present. Thus what they were 'ill-informed', where sensations they experienced had no researched cause and all was in the hands of the 'gods'. For their time this was acceptable and they did a good job in trying to describe the feelings of meaning they had through the use of analogy/metaphor to their current history/legend/myths (See SMs book covering this linkage of IC-derived meanings to local historic events/figures etc as a way to describe those feelings through analogy)

(3) If any of you, as singular, unique, conscious, beings, bothered to look BEHIND all of this you would move from the singular to the particular-general and so from taking the IC as some 'base', magical, context to understanding it as metaphor where behind it, originating it, are basic dynamics of self-referencing in the brain in the form of recursing the yin/yang dichotomy (aka differentiate/integrate aka WHAT/WHERE)

(4) If the ancient Chinese had not come up with the IC then some other divination system would have been used, and in that using would have its base categories linked to some dichotomy. E.g. in Astrology and other systems there is a focus on the elements - where these too come out of self-referencing (earth/air self-referenced will give you qualities that introduce fire/water and so on) IOW the identifications I have made apply to ANY dichotomy-sourced, self-referencing, context.

(5) the source of all of this is your brain, or more so the generic brain dynamics we all share as neuron-dependent life forms. PRIOR to understanding how 'in here' works we have lived-off speculations, some fanciful, some close to the mark, none empirically provable. Thus, for example, the experience of being 'pushed' by 'someone/something' invisible is in fact our consciousness being aware of context pushing our instincts. But the ancients had no idea what was going on other than the distinct experience of being 'guided' etc - It too Science to uncover what as going on. See my page http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/angels.html

(6) Our particular/general nature is programmed in the form of instincts. These are then refined during our life time through development of habits. This is all 'primate' stuff in that we are, genetically, still apes.

(7) From the moment of birth to about 24 months there is a development process going on that culminates in the emergence of a sense of 'self' and it is this sense that develops into the 'singular' nature I have mentioned before (with the associated properties and methods).

(8) The data supporting (6) and (7) has only come up within the last 100 years or so, with most of it in the last 30 or so. That data, applied to the notions of 'divination' etc indicates that there are elements now categorisable as 'delusions'. That’s what Science does, that’s what 59 covers, the lifting of the 'fog' etc etc etc.

(9) Additional work on our brain/consciousness dynamic includes the recognition that the whole we deal with consciously us but a part of the whole we deal with unconsciously. This reflects the dynamics of the metonymy/metaphor dichotomy. (see such pages as http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/wavedicho.html )


(10) When working from the position of the singular we miss a LOT that is going on in the realm of the particular/general. BUT, from an evolution focus, the 'random' element is useful such that it has developed in us and other neuron-dependent life forms as self-awareness, full blown consciousness for us. The intensity of its expression can make it seem as if it controls everything - it doesn’t, and focusing on the IC particular/general dynamics can aid one in understanding that.

(11) The success of the IC has been more due to it being sourced 'in here' and that 'in here' reflective of adapting to 'out there' - IOW the IC can elicit resonance. Consciousness, being driven to 'interpret' will then fill in the dots where some are real, some imagined. By using generic questions one can get around these problems. Now if one prefers to avoid such material, that’s fine, one can go on trying to live a 10th century BC life - but to move on means getting in touch with the IC in the 21st century AD.


Chris.

BTW - the QUESTION methodology is based on how the brain deals with novelty, be it imagined or real. The SAME method is used regardless of context such that we can use GENERIC questions to derive what is being sensed about the context etc. etc.

The EMOTIONAL IC material recognises our PRIMATE emotions as working almost autonomously and so we can interrogate it for its perspective on a context in that, for it, all moments are emotional.

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

Is the physical universe random, fixed or ordered according to laws of change? I suspect, whichever the answer, Yijing is no different. To entertain the mystical is not to discard science, and science is only another theory after all. I don’t know which is more misleading, science or the mystical. Perhaps they’re both real. I doubt the purely logical can ever know, nor can the exclusively mystical. Alchemy is also theoretical. The person I never believe is one who knows for sure.

the realm of the singular is the realm of divination 'as we know it'. It is ignorable in that one can work out of the realm of the particular/general and get as lot more out of the IC as a whole. Doing both benefits the singular in that the particular/general reinforces one's intuition. The singular the contextualises

Bruce,

Didn't Lao Tzu say, "Knowing that you are a fool is true wisdom."? I may be misquoting, but it seems appropriate.

Hi Chris,

Re: It is ignorable in that one can work out of the realm of the particular/general and get as lot more out of the IC as a whole.

Yes, I’m convinced this is so. There need be no oracle value to extract meaning from IC, at any given time, as a whole. Ignorable if this is how one pursues the study of it. But for one who derives value from specifics – as you are fond of calling it - it is far from ignorable.

