Quest Magazine

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the January-February 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Ever New." Quest  93.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2005):6

In fact, if water does not flow, it does not remain the same, but becomes stagnant. Change occurs in one way or the other. As Madame Blavatsky (HPB) said in The Secret Doctrine when describing the fundamental principles of the universe, motion and change are inevitable as a basic characteristic of manifestation:

This second assertion of The Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe. (p. 17)

Although everything is in a state of change, some things are more obvious, such as the flow of water and the changes of the seasons. Others are more difficult to notice, such as the evolving changes in ourselves. The changes occur so gradually that we might not notice anything at all. And yet of all the changes in the universe, those wrought in our own consciousness are among the most profound. Humanity's purpose on this earth is to learn and grow through experience as a part of its unfoldment.

Understanding life's changes and working with them can make our lives a lot more pleasant and harmonious with the way things are. Our personal self wants to cling to the things we like and reject the things we don't like. Parents may want to stop the clock and cling to their children at certain cute ages, or to speed up the clock and avoid the difficult stage of the teenage years. Christmas never seems to come, but the end of a relationship or death of a loved one comes much too soon. Our attachment or avoidance of any situation makes the change appear to go very slowly or all too swiftly. Yet all these experiences lie within the inexorable flow of our consciousness.

To accept the changing flow of consciousness and to be able to deal at least somewhat dispassionately with the changes we all encounter are marks of spiritual maturity and bring healing to the sorrows of life. Our lack of flexibility in viewing ourselves, others, or situations blocks our clarity in seeing things as they really are. For instance, we may have grown greatly in our abilities to interface with people or to manage difficult situations, but if the little voice in our heads is repeating an old parental admonishment that we are not good enough, then we may still feel trapped at an earlier stage of development. Old habitual thinking therefore blocks our change and growth, just as a large rock may dam up a stream. Moreover, when we deal with others, if we cannot daily see them with fresh eyes, we might be doing them the same disservice by limiting their ability to grow and change in relationship with ourselves.

To realize that consciousness is like that river into which one can never step twice is to progress toward healing and growth. It is freeing to be able to look forward to the changes that occur and delight in the opportunities they bring. In Michael J. Roads' book, Talking with Nature, he relates how the flowing river taught him about the flow of consciousness. He recognized that consciousness is like the moving water of a river. Although the banks of a river or the body of a friend may look relatively unchanged for long periods of time, there is a constant motion and changing composition. And at every moment one must be able to overlook the relatively static outer form and relate to the newness of the inner life. Then our relationship will be ever new and vital, without the excess baggage of our history. This is a part of what Krishnamurti and other great teachers have meant when referring to "living in the present moment."

If we can tune in to this fresh perspective, we will be better able to tune in to the messages of meaning hidden in the world around us and be flexible enough to flow with the river of consciousness as it unfolds in ourselves and others. We will be able to allow ourselves and others to develop as needed, being ever new creations. Greet the possibilities that flow into each new day with thanksgiving.

This first issue of Quest for 2005 explores ideas about divination as a way to look at the changes in our lives and the world around us. This issue also manifests some of the changes that have been occurring in the background as we flow with our creativity in exploring new images and ways to communicate with our readers. We hope you will be pleased and as always we invite your comments.

A New Expression of a Time Honored Theme

As every member of the Theosophical Society knows, the Society has three objects which have remained relatively unchanged for over a hundred years. These objects are the cornerstone of the Society worldwide and appear on all membership applications. Many members know them by heart and use their basic ideas whenever trying to answer for inquirers that most difficult of questions, "What is Theosophy?" The three objects are:

1. To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity regardless of race, creed, sex, caste, or color;

2. To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science;

3. And to explore the unexplained laws of nature and powers latent in humanity.

Anyone who is in sympathy with these objects will find kindred spirits among us and is invited to join our band of seekers and servers.

