Time and the I Ching

What is the nature of Time? The I Ching seeks to explain that.

This is important for understanding your own spiritual cultivation, as well as to understanding how Divination works, and why!

The Greatest Changes You Make are the Ones You'll Never See

One of the things that the I Ching teaches you, when you get really deep into it, is to see certain things in really big scales of time.

This also brings with it the realization that all the truly big things, the really meaningful things you can do with your life, are things you will never live to see the end results of.

The key to making intentional change in something, according to the I Ching, is to do it before it starts.

To have a vision of the future, to know how to make change in something before it even starts, requires that you must be able to very clearly observe the present.

So if the future is really Incipiencies existing as 'seeds' in the present, changing the future is all about planting the right seeds. 

"Incipiencies": More on How the I Ching Works

Incipiency is a concept inherent in the I Ching, because it is inherent in space-time. But the term (it's explanation, and centrality to I Ching studies) is largely attributable to the master Zhu Xi.

It emerges out of the question of "how does the I Ching tell the future"? The answer is: it doesn't. The I Ching measures the present, this moment. But you have to imagine this moment as a set of interconnecting streams from trillions of previous choices, from events that took place yesterday, the day before that, 50 years ago, 4000 years ago, 12 million years ago, etc. Each choice both sealed off a whole bunch of possible futures, and created a cascade of effects that would have a possibility of happening in the future. And in the present moment, we have the culmination of that weight of trillions of trillions of circumstances.

With me so far?

So, if we understand that, we also understand that the future is observable in the present moment; by looking at those past streams, where they can and cannot lead, which of them cannot be altered at this time (unchanging lines) and which of them could be (changing lines). The future exists as a kind of seed already in the present. It is not here but the ingredients for it are all here.

In I Ching study there's a saying that goes something like "you cannot change something once it has happened. If you want to change something, you need to change it before it happens".

The changing lines reflect those incipiencies, the malleable spots in the present moment in Space Time, where you can make a choice, you can drop a new pebble in the stream of space-time to alter the current and change the course of the future.

"Synchronicity" and the I Ching

Many people in the west try to claim, in answer to the question of how the I Ching works, that it is through "synchronicity".  This was a term used by the psychologist C.G. Jung (who was a great admirer of the I Ching, and tried to explain its function through the lens of his psychological theories), and was later bastardized for common use by the new-age movement.

(Jung, giving a questioning glance at New Age woo)

Synchronicity, as it is most often used by people involved in applying the term to the I Ching, supposes that "random" events, random convergence, random meaning, all just comes together as little more than some sort of "coincidence on steroids" (as one of my Yi Fa Society students put it).

It is a way you can feel like something has meaning, but you still don't have to really challenge your ideas beyond the assumption it's all just random chance.

It allows you to 'cop out' in various ways:

-to chicken out of needing to take a casting seriously if you decide you don't like what it's saying

-to chicken out of considering your own deeper consciousness ("I just look for synchronicity and let the universe guide me!!")

-to chicken out of exploring the vaster significance of the I Ching's expression of space-time

-to chicken-out of having to move beyond our 20th/21st century post-modern Baby-Boomer western paradigm

This Western Paradigm is the one that says things like "spirituality is just some kind of primitive superstitious psychology", or "you are the center of the universe so of course the universe will send you personally unique personal messages when you toss some coins around, because of how special you are", or "there is no actual reality, all that matters is what you're feeling and what you imagine"!

But in fact, profound study of the I Ching shows that nothing at all is really "random".  All events are caused by Incipiencies: the quality of previous events in space-time synthesizing to plant the seed of future events in space-time. As a certain Canadian philosopher once said: "Fate is just the weight of circumstances".   Every event consists of a moment (represented by the Hexagram) that is the product of literally TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS of previous choices made, that weigh down on that moment to make it THAT moment and no other possible moment.

Within that moment, there are only a certain number of malleable points, where one can act to create a new Incipiency that will work to shift the movement of time in the future. These are represented in an I Ching hexagram by the Changing Lines.

So Incipiency is like the "Gravity" of Time.

If you understand this, then you'd get that "synchronicity" as a notion has nothing to do with the structure of the I Ching.  Or, for that matter, with reality, except in the sense that you can take any coincidence and apply meaning to it, sometimes to good purpose.

Understanding Incipiencies

Sometimes great change, disaster or windfall, appears to happen suddenly.

This is an illusion of perception.

The moment where change seems to be happening with great speed is in fact long after the seeds of that change were planted.

