Hi All,

It was August 1968, 40 years ago this month, when i obtained my first copy of the ancient Chinese text known as Yi Ching, or the Book of Changes. I was introduced to it through my teacher, who one day put three coins in my hand saying, “Try this.”

The actual process of divination is simple enough, one formulates a question, performs a ritual that points to a specific passage in the text that purports not only to be relevant to the question but actually useful and helpful. I found this to be a rather startling proposition, because if this divination process is actually viable it meant that my worldview had to expand to incorporate it. It put me in a position similar to Alice, leaving the flatland of the Midwest, saying to her pet pooch, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Lots of testing ensued. And after hundreds of divinations, something happened to me, my worldview actually shifted. There is a lot that could be said about the many adventures that continued to unfold. But today my use of the Oracle is pretty much a matter of daily practice; where each morning i ask a simple question, “What furthers for today?” Simply put furtherance is akin to optimum use.

Last Monday, the early morning answer to this ongoing question was the chapter in the book called Stagnation. This is an indicator of an out of sorts situation. Here's what happened. At 8 AM i was scheduled to be in the office of my dermatologist for a simple in office Mohs surgery procedure to remove a basal cell carcinoma from my face. Frankly i didn't think this was a big deal; i’d been through it before. But as part of the pre-surgery process it turned out that my heart rate was low; down as far as 35 beats per minute. In the dermatologist’s mind this was clear counter indication to any prospective surgery. So they shipped me off to the emergency room at the local hospital for a series of tests, EKG, blood pressure readings every quarter hour, bloodwork, and chest x-ray. All of which went rather well, and the results of which were within normal ranges. One other test was in order, a Holter 24 hour monitor that i was supposed to be attached to before leaving the emergency room. Alas, i waited and waited, no monitor technician showed up. Finally, i suggested to the staff that unless this matter was attended to in the next 20 minutes; i was to going to leave the hospital. (Actually all i wanted was a mutually agreed time convenient to both of us.) Rather than face that prospect, they decided to wheel me from the emergency room to the place in the hospital where the monitor could be installed.

Finally, this was accomplished, and i was ready for discharge, but i was stuck there without transportation, because my vehicle was back at the dermatologist office, because they were reluctant to allow somebody with such a low heart rate to drive. The obvious answer was to call a taxicab; but the hospital gal assigned to do this task found it -in that moment- beyond the level of her competence. So i left her, muttering to myself, and headed for the exit. I was stopped by some kind soul who asked about my situation, and she took it upon herself to complete this task. Then i was told that a cab would arrive by a time certain. Alas the stagnation continued. Again, i felt compelled to action, and informed the kind soul that if the cab did not arrive 15 minutes after the time certain, that i would undertake to walk to the dermatologist's office, some four and a half miles away, and retrieve my vehicle. This took about two hours and i was more than a bit tired by the effort.

The next day’s divination was quite clear, if i could just hold off, and not insists that i was in the right and provoke some conflict, that it was possible for Grace to descend. Typically i alternate days between cycling and walking, and as yesterday was involved in a hike beyond my usual, it seemed appropriate to cycle, in part because i wanted the Holter heart rate monitor to record what my heart does when it's stressed. So i cast about for a destination. 10 miles from home is a restaurant that serves one of my favorite breakfasts, Swedish pancakes served with lingonberry sauce. Conveniently, this restaurant is in the general area of the hospital, a reassuring proposition, just on the off chance that there was something seriously wrong with my heart.

The pancakes were yummy as usual, and my attention turned to the return trip. From my bike bag i fished out a bus schedule. It showed that i had about half an hour to get to a depot where a bus would be available to take both my bicycle and me part of the way home, reducing a 20 mile round trip to a mere 14. This was something i’d wanted to try ever since obtaining my senior citizen bus pass, an ID card that allows me to ride without charge.

The bus with my bike on a front mounted rack zipped along to a destination near home arriving exactly 24 hours after the heart rate monitor had been initiated the previous day. I was very polite to the bus driver, admiring her skill aloud, but not letting on that from my point of view she was an agent of Grace.

Warmly,

Charles

88W18'28" 41N58'02"

Charles:

Thanks for sharing that! A very nice sequence.

I hope you are in fine fettle at this point.