In order to communicate these ideas in a more concentrated and modern form, a team of leadership staff, including the National Board of Directors, has been working for a good while to create a new mission statement. Although Theosophy has ancient roots and is ever the same, yet it is ever new.

Our Mission

The Theosophical Society in America encourages open-minded inquiry into world religions, philosophy, science, and the arts, in order to understand the wisdom of the ages, respect the unity of all life, and help people explore spiritual self-transformation.

In this new year, celebrate with us a freshness of vision and an eagerness to approach our mission with renewed zeal in a world that certainly needs our message.

---

By Richard W. Brooks

Originally printed in the January-February 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Brooks, Richard W. "What Is the I Ching?" Quest  93.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUAY 2005):20-23

The Chinese classic called I Ching (sometimes written Yi Jing, as it should be pronounced) has been interpreted a number of ways by different scholars and devotees of the text. Is it, as many who consult it claim, a book of divination? Is it more fundamentally a book of wisdom, offering suggestions of what one might do in various situations? Is it a remarkable insight into the basic archetypal possibilities of the human psyche, as Carl Jung believed, and perhaps also related to his notion of synchronicity? Is it basically a resource book that gives us some insight into the social structure of ancient China, as some scholars claim? Is it an early example of a binary number system, anticipating by millennia the switching structure of the modern digital computer? Or is it somehow all of these at once?

The great German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm translated the I Ching in 1923 based on his years of familiarity with the text and his consultation with Chinese who used it. His German translation was then rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes at Jung's request; the revised edition was printed in a new format with a preface by Richard Wilhelm's son, Hellmut, also a Sinologist. Other translations exist, of course, including one published by the Sinologist John Blofeld in 1965. The Chinese scholar Wing-tsit Chan preferred James Legge's 1882 translation. But many of us who have become intrigued with the text and cannot read the Chinese original prefer the Wilhelm-Baynes translation, even though it is, as Chan points out, "interpretative to some extent" (795). Jung, in fact, states that Legge "has done little to make the work accessible to Western minds" (Wilhelm-Baynes, xxi).

Since the Chinese language lacks inflection, the title could be translated either "Book of Change" or "Book of Changes." I prefer the former, since constant change is a basic assumption of ancient Chinese philosophy. The basis of the text is the philosophy of yang and yin, the former being associated with light, strength, affirmation, and so on, and the latter with darkness, weakness, yielding, negation, and so on. Neither is considered superior, since in some situations a dominant and forthright attitude is appropriate, while in others a more submissive attitude is needed. The proper attitude depends on one's situation and the desired outcome.

The yang principle is indicated in the I Ching by an unbroken line and the yin by a broken or divided line, hence the binary aspect of the system. The various combinations of these two lines are made by two trigrams (combinations of three lines) placed one atop the other to create a hexagram (a combination of six lines), making a total of sixty-four possible combinations. The method of reading them is from the bottom upwards. Each trigram is given a Chinese name, as is the combination of the two trigrams in a hexagram. The first hexagram according to the usual system of organization, is called in the Wade-Giles transliteration system Ch'ien, The Creative (or in Gregory Winecup's translation using the pinyin system of transliteration Qian, Strong Action), and is composed of all yang lines. The second hexagram, composed of all yin lines, is K'un, The Receptive (or Kun, Acquiescence). The subsequent hexagrams are all composed of various mixtures of yang and yin lines.

The traditional way of consulting the book is by means of yarrow stalks. It is suggested that this is because the stalks originally come from living organisms and hence are appropriate instruments for consulting what is considered to be a dynamic or living system. It is also a slower method and allows—according to some, including myself—psychokinesis (PK) to influence the stalks at a subconscious level of the psyche. The assumption seems to be that some deeper aspect of ourselves already knows what would be best for us to do in any specific situation, even if our brain-dominated consciousness does not. And that aspect of ourselves somehow influences the way the stalks are divided and counted out. If this is correct, as I believe it is, it implies that one should never consult the I Ching flippantly, disrespectfully, or casually, nor for trivial questions or problems one could easily solve for oneself. It should be used infrequently and only when one has a serious dilemma. In other words, one must attempt to get in touch with one's deeper self and not with some more superficial aspect of one's psyche.