The sage can look back and see many conditions, little developments, without which that great change could never have taken place.

All change actually starts with a series of smaller incipient events; often these will not even resemble or seem to have anything to do with the great change they can lead to.

Thus, the skilled practitioner can learn how to observe these earlier conditions, and make great changes eventually happen (or prevent them) with very little effort.

This is the power that a profound study of the I Ching grants: to be able to see the process of time, and how to change things before they happen.

Another way of Looking at How the I Ching Hexagrams Explain Space & Time

Hexagram #1 and Hexagram #2 are the two extremes of Reality.  Hexagrams #63 and #64 are where those extremes meet.

Hexagram #1:

All other hexagrams have one of these four as their nuclear; or as the nuclear of their nuclear. #1 and #2 are both nuclears of themselves; hence they are two polar extremes. #63 and #64 are nuclears of each other; hence, they are the center-point where Time and Space collide.

Hexagram #2:

To understand the King Wen sequence (the regular sequence of Hexagrams as they appear in the I Ching) you must think of it as a U-shaped track. On one side are all the odd-numbered hexagrams, starting with Hexagram #1; on the other the even-numbered hexagrams, starting with Hexagram #2. The curve where the two lines meet is #63 and #64. So if you unfolded that track and made it into a straight line, you'd have #1 and #2 at opposite ends of each other, and #63 and #64 right in the middle of the line.

Otherwise you could also envision it as taking the form of a square angle (of 90 degrees, that is, one-fourth of a circle).  The Odd numbers would be the vertical and the Even numbers the horizontal. And #63 and #64 would be where they meet, in the center.

Hexagram #63:

Look at Hexagram #1 ("Creation"), and you will see that it is all about time.  Look at Hexagram #2 ("Passive") and you will see it is all about space. Where they intersect is the Now, but the now is eternal, and instant. It is so fast it cannot be depicted. The moment you say "it is now" you are no longer in the Now.

So instead, there is the flickering interplay between that vertical Time and horizontal Space, and it finds itself in the connection between Hexagram #63 ("After Ending") and Hexagram #64 ("Before Ending"): Before Ending, After Ending, Before Ending, After Ending.  Everything is a series of immediate flickering moments between what Is Changing and what has Not Yet Changed.

Hexagram #64:

Just like Hexagrams #1 and #2 are completely pure in their respective Yang and Yin, as ideal extremes, #63 and #64 are completely mixed; in that messiness of the incipient moment of the Now's explosive crash between Space and Time. #63 has everything in the proper place, #64 has nothing in its proper place. That's Reality.


Between Space, Time, and Now there is Space-Time, all the other situations that are represented by all those hexagrams that are in some way derived from these four hexagrams. They each and all have effects on how we can approach Reality and what we must do to manifest Virtue (which also has four aspects). The Superior Individual is he who chooses to take note of each situation as it is really happening in the Now, and manifest the right Virtue accordingly.  The Sage is someone who has been able to experience all of Space-Time and how it is both happening at once and not happening at all.
The Superior Individual has found the axis which forms a square; the Sage has found the Center-point.

Determining the "Present" in an I Ching Casting

An excerpt from The Magician's I Ching:

In I Ching tradition, the number of changing lines you have affects what should be read.  Depending on the number of changing lines, the "present" or "central incipiency" of a casting varies.  Everything that comes before that "present" is a reflection of previous developments (that are still influencing the present moment), and everything that comes after are "incipiencies" that have not yet manifested, that is, later developments.

Determine the changing lines you have:

-No Changing Lines:  the Main Hexagram Text is central, and should be the only part read.

-1 Changing Line: the single changing line is the "present".  The Main text and the main text of the resulting hexagram are broad themes of the prior and later developments.

-2 Changing Lines: the UPPER of the two changing lines is the "present".

-3 Changing Lines: the MIDDLE changing line is the "present".

-4 Changing Lines: in this case you should read the main text of the hexagram, the four changing lines of that hexagram AND the two unchanging lines of the resulting hexagram (so if you have a hexagram with lines 1-4 being 'changing lines'; you should read those four, plus lines 5 and 6 of the new hexagram).  Of these, the LOWER of the two resulting hexagram lines is the "present".

-5 Changing Lines: As above, read the main text, all 5 changing lines, and the single line of the resulting hexagram that was not changed.  The single unchanging line from the resulting hexagram is the "present".

-6 Changing lines: read the main text, all six moving lines, and the resulting text.  The resulting hexagram text is the "present".