I sometimes try to imagine being one of the diviners who was appointed by the ancient emperor to create a draft of the I Jing.

"OK team, we need to come up with an Integral series of 64 events with indications and contra-indications that cover every possible situation in the universe. Get to work, we need a draft done by the Fall."

Where do you start? What do you use as a reference?

Now, my question: can anyone explain in clear language why the I Jing would be even remotely useful? How is it that it can correspond in any way to something that will happen in the next moment?

One thing that I wonder about is this: if I get a fortune cookie and it says, you will notice a red car, what do I start doing? Looking for a red car. And of course, at some point I will find one. And tomorrow, when the next fortune cookie says, you will notice a blue car, now I am oriented to blue cars and remembering that previously the oracle was correct, and it perpetuates itself.

To put it another way, the oracle asks us to look for an event which is bound to come along in some form. And then it comes along. But to define the event, we have to structure everything else so that the curtain and stage put the confirming event on center stage of our awareness.

So, in your example of stagnation, there were hundreds of possible events that happened in those hours that represent smooth and rapid creative development, perfect timing and effective advancement, complete non-stagnation.

Maybe the way to look at the I Jing is that it is simply a relatively sophisticated way of deluding ourselves and, since we always delude ourselves and usually do it in fairly crude ways, practice of I Jing at least represents greater sophistication and awareness.

Hi Schalk,

Thanks for your response and concern for my health. Both are appreciated.

The Yi Ching represents a special case in the world's sacred literature, and nothing it has to offer comes in the form of dogma. It's special because it is testable. No one is required to believe anything about it whatsoever. If someone were to ask me how to approach it, my counsel would be after mastering the simple divination procedure, to keep a notebook that recorded the question and the divined result and how it may or may not have been applicable to a real-world situation. Then one is in a position to decide for oneself based on the evidence about its viability as a divination system.

But that question aside, the one you raised about how it works, is something i've pondered for over 40 years. It may be unsatisfying, but the best answer i have for this question comes from applying the Integral framework to it. Obviously there is a third person aspect to it. In the sense that there is a divination procedure; sticks or coins or whatever one chooses, and they are manipulated in the physical world, and are both observed and measured. There is a second person aspect to it that arises with some continued use, say beyond the neophyte level. Its answers can be so uncannily accurate that from a second person perspective, its use could easily be described as being in a sort of relationship, with a very wise entity who always has your long-term best interests at heart, and who is unfailingly available. But it's only when we get to first person perspective that the heart of your question comes into play. My best guess as to what actually happens in the moment of divination, is that subtle energies are at work.

In fact, one time it happened to me that i saw what human beings look like. Not from the point of view of their physical bodies, but of their subtle energy bodies. It was amazing to see swirls of multicolored energy patterns, so intense and marvelous that at first i didn't understand that i was seeing humans in that form. The closest thing in common parlance, to understand these energy bodies is what we usually call the aura. It's most easily seen as a glow around the head; it's what the medieval folks called the Halo. Close observation of a speaker whose talk is involved with what could be called a spiritual theme demonstrates that the aura tends to be energized or glow or become more visible as their talk approaches something more purely divine.

All of which is a rather wordy way to say that the evidence suggests that there is a connection between one's questioning thought, one's intent, one’s sincerity, that charges the subtle bodies in such a way as they actually influence the movements of the objects of divination in the physical world.

Many years ago, on the same day i bought the autobiographies of two noted monks, Thomas Merton and Chogyam Trungpa. The latter’s book called Born in Tibet, describes his harrowing walk over the mountains of his native Tibet eventually escaping to India with many followers. In it he describes occasions of some consternation the use of certain divination techniques that he had been taught as a result of his tulku status.

Then the day came on one of those rare occasions when i was face-to-face with Trungpa in a question-and-answer session at a public meeting. And so i asked him this question. “I understand from reading Born in Tibet, that you employed divination techniques only with reluctance. Is this correct?” He replied simply, one word, “Yes!”

So i was left to ponder why it is that this highly trained person in the inner arts was reluctant to use divination. The only satisfactory answer from my view is that if in first person there is no separation between the individual consciousness and the Absolute, it is non-dual; the asking and receiving are the same. Subject and object are one.

Warmly,

Charles

88W18'28" 41N58'02"