Another method of consulting the book is by tossing ancient Chinese coins. Although they do not have the metaphorical association with life that yarrow stalks do, they at least preserve the association with ancient China. Whether PK—and one's unconscious self—can influence the result as readily is difficult to determine, although PK experiments have been conducted by parapsychologists with such materials, often with statistically significant, although not usually very exuberant, results. Some Americans use ordinary modern currency such as copper pennies, considering that they are comparable to ancient Chinese copper coins. Still more recently, a computer program has been developed that chooses one's hexagram electronically. With all such modern methods, the element of ritual involved in the use of yarrow stalks is bypassed. The few times I have witnessed these modern methods, I felt that the resulting hexagram was somehow inappropriate to the question being asked, often completely unintelligible. That is why I prefer the slower, ancient method using yarrow stalks as is described in Wilhelm-Baynes text (721—24).

Because there are obviously more than just sixty-four different situations one might find oneself in, the text offers a variety of alternatives. There are actually four possible outcomes for each of the six lines when consulting the yarrow stalks. These lines are identified either as "young yang," "young yin," "old yang," or "old yin." The young lines are fixed; that is, they remain unchanged. The old lines are moving; that is, they change into their counterparts: An old yang changes into a young yin and an old yin into a young yang. It is unusual to arrive at a hexagram containing only fixed lines, which suggests a situation that one cannot change and simply has to accept. Equally uncommon would be to arrive at a hexagram with six moving lines, indicating an extremely fluid situation. More common is a hexagram with at least one or two moving lines. In that case, one gets two hexagrams: the starting one and the one it changes into. That suggests possibilities for solving (or resolving) one's present situation creatively instead of reactively, which often happens when one deals with life's problems based on past habit patterns.

Another important aspect of the I Ching is that each hexagram has both a judgment and an image associated with it (collectively called the kua-tz'u), both of which are expressed in metaphors. The text describing each of the possible moving lines (known as the yao-tz'u) is also expressed metaphorically. The vagueness involved in both is important, since it allows one's subconscious—perhaps even one's higher self—to interpret the hexagram in a way that is appropriate to oneself. Two people with two different problems arriving at the same hexagram might appropriately interpret it in different ways according to the nature of their question. In other words, the I Ching is a remarkable book with an almost infinite range of possible answers to life's dilemmas.

In addition to the kua-tz'u and yao-tz'u, there are several commentaries, probably appended to the basic text over several centuries. The most interesting from a theosophical point of view is the wen yen, which stresses the philosophical and ethical implications of the hexagrams. As Wing-tsit Chan observes, it is upon that commentary and some appended remarks (hsi-tz'u), as well as comments on some of the trigrams, "that much of Chinese philosophical speculation has been based" (262).

Just when the I Ching was compiled is difficult to determine. Tradition ascribes the eight trigrams to the legendary hero Fu-hsi (traditionally dated prior to the twenty-third century BCE) and their development into the hexagrams to King Wen (reigned 1171—1122 BCE), although modern scholars dispute this. Hellmut Wilhelm points out only that it is generally agreed that there are several layers of the text, the present form having been reached "in the century before Confucius" (Wilhelm-Baynes xiv). It is known that Confucius (551—479 BCE) included it among the classics (ching) he required his students to study, and it is believed that he wrote a commentary on it (called "The Ten Wings"), although this also has been disputed by some scholars (Chan 262). One assumes that Confucius considered it a book of wisdom rather than of divination, perhaps relating to earlier times before China began to degenerate into interstate warfare (which started during his lifetime but became endemic during 403—222 BCE, called the Warring States period). Confucius looked to the past as a model for restoring political order. In any event, the I Ching assumed great importance in later centuries in China, especially when the examination system required aspirants for government positions to write essays on the Confucian classics.

