26 Dec 2001
Embodying the Sphere of Change
Reframing metaphors of the I Ching as a codification of the patterns of change
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Introduction
The purpose of this document is to indicate how a spherical metaphor might be used to interrelate the 64 conditions of change as coded within the Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching). The concern is to interrelate the complete set of changes and transformations as they may apply to individuals, communities, countries or the world. Some of these possibilities have been explored in a related set of pages.
The emphasis here is on the experiential quality of the complete set of changes and their ordering -- especially with respect to the transformational pathways between each condition.
Basic metaphor
Trigrams (or Hexagrams) distributed equally over a spherical surface:
- lines tangential to the surface
- maybe hexagram (broken and unbroken) lines are each like disks, with or without a central hole (as in traditional oracle coins)
- hexagrams bobbing up and down like corks on the surface of water, passing through the surface as they do so
- like sets of chakras?
Basic design constraint
A basic concern is not to seek conceptual closure, but rather to work with qualities that might include: elusive / non-closure / intimation / unfinished / open:
- not an explanation, or an understanding to be grasped
- more like a courtship dance with reality
- Sufi bird cage: a constructed container that higher orders of meaning may briefly inhabit (if the design is sufficiently attractive and elegant)
- an eternal puzzle
- a koan
- nature of the whole intimated by identification the pattern of the dancing parts
- mirroring and projection (one trigram conditions into the other)
- a thin gossamer pattern
- implicit question as to what or who it is for?
Change conditions as attractors
Each trigram or hexagram may usefully be considered as an attractor
- competing with other attractors (for attention time) and destabilizing their 'take' on reality
- entering and existing the dramatic stage
For more on Human Values as Strange Attractors (see https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs/values93.php)
Dynamics and their metaphors
Changes embodied by the I Ching hexagram set temporarily activate (flickering changes):
- moment by moment
- longer cycles -- different for each line level
- fastest inside, slowest outside, or
- slowest outside, fastest inside
- binding the parts into the whole (semantic ecosystem)
- transformation links across the sphere
- notes associated with each link (wind chime)
- poetic associations between disparate conditions
- recognizable patterns of associations (more culturally specific)
Sustainability of any pattern of changes is associated with the dynamics of the whole -- and how each plays off the other
Each hexagram might be considered as resembling any of the following:
- a car cylinder
- going through a cycle
- 64 cylinder car
- motor of life
- what crankshaft is it turning, or by what is it being turned?
- a species in an ecosystem (field of wildflowers, dell, niche, etc)
- a leitmotiv in an opera (intertwining many leitmotivs)
Sets of polarities could be understood as stringed instruments
- appropriately taughtened polarities can act like strings in an instrument
- they generate notes and are effectively played (by the winds of change)
- the question is the notes they generate, how they combine into melodies, and how to hear them
Media presentation
- bobbing and flickering
- patterns of links
- cycles of patterns
- rotating sphere
- rotate sphere so that every hexagram (trigram) eventually faces the viewer
- roulette
- metaphoric story for that ideogram
- side 'hidden' from the viewer
Experiential understanding
The most fundamental challenge is the degree and quality of metaphoric, experiential understanding (essentially incommunicable) associated with each condition (and how each relates to another) -- although metaphorically there is clearly much resonant familiarity with the conditions and the transformations (father - daughter, etc):
- creative (strong, heaven, father) -- receptive (yielding, devoted, earth, mother)
- arousing (inciting movement, thunder, first son) -- keeping still (resting, mountain, third son)
- abysmal (dangerous, water, second son) -- clinging (light-giving, fire, second daughter)
- gentle (penetrating, wind, wood, first daughter) -- joyous (lake, third daughter)
It is how such understanding is embodied that is the challenge -- rather than how it may be described conceptually without providing the perceiver with a new way of relating to change as it is experienced in the moment.
In multiple personality terms:
- who (within oneself) is each condition?
- why is the condition necessary within the whole?
- how is it to be such a condition?
- how is the transformation to another condition experienced?
- is each transformation a kind of catastrophe?
- each trigram or hexagram is a different type of coherence (a different type of understanding)
How does any such understanding:
- resonate with experience as it changes moment-by-moment in the present?
- evoke conditions to be encountered for learning?
- force recognition of the larger pattern in which 'unwanted' roles have their place and 'desirable' roles are lost?
- grasp the whole in a necessarily inappropriate and distorted manner (walking, reductionism, reifications)?
- evoke challenging alternative understandings needed to sustain the larger whole?
- change in depth, scope and quality (subtlety of patterns detected) with experience and maturity?
- distance people from those who do not cultivate it ('mountaineering syndrome')?
