Only thing certian is change

In a 1965 interview Bob Dylan described the Chinese classic, the I Ching or Book of Change, as "the only thing that is amazingly true, period." The great Chinese philosopher Cheng Yi of the eleventh century agreed: "The I Ching is grand in its scope; it is all-encompassing. To those who contemplate its depth and practice its discipline, the text will provide everything."

Some would say that the power descends from its ancient magical origins. As the Anglo-Chinese novelist Timothy Mo has written, "It is a cable that disappears into the abyss of a darker time. In it the Bronze Age predicts to the Information Age the shadow of what is to come." This may be part of the truth. But as I see it, the key to the efficacy of any I Ching consultation is the extent to which the dialogue between individual and text is imbued with the twin spiritual qualities of Sincerity and Good Faith. The person approaching the oracle must bring to his or her consultation a total honesty, an inner mind free of deceit and delusion. Once this has been achieved, the book acts as a penetrating mirror, a true spiritual friend opening the individual's range of vision to possibilities undreamed of hitherto. It talks back from the deeper mind. often bringing a potent liberation from the static and paralyzing indecisions that render the individual incapable of making creative choices.

As the British scholar and poet Angus Graham once wrote, an I Ching consultation is "a synthesizing act in which the Diviner sees into and responds to everything at once, with a lucidity mysterious to himself." One of the earliest Chinese commentaries The Great Treatise puts it in even more superlative terms: "The I Ching penetrates the Will of the World, its Knowledge of the Springs of Change enables terrestrial endeavors to be accomplished. This Spiritual Entity makes speed without haste, it arrives without traveling."   -   John Minford