Theosophical references to China are scarce and to the I Ching even scarcer. H. P. Blavatsky makes several references to Confucius in The Secret Doctrine, but most of them make little sense and none relates in any obvious way to the I Ching. It is a shame, because this Chinese classic, however it is construed, is most interesting. And when it is used as a book of divination—or, if one prefers, of wisdom—it can be extremely illuminating. I have known several theosophists, including both my wife and myself, who consult it when confronted with a difficult situation that we cannot solve with either reason or intuition. It has always proven useful. In one case, which occurred at a theosophical planning seminar I attended, the hexagram, Splitting Apart (po or bo), was a literal description of our situation. It also gave us sensible advice for resolving our impasse, which we did. However, in many cases, the really difficult thing is not interpreting its recommendations but putting them into practice!

---

References

Chan, Wing-tsit. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Wilhelm, Richard, trans. The I Ching or Book of Changes. Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Bolllinger Series XIX. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971

---

Richard Brooks is a retired professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. As a Theosophist of more than fifty years, he served on the national board for many years. His specialties are logic, Indic and Chinese philosophy, and parapsychology.

---

By Vincent Hao Chin, Jr.

Originally printed in the January-February 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Chin, Vincent Hao. "Clarification and Integration of Values" Quest  93.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2005):24-29

The philosophy of life for every person consists of two aspects:

1. A map of reality—an understanding of what life is all about, of nature and the cosmos

2. A hierarchy of values—a perception of which things are more important than others

The philosopher Will Durant wrote that wisdom is "seeing big things as big, and small things as small." This implies that, first, we see reality objectively, rather than in a distorted way, and second, we're able to see the relative importance of things.

Clarification of values means that we must review which values should guide our life. Value means what is worthwhile. If happiness is worthwhile, then it's a value. If giving time to the family is worthwhile, then it's a value. If playing basketball is worthwhile, then it's a value.

The problem starts when these values conflict, not only with each other but also when they compete for our time and attention. Between family and basketball, which one is more important? Between honesty and earning more money, which one is more important?

When we don't give time to the consideration of this point, then our conditioned values take over. They subconsciously dictate what is more important and what is less important. Thus, a father spends more time with his officemates than his family after work, although when he is later asked about it, he realizes that his family is more important to him than his friends.

KINDS OF VALUES 

There are three kinds of values:

1. Universal values
2. Cultural values
3. Personal values 

Universal Values

Universal values are valued by all human beings due to the intrinsic nature of these values or by virtue of our being human beings.

Truth, for example, is valued for its own sake. We want to know the truth rather than be misled or be under an illusion. We prefer an illusion only when there is fear or there is psychopathology, in which case, we then put the value of avoidance of pain over that of truth. But even in the latter case, it's not because we don't prefer truth to illusion.

Happiness is sought by every human being because of our biological, psychological, and spiritual makeup. Even masochists inflict pain upon themselves because they derive happiness from it.

Universal values are shared by human beings regardless of culture and age. The following are some of these universal values:  

•  Truth
•  Happiness
•  Inner peace
•  Love
•  Kindness
•  Justice
•  Respect
•  Courage and fearlessness 

Schools universally espouse these values. But the problem is that schools and teachers don't take them seriously. They recognize that they're often impractical (such as honesty) and almost unattainable (such as happiness or inner peace). Thus, universal values are seen as ideals. Modern society gives evidence to the prevalence of values that contradict these universal values.

Cultural Values

Cultural values are dependent on the social norms, religious beliefs and other environmental situations of people. Thus, in a society in which the ratio of males to females is just one to ten, polygyny may be legal and ethical; if the reverse, polyandry may be the legal and ethical custom. In some countries, porce is permitted, in some it's a sin.

