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I Ching: This Is It
by Bob Bakalish

One of the most profound observations about life came from the Chinese many thousands of years ago. It is the concept of Yin and Yang. This concept is one of the foundation of Eastern thought. This concept makes the world and everything in it somewhat understandable. The symbol for Yin-Yang is a circle, with a curved line dividing the space that is white and the space that is black. Within the white area is a small circle that is black, and within the black area is a small circle that is white. This symbol indicates that seeming opposites, such as good and evil, right and wrong, black and white, are in reality compliments which make up a whole.

I have my own understanding of Yin and Yang, like I have my own understanding of everything else. I do not claim that it is similar to the understanding of those who have great knowledge of Yin and Yang. The key is that it does make sense to me in some way. It is not necessary for my understandings to make sense to any other being.

In western thought we think in continua. Black is on one side of the spectrum and white on the other. In between is everything else. In eastern thought black and white and everything else in the universe are part of a whole. It is hard for someone raised in one culture to think as someone does from the other.

I was taught to know the difference between right and wrong. I was taught the difference between good and evil. I was taught the difference between day and night. I was taught so many things that divide the world into two camps. This is so much so that I am often unaware that I am doing it.

If one thinks of the world in such a way, one has to be very creative about ways to explain the abnormalities, the things that just don’t fit. How does one explain evil? This is a question that theologians have been discussing for millennia. The devil, hell, temptation, demons, and more have been postulated. Some argue that evil is just a judgment based on social mores.

In eastern thought, good and evil are not separate, but part of the same whole. They are indeed separate from each other, for there is good and there is evil. Yet they are connected too. This is how I understand it.

The Yang force is strong, unbroken, directional, creative, spiritual, directional , straight, male, and its movement is outwards . The Yin force is yielding, fertile, female, physical, of the earth, reverent, and its movement is inward. One is not superior to the other. One can not exist without the other. All distinctions will disappear without both.

When strong is in a strong place leadership takes place. When the strong is in a strong place and yielding is in a yielding place, all creation takes place. When strength is in a yielding place, stagnation takes place. When yielding is in a yielding place, birth takes place. When yielding is in a strong place, then evil takes place.

Approximately three thousand years ago, some very smart and wise people developed an extrapolation of the theory of Yin-Yang. They took what was a linear theory and created a five dimensional theory called the “I Ching”. “Ching” is a word which translates to book or collection of writings. “I” is a word that has several meanings. It is often translated to mean changes, thus “Book of Changes”. One of its other meanings is “easy”, meaning that which is so simple that we already know (if we can get in touch).

The creators of this work took the lines (Yin and Yang lines) and formed them into trigrams (three lines) which represented the building blocks of the world we see. These trigrams represented the eight segments of nature, family, community, and society. Each of the eight trigrams represented some aspect of nature: heaven, earth, fire, thunder, mountain, wind, abysmal water, and joyous lake. Each of the eight trigrams represents parts of the family: father, mother, three sons, and three daughters. Each of the eight represents some element of society: from the emperor to the lowest member of society.

These eight trigrams could be represented by the eight points which make up a cube, which is the line put into three dimensions.

The trigrams in turn were extrapolated into hexagrams (six lines). Each trigram has a relationship with every other trigram. These relationships form the “I Ching”, or sixty-four hexagrams. These relationships form the fourth dimension, which is perspective. What one sees is not the object itself (three dimensional) but is dictated by who one is, where one stands, and where one looks. No one ever can see the whole of anything. We assume that we do every minute, but in reality we never do.

The sixty-four hexagrams in turn were extrapolated into 4096 decagrams (twelve lines). This is because nothing in this world remains constant. Change is inevitable. The fifth dimension is change over time.

There is no way to know if the I Ching is a complete system. Perhaps there are realities which were not foreseen by the developers of the I Ching. I personally struggle to understand all the implications of the realities that I can grasp. So I have not the skills or intellect to attempt to question its completeness. To me it is as complete as any system that I have found.