Additional layer of trigrams (to make a hexagram) introduces a fundamental polarity (embedded in metaphoric interpretation):
- inside (inner) vs outside (outer)
- past vs future
- up vs down
- self vs other
- knower vs known
- right action vs inappropriate action ??
- freedom (rights) vs constraint (obligations) ??
- abstract vs concrete?
Quality of encounter
- compacted earth
- quality of encounter between trigrams of a hexagram
- set up 7 kinds of transformation catastrophe (see diagram)
Considering the transformation pathways
Transformation pathways:
- for eight trigrams (7 types of change = elementary catastrophe):
- 3 x 8 single-line changes
- 3 x 8 double-line changes
- 1 x 8 triple-line changes
- for 64 hexagrams (188?? types of change?)
- 6 x 64 single-line changes
- 24 x 64 double-line changes
- 64 x 8 triple-line changes
- 64?? x 8 quadruple-line changes
- 24?? x 8 quintuple-line changes
- 6 x 64 sextuple-line changes
Transformation pathways:
- 8-fold set is all most could grok conceptually
- hence 8-fold sets of vices and virtues
- 64-fold set is what people live and experience (and are submerged within, as participants)
Catastrophe theory
Transformations and catastrophe theory
- transformations are essentially discontinuities
- Rene Thom models the seat of the morphogenetic process into domains of different attractors, separated by shock waves. Shock wave surfaces are singularities called "catastrophes".
- a catastrophe is a state beyond which the system is detroyed in an irreversible manner.
- in a 4-dimensional world there are 7 types of elementary catastrophes.
- a catastrophe is how one gets from one attractor to another? Can the 7 transformational relationship pathways between the 8 trigrams be understood in these terms?
Surfing endlessly
- each catastrophe is like a (shock) wave to be surfed appropriately (according to the type of wave)
- living as catastrophe management, specifically the breathing cycle (cf Secret of the Golden Flower)
| Creative | Arousing | Abysmal | Resting | Receptive | Gentle | Clinging | Joyous | |
| Creative | Creative (heaven) | Power of the great | Waiting (nourishment) | Taming power of the great | Peace (earth) |
Taming power of the small |
Possession in great measure |
Breakthrough (resoluteness) |
| Arousing | Innocence (unexpected) | Arousing
(shock) |
Difficulty at the beginning | Providing nourishment |
Return (turning point) |
Increase | Biting through | Following |
| Abysmal | Conflict | Deliverance | Abysmal (water) | Youthful folly | Army | Dispersion (dissolution) | Before completion | Oppression (exhaustion) |
| Resting | Retreat | Preponderance of the small | Obstruction | Keeping still (mountain) | Modesty | Development (gradual progress) | Wanderer | Influence (wooing) |
| Receptive | Standstill (stagnation) | Enthusiasm | Holding together (union) | Splitting apart | Receptive (earth) | Contemplation (view) | Progress | Gathering together (massing) |
| Gentle | Coming to meet | Duration | Well | Work on what has been spoiled (decay) | Pushing upward | Gentle
(penetrating, wind) |
Caldron | Preponderance of the great |
| Clinging | Fellowship with men | Abundance (fullness) | After completion | Grace | Darkening of the light | Family
(clan) |
Clinging
(fire) |
Revolution (moulting) |
| Joyous | Treading (conduct) | Marrying maiden | Limitation | Decrease | Approach | Inner truth | Opposition | Joyous
(lake) |
References
Steven H. Cullinane. Diamond Theory [text]
Steven H. Cullinane. Geometry of the I Ching. ('a simple way of generating the 1.3 trillion transformations natural to the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching') [text]
R.J. Rummel. A catesrophe theory model of the conflict helix [text]
R.J. Rummel. Understanding conflict and war (Vol. 2 The Conflict Helix) Sage Publications, 1976 [text]
Anthony Judge:
- Coherent patterns of schism formation, bifurcation and disagreement (and the associated bonding, encounters and agreements they evoke). 2001 [text]
- Presenting the future: an alternative to dependence on human sacrifice through global pyramid selling schemes. 2001 [text]
- Personal globalization. 2001 [text]
- Enhancing the quality of knowing: through integration of East-West metaphors. 2000 [text]
- Transformation Metaphors derived experimentally from the Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) for sustainable dialogue, vision, conferencing, policy, network, community and lifestyle [text]
J.J. Kay. "A Non-equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity", Environmental Management, Vol 15, 1991, No.4, pp.483-495 [text]
H. J. Sussman and R. S. Zahler. Catastrophe theory as applied to the social and biological sciences: a critique. Synthèse, 1978a, 37, 117-216.
Anon. I Ching and Information Theories (1/ 2). [text]
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