Some cultural values are cruel and yet are tolerated or even promoted by members of the community. For almost a thousand years in China, prior to 1912, many women were subjected to the binding of the feet with cloth to make their feet small and dainty. This results in the breaking of the toes and the deformation of the entire foot. Girls from three years-old onwards may be subjected to this cruel practice by their mothers, and they undergo severe pain for two or more years. The practice was prohibited when Sun Yat Sen founded the Republic of China. Cultural values also change with time. What used to be unethical in one generation may no longer be so in the next.

Many of our attitudes and beliefs are derived from these cultural values and hence are conditioned values. Cultural values are not necessarily good for humanity simply because they have widespread acceptance. We need to review such values, because they can color the way we view life and the way we behave. They can create inner and outer conflicts.

The tendency to accumulate wealth, for example, is a very strong cultural conditioning derived from society's measurement of success or from family expectations. We may not have fears or strong desires that impel accumulation, but our minds subconsciously assume that it is the preferred value, and because it's an embedded or hidden assumption, it's often unquestioned. It then exerts pressure on us and can become exceedingly influential or even overwhelming in view of its unquestioned validity. It can effectively overrule any decision we make to adhere to universal values.

A review of our cultural values is thus a review of our philosophy of life. Few people do this deliberately. It requires a broadness of knowledge about life and human affairs. 

Personal Values

Personal values are worthwhile to a particular individual and differ from person to person. Thus, some people may value art more than earning money and thus spend more time painting, even if it provides little income. Others may value money more than art and thus spend more time buying and selling paintings than being painters themselves.

Personal values are largely subjective and are neither ethical nor unethical except when they go against one of the universal values. Thus, whether we prefer chocolate or vanilla is a subjective preference. But whether we eat the flesh of a mammal can be an ethical issue, because it now touches on the pain and suffering caused by the slaughtering of animals for food.

It's important to realize that inner peace is not possible if our personal values contradict one or more universal values. True inner fulfillment eludes us because we won't be able to integrate the higher and lower aspects of our being.

If I do an injustice to someone while trying to earn money, I won't have inner peace. I'll feel insecure. More important, I intuitively know that it's a wrong thing to do. This sense of unethical action doesn't come from cultural values but is due to an inner sense of right and wrong that we have, regardless of our culture.

Thus, it's important to explore a way of life in which universal values are in harmony with our personal values.

ARE UNIVERSAL VALUES PRACTICAL?

In our lectures, we ask the audience (some of whom are schoolteachers) who among them believes that honesty is the best policy. Perhaps half of them or less raise their hands. When we ask how many of them consider that honesty is practical, usually one or two or none at all raise their hands.

We're facing here a fundamental contradiction between our principles and our daily reality. It seems impractical to be honest or to be truly principled. We believe that we can't rise in our careers if we're honest or if we don't compromise with the demands of the environment that compel us to lie. Or we can't win an election if we're too honest. Or become a successful salesperson unless we exaggerate or misrepresent the product.

How true is this widespread impression?

PRINCIPLES AND ACHIEVEMENT

Many years ago, I read an autobiographical book of Joe Girard, who was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the Top Salesman in the World for at least seven consecutive years. Girard was a car and truck salesman. Sometimes customers would come to him to buy a special kind of vehicle that his manufacturer didn't produce. He would tell the customer that his company doesn't have that vehicle, but that it's available from another manufacturer (a competitor), and Girard would even refer the customer to the competitor's dealer. But he would also tell the customer that if in the future the customer needs anything that Girard has, then they should call Girard. He would then give the customer his card.

Such honesty had an effect on potential customers. People from across the continent called Girard if he could supply them with what they needed, and if Girard had it, he stood a good chance of getting the order, because he had been honest with the customer. Girard didn't rise to the top through insincerity and manipulative tactics.