To simplify the system in my own words, basically in all situations there are many courses of action. But there is always one course of action which is most appropriate to the situation. This action may be bold or subtle, it may require retreat or war, it may satisfy what we think we want, or it may disappoint what we think we want. Some times it means simply doing nothing. This most appropriate action is described in the translations as what “the superior man” or “noble one” would do.

The superior man is guided by two principles. The first is accord with heaven, or the love of God. The second is fellowship with man, or brotherhood. When any person acts from these places he becomes like the superior man. Much later a young man in the mid-east talked of "loving God with all our hearts" and "treating fellow man as we would like to be treated". He said that this was the way to heaven.

To me the essence of the I Ching is that all people know intuitively what is right. This does not mean that they do what they know is right. But if one acts from the superior man within us, guided by love of God and fellowship with man, we will always act in the most appropriate way.

The higher self is most often drown out by the lesser selves. These lesser selves, like the higher self, are not separate parts of our personality, but rather the particular voice that is speaking in the moment. The lesser selves are concerned about satisfying themselves. They want what they want, whether it be attention, pain, pleasure, status, material things, inebriation, gratification, or a myriad of other self oriented goals.

There is a fine dividing line between being in touch with our own higher self within and doing God’s work. And the distinction between these two separate visions enable both good and evil to be done in the name of God.

It is my view that we each have within us some aspect of God. This aspect has been called a soul, a conscience, or a higher self. The higher self is our compass in a confusing world. When we get in touch with this higher self we discover the most appropriate way to act in any situation. The two guiding principles of the higher self are love of God and fellowship with man.

One could say then that in some sense “this is what God would wish us to do”. This is where the problems begin. If one starts thinking in such ways, then we have to give equal consideration to those who say “God told me to kill so and so”, or “we must go to war for God and country”, or “God punishes sinners”, etc. We can not “know” the will of God. We can not “know” what death is. We can not “know” what is after death. All speculation, whether written in scriptures (of all types) or spoken by those who claim special knowledge are just that, speculation.

God is everything, so God is all aspects of every process. But our awareness of God, what I call the God experience, occurs in special circumstances. This can be understood somewhat using the principle of Yin-Yang and the I Ching. Yin is yielding and Yang is strong. All things are a combination of the two and cannot be separated. Three strong lines together represent heaven . Six strong lines together represent “The Creative” or God principle. Three broken lines together represent earth or human life. Six broken lines together represent “The Receptive” or fertility.

We have our God experiences when we are completely receptive. We have our God experiences when we are truly submissive to a higher power. God broadcasts his energy all the time. It is available to us every minute of every day. But it is only when we stop our own broadcasting that we can hear God’s. This energy is life transforming and therefore deemed extremely valuable. But it is not an energy that can be controlled and rationed out.

We cannot describe God. We can not use human principles to characterize God. So Yin and Yang, though perhaps one of the greatest constructs in human history, can not accurately describe God. Yet our experience of God, a purely human phenomena, can be described by such a construct.

God is not Yang. But the force of God, at least the force of God that we can comprehend is the only purely Yang force in the universe. We are not Yin. But the way that we accept God's force is the only purely Yin happening that we can experience. The God experience happens when we can be purely receptive.

The concept of evil is an odd one. Religions have spent centuries trying to explain it in ways that keep God as perfect. All their attempts have been rather futile in light that as much evil has been done in the name of God as has been done in other ways.

The explanation of the I Ching is quite interesting. Since all positions, whether it be in nature, family, community, or society are either strong or yielding in some combination, there are positions which are correct. A strong position in a strong place leads to progress. A yielding position in a yielding place leads to fertility and growth. A yielding position in a strong place leads to decay. And a strong position in a yielding place leads to evil.

Evil occurs when someone who is weak takes power. When someone, who out of his own selfish interests, usurps the will of God, then evil occurs. This is why so much evil is done in the name of God.

If indeed one can discover the most appropriate action by getting in touch with the higher self within, is that not in essence “knowing” what God wants us to do? And if we follow through on that action, are we not doing the will of God? And since our lesser selves are masters at pretending to be the higher self, are we not easily fooled?

