Very interesting email from Donato:
“Dear Hilary,
I have been consulting I-Ching for many years, during crisis mainly and therefore for really important matters, as well for less decisive problems. In many cases the answers seemed coherent with the question, in some quite ‘to the point’, in many others they baffled me.
I have observed (but I may be wrong in some cases) that it often replies to a question I didn’t ask and ignores the one I’m asking. As if it chooses the issue that is more important. Some time it’s frustrating!
I tried many times to define the question in a precise manner, even using formulas you advise in your course, to force or to pinpoint the oracle to stick to the question, but it never worked, the answer I got had no sense in relationship to my outspoken question but could be meaningful if addressed to another problem I had at the time.
What do you think about it? Is my view plausible? Or the problem could be my lack of understanding?
I thought a lot about that and I was thinking that the explanation could be that consulting I-Ching is a way to be in a dialogue with our inner self or, if you prefer, with our unconscious. That means: if I am confused, the resulting dialogue will be confused too, or maybe if I ask the wrong question, I’ll get a wrong answer.
This, of course is not precisely what the Chinese think and that I read here and there: ‘The I-Ching is always right, it always gives the right answer’.
Suppose the first case is correct, it makes me ask another question: but what then is the use of the I-Ching if I cannot consult it when I am troubled and therefore confused? If I see the whole issue clearly I would not need the I-Ching’s help, would I?
You see the ‘cul de sac’ I am in? I need to consult the oracle because I’m confused but at the same time I cannot trust the answer just for the same reason. So, how can I get out of that hole?
Your obvious answer could be: let another consult the I-Ching for you. But that, it seems to me, prevents me to grow and learn. If I have to depend on someone else judgment or intuition I’ll never develop mine.
So the question would be: the source of the answers you get through the I-Ching is beyond human limitations or within their influence?
Some months ago I decided to consult the I-Ching about that matter.
Are you curious to know what I got?
My question:
‘Is it possible through I-Ching to have access to a superhuman or divine source of knowledge or judgment?’
I-Ching response:
26, Ta Ch’u / The Taming Power of the Great, 6th changing line,
11. T’ai / Peace
The Wilhelm translations says:
‘Nine at the top means:
One attains the way of heaven.
Success.
What do you think?
My best regards,
Donato Dettori
Italy”
Dear Donato,
Thanks very much for your interesting email! While a lot of people ask whether they can always expect Yi to answer the question they chose, I’ve never seen anyone else think it out like you have, or ask Yi about the source of its own answers.
The question of whether or not Yi always answers the question is very much debated. Different people seem to have very different experiences. I find it does answer the question I ask, about 99% of the time. The exceptions would be
- when I was asking a question in order to avoid thinking about something else
- when there was something else I really needed to hear
I’ve only had one unmistakable experience of Yi ignoring the question to talk about something I needed to hear more; people with more active and eventful lives might have this happen more often! But I strongly suspect that in the great majority of cases where someone feels their question hasn’t been answered, they just haven’t been able to understand the answer.
This is most probably not their fault: some translations/commentaries are specialised to respond well to one particular type of question or area of life, and fail to supply anything relevant when the question is beyond the author’s imaginings. What you say about answers being sometimes spot on, sometimes baffling, reminds me of the effects of certain commentaries.
Unclear questions can also lead to a ‘disconnect’ between question and answer, just because the person reading is not entirely sure what question the oracle is answering. A simple example: if you ask, ‘Is it a good idea to do x?’ then you are really inviting an answer to the question ‘What would it be like to do x?’ or perhaps ‘What do you think of this idea of doing x?’ Under most circumstances, this wouldn’t matter in the least; it might even be good to have this greater ‘elasticity’ in the answer. But occasionally, it does cause problems.
It doesn’t sound as though unclear questions would be your problem, though. And as you imply, it isn’t possible to ‘force’ the oracle to answer a question, not with any amount of focus and definition. In those very rare cases where the issue isn’t a lack of understanding, and where the answer is clearly talking about a different issue, I think this is most likely to be because that issue is the most important one to you – and maybe you were asking the other question as a kind of ‘smokescreen’. At least, this has been my experience. The oracle answers your whole present mindset as well as your question, so confusion can arise if those two are remote from one another!
I understand what you mean by that ‘cul de sac’; I think in English we’d call it ‘Catch 22’. ‘If you’re confused enough to need the oracle, you’re too confused to use it.’ But in my experience, this is just not true. There is probably a moment when the answer deepens the confusion, gives my mental kaleidoscope a very thorough shake, but then the patterns start to become visible.
So I would say the way out of the hole is firstly to understand that this is an oracle for confused people, and your ‘cul de sac’ is an illusion. Secondly, to ensure you have a good translation of the oracle and give priority to reading the text rather than commentary. And thirdly, not to hand over your reading to another person to interpret for you, but if possible to get an experienced reader to help you out by offering new perspectives.
(Two ways to do this: there are some very good readers at the I Ching Community, if you’re comfortable with posting there, and there is the correspondence version of my more advanced I Ching course which involves in-depth coaching on each step and element of a reading to give you many ways to connect with it, and indeed to develop your own judgement and intuition.)
Your reading on the source of the oracle’s answers is a stunning one – thank you for sharing it. I hope you’d agree it’s an utterly clear ‘yes’. (Now, the question of whether the divine and superhuman knowledge lives ‘out there’ or ‘in here’ is a whole other metaphysical debate…)
Footnote:
I had a nice reply from Donato, who added that he’d been puzzled by the relevance of Hexagram 26 and ‘taming power’ until he looked it up in a different translation and saw it described as the ‘great educating power’.