I knew a lady entrepreneur who was one of the materiel vendors of a huge public works project in the Philippines. The public works buyers discovered that among their suppliers, this lady was apparently the only one who didn't overprice or connive with other suppliers to pad their quoted prices. In time, the buyers developed so high a trust in this lady that they would ask her to help them check the prices of items they were buying. Needless to say, this lady received large orders from this public works project, simply because she was honest and trustworthy.

One young public official whom I know very well took the road less traveled and was determined not to succumb to corruption when he was elected mayor of a city in the Philippines. Group after group came to him offering regular amounts of money if he would just agree to look the other way. Time and again he politely declined, until the syndicates found that they were facing a mayor who was dead earnest about his principles. Unlike other politicians, he didn't include journalists and media people in his payroll just to ensure that they said good things about him or to be silent about anything they observed to be wrong. It didn't take long for the people to realize that they had in their midst a truly honest official. They gave him their trust. He won by a landslide in every reelection, with little campaign funds to sustain him. In one election, he ran unopposed. Three years after he stepped down as mayor, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (the Asian Nobel Prize) for government service, the only local official ever given such a recognition.

I can cite many examples of people who, when they're clear about their values and have developed mature skills in management and interpersonal relationships, excel in their respective fields and reach levels that are unattainable by people who employ deception or are insincere. There are millions of politicians, but only those who are principled earn the name statesman. There are many so-called religious people, but only a small percentage are called spiritual.

Stephen Covey, in his best—selling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, noted that the truly successful individuals are those who are character-ethic oriented rather than the personality-ethic oriented. The lives of character-ethic oriented people are guided by principles rather than by conveniences, by what is just and compassionate rather than what is selfish. The personality-ethic oriented individuals may bribe or be insincere in order to achieve a certain goal, but their success will be blocked by walls that can only be surmounted by adherence to universal principles. They may soon discover that they have paid for their short-sighted "success" with a high price.

VALUES IN DAILY LIFE

The test of the practicality of universal values lies in our daily life applications, which I will presently explore.

Most parents lie to their children, and many do so habitually. Why is dishonesty necessary with our own children? Why can't we even be truthful with the people closest to us? Many parents justify their dishonesty by saying that they tell white lies—for the good of their children. But I wonder what is good about having parents who can't be trusted?

This is a typical example: A young son approaches his mother and asks for money to buy something from the store. The mother feels that her son doesn't need it, so she says that she has no money. The boy is disappointed. As he goes into another room, he hears his father ask for money from his mother, and the mother replies, "Just get it from my brown purse."

If you were the son, what would you feel? How will you take your mother's words in the future? Do you think that the white lie of the mother was worth the potential resentment and distrust felt by the son?

Part of the problem is that the mother didn't realize that it was possible for her to say no to her son and to give her sincere reasons without necessarily creating resentment in her son. This option would have been less harmful than lying, even if the boy felt disappointed with her "no."

To be able to be sincere requires the capacity to communicate assertively and sincerely. We must also have developed the self-awareness to be able to face discomfort in our feelings. Your friend comes grinning and proudly shows you her new hairstyle. She asks you, "What do you think of my hair?" You happen to think that it doesn't look good at all. In fact, you think she looks ugly with it. What will you say?

In many cultures, it's proper to say, "It looks OK" or "It looks nice," even if it's a blatant lie.

By learning how to communicate assertively, we can have a better idea of how to give feedback without being judgmental, to speak truthfully without unnecessarily hurting the other person. 

TAKING BITE—SIZE EFFORTS 

In the quest for self-transformation, we need to experiment with daily opportunities for the integration of universal values in our life. Do it at a comfortable pace.

For example, try bite-size honesty. Using assertive communication skills, take risks in being truthful in small daily things. With these modest victories, we can gradually find it easier to be truthful in many things in daily life—with our children, spouse, friends, peers, office mates, etc.

Experiment with bite-size justice and fairness. When we forego an unfair advantage, we may find that we can take the apparent sacrifice. It also feels good deep inside. Again with such small victories, we will find it is no longer difficult to be just when it comes to large matters.

