The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation.” The Book of Changes and Alan Watts “The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. Jung explains that the ancient Chinese school of thought was more modern than we suspected. Jung would go on to propose that psyche and matter are one in the same and that through synchronicity, inner psyche and the outside world are intrinsically connected in a way unknown to scientists still tied to their irrefutable axiom truth of causality. Our notion of coincidence is the main concern of the I Ching. Jung believed that the traditional Chinese mind, as he saw their work laid out in the I Ching, is preoccupied with the chance aspect of natural events. “Western scholars have tended to dispose of it as a collection of ‘magic spells,'” wrote Jung in the foreword. ![]() Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance.”Įven today, such talk of synchronicity gets eye rolls from the materialist and positivist crowd as just a bunch of New Age hogwash. “… A certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity, a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Coming from a scientific background where demonstrable causality is gospel, Jung was very curious to see why this ancient book was so apt to a seemingly infinite amount of circumstance. There was a great deal of meaningful and relevant answers to his patients’ questions. Jung used the oracle with his patients during therapy sessions. ![]() I was already fairly familiar with the I Ching when I first met Wilhelm in the early 1920s he confirmed for me then what I already knew, and taught me many things more.” “For more than 30 years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance. In a foreword to the book, Carl Jung, psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, expressed his intrigue on the divinatory aspect of this mysterious book: German sinologist, Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching stands as the definitive work to read if you’re interested in learning about the ancient work. This is the Book of Changes that we now know today. There is historical record that, in 1050 BCE, Emperor Wen of the Zhou dynasty changed the trigrams into hexagrams (six lines) which created 64 different combinations. ![]() That is, three stacked lines either broken or solid, which reflect yin and yang - the cosmic duality of the world and void. According to a mythological version of the creation story, the Chinese hero Fu Xi stared into the skies and the world around him and discovered that everything could be arranged in eight trigrams. It is by far the most consulted book in China and East Asia.Īll of this said, the exact origins of the I Ching is shrouded in myth and mystery. ![]() The book has spawned countless interpretations, commentaries and dueling schools of thought. In the 1950s and subsequent ’60s counterculture, the I Ching held a special place as a divinatory guidance book for living a better life. Here and there it popped up for Western scientists and philosophers to study - the first European commentary was written in the late 15th century. Two of the most major branches of Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Taoism owe their creation to this foundational book. Throughout the years it has served as an all-encompassing philosophical treatise of the universe, a guide toward ethical living, a guidebook for ruling, and as an oracle for one’s personal life and psychic future. The I Ching or, as many Western audiences know it, the Book of Changes, is a book that is thousands of years old.
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