I find meaning and value during every morning walk, just by sharing the same place with nature; and sometimes something happens which speaks to me in an uncommonly timely way, as would the Yijing. To discard that as ignorable would only be to my loss.

Jack,

If you take all the people who positively know THE answer, put them all in one field with weapons, let them duke it out amongst themselves until none were left, the earth would be a wiser place.

I just like it !

As far as I'm concerned both the Logic & the Mystic of the IChing disintegrate very quickly, leaving plain good sense. It's the emotional and itellectual equivelant of talking to an intelligent and compasionate friend.

Regards

Steve

"If you use any random/miraculous manner in dealing with the IC the WHOLE of the IC applies. Using questions the same applies BUT you can get a better sorting of the hexagrams into best-fit/worst-fit, and consistantly so."

This sounds like conjecture, Chris. Why do you think that random methods don't give a best fit? Because our current sciences cannot explain how that would work perhaps?
Are you applying the principle "I cannot explain this, therefore it cannot happen"?

"Review Markov Chains."
I suppose you mean that you can understand certain stochastic patterns if you assume that the underlying process is Markovian?
That may be true, but are you perhaps applying another principle here, a cousin of the one I mentioned earlier?
"I can explain it this way, therefore it must happen this way"?

I didn't try it yet, but I guess I could explain the evolution of cars on earth quite satisfactory with current evolution theory. And yet ..

Be careful with Occam's razor, you can easily cut yourself.

bruce_g said:

I find meaning and value during every morning walk, just by sharing the same place with nature; and sometimes something happens which speaks to me in an uncommonly timely way, as would the Yijing. To discard that as ignorable would only be to my loss.

Click to expand...

But this is YOU, a SINGULAR. In the realm of particular/general YOU dont exist, YOU are 'meaningless', your identity is represented by a hexagram reflecting your PARTICULAR nature as a member of the species (and so serving the particular purpose you have in that species) where you share identify with other 'like' members of the species.

Understand the particular/general and you will get a much richer understanding of your species, your species-membership, and your unique self (which does get influenced by the unconscious dynamics of the particular)

Chris.

stevev said:

As far as I'm concerned both the Logic & the Mystic of the IChing disintegrate very quickly, leaving plain good sense. It's the emotional and itellectual equivelant of talking to an intelligent and compasionate friend.

Regards

Steve

Click to expand...

Because it reflects us, or more so our brains. The qualities derived from self-referencing what/where in our brains are encoded in the IC - as they are encoded in all other specialisations (e.g. Mathematics, Emotions, etc) -that is where the IDM work focuses - the isomorphism due to all specialisations coming out of the one generalisation - the properties and methods of the neurology where that neurology, through evolution, has adapted to 'out there' by internalising basic elements.

Chris.



Chris.

Random methods cannot give a best fit since they are not related to the LOCAL moment, they apply to eliciting some universal AS IF local. The questions methods grounds things in the local and so gives a 'best fit' more consistantly.

The random method is useful to PLAY, to EXPERIMENT with variations on a theme etc. try out 'new' perspectives and so 'random' seeding of a situation.

martin said:

"Be careful with Occam's razor, you can easily cut yourself.

Click to expand...

I am hi tech - use an electic razor (and it comes with a solar power kit as well!)

Chris.

BTW - as to the mystical - when researching the particular/general one comes across what links us all together and so allows for 'resonance' across individuals - this is reflected in the 'property of recursion' page:

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

Read it until you 'get it'. THEN think.... realise how it is that we can use XOR to get the IC to describe itself just as we can describe ourselves.

Chris.

Read, like study you mean ?

Nah, too many words. I can't wait to play XORs.

stevev said:

Nah, too many words. I can't wait to play XORs.

Click to expand...

One needs to walk before one runs.

other more IC/XOR focused - http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introXOR.html

Basic IDM is covered in
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introIDM.html

Using the XOR methodology we get hexagrams to describe themselves - a feature uncovered in the consideration of the realm of the particular/general, not the singular ;-)

Chris.

I always walk into doors,

and I don't mind falling.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed,

everything would appear as it is, infinite." Why did Blake use the metaphor of a door anyway? You cleanse a door and you still can't see through it. Just open the friggin' door.

Steve,

Common sense is only one of Yi’s intended purposes. “During the hunt three kinds of game are caught” – ‘to serve gods, guests and for everyday consumption. When the catch answered all three purposes, the hunt was considered especially successful.’ 57.4

Where is

the door man ?

This is a banquet

Gods, guests and the everyday. Well I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying communicating with and thru the IChing.

I dig Blake, especially his passion.

‘Cleansed (clear) door of perception’, I think, refers to the way in and out of how one views the world – perhaps something like 19-20?

Other Blake beauties:
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.

Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

Shades of Lao Tzu?
I have no name: I am but two days old. What shall I call thee? I happy am, Joy is my name. Sweet joy befall thee!

And this one for my friend, Chris:
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

But in fairness, Blake was first an artist.