Do bite-size kindnesses every day. Say "thank you" to people whom you don't usually thank for small favors, like passing the salt. It gradually becomes a habit. We no longer even think of it. The "thank you" just automatically comes out of our lips whenever anybody does any small thing for us.

CLARIFYING PERSONAL VALUES 

To integrate universal values into our lives, we must do another necessary task: clarify our own personal values.

Many of us go through life not knowing that our personal values are not really our own. They are just reflections of the demands of our surroundings: our parents, friends, society, what people will say, etc. We begin to wonder why we're not happy in our careers or why we easily get angry when we're performing our work.

Winnie worked as a legal researcher in one of the best law centers in the country for about twenty years. When I met her, she said that she was due to retire in two years. Seeing that she was still young, I asked her what she planned to do after her retirement, thinking that she would set up her own law practice. She said, "I'll open up a dress shop." I was caught by surprise, and I couldn't say anything for a few moments. I asked her why. She said, "Ever since I was young, I had always wanted to design dresses and make them. Now that I'm about to retire, this is the thing that I really want to do."

"Then why did you become a lawyer?" I asked.

"When I was entering college, my uncle wouldn't finance my studies unless I took up law. So I did."

It's been more than ten years since that evening, and I haven't met Winnie again. I often wonder what she felt throughout the twenty years when she was doing legal work. I wonder what she's doing now. I wish that she's happy in her new career, doing creative designs.

Would you and I be willing to devote more than twenty years of our lives to something that we didn't really love? Lack of clarity of our personal values can condemn us to a life that we don't cherish, to a work that we don't find fulfilling.

It's essential for each one of us to clarify what is truly meaningful in our lives—things that we would like to live and even die for.

To help us attain such clarity, we must try to answer two questions. For some of us, they may be difficult to answer. Nevertheless, do your best. You can always change them later. I suggest that you write down your answers, not just think about them. Writing them will force you to be specific and to see your present hierarchy of personal values more clearly. The first question is, What are three things that you would like to do or achieve or become before you die?

Write them down in the order of their importance.

The second question is, What are three things that you would like to do or accomplish within the next three years?

In answering the first question, you're really searching for an answer that doesn't come from your outer self, which is your logical mind or emotions. When your outer self answers, you might reply according to the values of society, which may not resonate with your innermost self. You want the answer to come from somewhere deeper within you.

For this reason, it's important to review the list after a week, a month, and a year. See whether your answers are still the same. If at these different times your list is the same, you may be reasonably sure that you're hearing the answer of your deeper self. If the list keeps changing, then it means that you're listening to your outer self.

Your answer to the second question helps you determine whether you will be spending your coming years meaningfully. If what you do for the next three years has got nothing to do with your lifetime list, then decide whether you're doing the right things for the next three years or, on the other hand, whether your lifetime list needs to be revised.

Check also whether your personal values are in harmony with universal values. If not, review them and see whether deep within yourself they are really what you want in life.

INTEGRATION OF VALUES 

The above discussion and exercises constitute the first, but necessary, stage in the integration of values and behavior.

The second stage is the integration of these values. Two things are required to internalize values: 

1. Clarity of universal and personal values: We must be convinced that universal values are valid and truly worth pursuing, and also that our personal values are clear and strongly felt.

2. Contrary conditionings are neutralized. The conditionings to be neutralized are of two kinds:

1. Physico-emotional conditionings: those involving habits and emotional reactions, such as fears, resentments, etc.

2. Mental conditionings: those molded by cultural values, such as the measurement of success and failure and philosophy of life. They create preferences for lifestyles, modes of action, etc. This aspect is related to a review of one's map of reality.

When true clarity is achieved and conditionings are comprehensively reviewed, then values can be fully integrated into our life with minimal difficulty.