The answer to all three of the questions is yes. We are easily fooled into thinking that what we do for our own selfish interests is the course directed by God. That is the dilemma in which we find ourselves. Yet for those who are willing there is progress. For we can tell the way to the higher self by two criteria: love of God and fellowship with man. If our action is honestly from these sources then it is indeed the higher self.

But life can be confusing regardless. One can easily fool oneself into believing that one is acting out of love of God and fellowship with man when the facts clearly indicate otherwise. In such situations we find that the results we expected do not occur. We have all done things which we thought would have good consequences and discovered afterwards that the consequences were quite disastrous. We have all seen governments do this also. And we have certainly all seen other people make such mistakes.

Life is a learning process. Some mistakes are minor. Others cause tens of thousands of lives. But all learning comes from mistakes. We learn nothing from our successes. But if we fail to learn from our mistakes, then as someone famous said “we are doomed to repeat them.”

One of the questions people often ask is “why seemingly religious people do such atrocious things?” This is true of religious leaders as well as followers. The headlines are repeatedly full of such events.

Clearly the mind is capable of the most perverse rationalizations. We can convince ourselves that our own selfish wants are more important that virtually anything else. Also, many religions start with the premise that we are all sinners, and therefore sin is commonplace. Certainly we all know what we have done so we all know of our own sins. So this tends to make us somewhat tolerant to the sins of others (unless of course we are hurt by them).

But the real fact is that when we are guided by the rules of the church or the laws of society, we behave out of fear. When we are guided by the love of God, we behave because of joy.

How can we know the will of God without direction? How can we know what is right without direction? This is the power within us that we are on earth to develop. I believe that within us is this ability. I believe that this is the development of our higher self.

When we act out of our higher self, the actions are ALWAYS in keeping with what is right and appropriate. We do not need a set of outside rules or laws to know what is right. Yet we have the almost uncanny ability to convince ourselves that what we want to do is the right thing to do. Our lesser selfish selves promote themselves as the higher self (as in the Bible the devil promotes himself as angels). So how are we to know?

This is our journey on earth. We each have to find our own inner direction. In the end it cannot be dictated from outside. It has to be recognized, nourished, and grown from the inside out.

In that religion encourages such growth it is quite useful and effective.

As significant and difficult as developing our own higher self may be, it is only half of the struggle. The other half is in realizing and celebrating the higher self in others.

Every human being is born with the seed to a higher self. No matter what the outward appearance, the possibility for growth is there. This may be quite obvious in the people we love, like, or respect, and seemingly impossible to see in people we hate, dislike, and have little respect for. But even our worst enemies, even people who do tremendous evil, even in people who seem to be oblivious to moral behavior, there is the potential for spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth can be stunted by any number of events. Some experience great trauma early in life. Some are drawn to escapism of one sort or another. Some are corrupted by material things. But regardless of how the retardation takes place or how strong the retardation is, there is always the power of the moment of God experience.

Reacting to the higher self within others can be difficult to do. With friends and loved ones it is easier. With strangers and enemies it is awkward or seemingly impossible. Yet this is the task that we must accomplish to progress on our spiritual journey. And the power of reacting to the higher power within others can be quite transforming.

There is a tendency to compare our progress with others. Like God grades on a curve. I may not be perfect, but compared to so and so, I am pretty good.

I am reminded of a story that Duffy used to tell. Duffy was one of the original members of Alcoholics Anonymous. When he was drinking, alcoholics were not put in jail but in mental institutions to sober up. After the initial phase of recovering from the bender, the alcoholic was in much better shape than those around him who took meds every day to control their behavior. At first there was a certain pride in being in the best shape of all the patients. Then he realized that it doesn’t take much to be the best looking and best ping pong player when everyone else is on thyroxine.

If we judge ourselves by what we are, we will be both satisfied and lacking. We regret our errors and build up our successes. We think about the past and the future. If we realize that we are on a path toward God, we focus doing our best in the moment. If we act out from our higher self, toward the higher self in others, we have succeeded in the moment.

A person loves God when one loves another. He gives to God when he gives to another. He encourages God when he encourages another. It is as simple as the rain becoming part of a river. It is just one drop at some point and the ocean at another.

It is not necessary to call God’s name. But if one does ask, it shall be answered.

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