---

By Ray Grasse

Originally printed in the January-February 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Grasse, Ray. "The  Voice of Divination: Omens, Oracles, and the Symbolist Worldview." Quest  93.1 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2005):14-19.

"Things here are signs," the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus once declared. With these words, he gave expression to a worldview that has, in one form or another, influenced human thought since the earliest stirrings of civilization. Sometimes referred to as symbolist, this perspective regards the world as a kind of sacred text, written in the language of symbols, and holds that all phenomena harbor a deeper meaning beyond their obvious appearances. If one applies the proper key, these meanings can be decoded, and everyday life unveiled for its deeper truths.

While the symbolist worldview encompassed a wide range of symbolic patterns, one of these in particular —the omen—came to hold special importance for traditional societies. "Coming events cast their shadow before them," an ancient proverb proclaims. Through the study of omens, men and women sought to glimpse future possibilities and shifts of fortune and thus prepare themselves for the challenges and opportunities awaiting them.

As with all aspects of symbolist thought, the concept of the omen has expressed itself at widely varying levels of sophistication. At their subtlest, omens exist in a world where the boundaries between past, present, and future are permeable. Influences of past conditions or events still echo within the present, while from the other direction, what is to come sends ripples into the now, like the bow waves preceding an advancing boat. Hence the phenomenal play of each moment represents the complex blending of symbolic influences from all three dimensions of time, with those from the future designated as omens.

When classifying omens, it can be useful to distinguish between literal and symbolic forms. Literal omens require little translation. For instance, the South American novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez once recalled the time he answered his doorbell to find a stranger saying, "You must change the electric iron's cord—it is faulty!" Then, realizing he had come to the wrong house, the stranger promptly apologized and left. A half-hour later, Marquez's iron burst into flames—the result of a faulty cord. Here, the apparent omen foreshadowed the later event in a straightforward way.

Far more common, however, are those instances when an omen takes on a metaphoric dimension, appearing in ways that, like dreams, require greater skill and intuition to interpret. In the British television production of Robert Graves's I Claudius, the death of a central character (Herod) is foreshadowed by an owl landing on his chair during a public ceremony. The owl hoots several times, with the number of hoots corresponding to the number of days before his death. The relationship between the omen and what is signified by it was entirely symbolic and involved several levels of meaning. To make sense of such an image, we must perceive it with a discerning eye. As creatures of flight, birds are metaphorically associated with the soul's flight at death. Moreover, the owl is specifically a night bird, emphasizing even more dramatically the idea of otherness, the negative (or passive) half of the day/night polarity, and, by analogy, the opposing side of the life/death polarity. The number of hoots emitted by the bird represents a proportional reference to the number of days until the individual's death. In this way, a single and seemingly simple event encodes several dimensions of information and meaning at once.

In ancient times, birds represented one of many different types of omens. Other notable areas of study included the behavior of snakes, randomly situated pieces of wood along the road, patterns on bodies of water, omens derived from celestial phenomena of any sort, and even moles on the human body.

Identifying Omens

Is there any way to determine whether an event is an omen? Although such events don't lend themselves to easy classification, there are some useful guidelines we can hold in mind.

The first of these is the quality of unusualness characterizing an event. For ancient cultures, events that were out of the ordinary were seen as holding special import concerning future trends. Great attention was paid to the appearance of bizarre weather conditions, unusual dreams, the birth of malformed children or animals, or major accidents, all in the belief that the extraordinary quality of such events portended changes for the individual or the collective. This preoccupation with anomalies, in part, led ancient cultures like the Babylonian and the Mayan to chart the movements of heavenly bodies as precisely as possible in order to determine which movements or phenomena were out of the ordinary and thus of consequence to society. The more irregular an astronomical occurrence, the greater its significance as a portent of social change. For the Chinese astrologers of antiquity, such unusual sights as the daytime appearance of Venus would be regarded as highly significant omens, pointing to an imbalance of forces within the kingdom at large.

A more systematic method for identifying omens employed by traditional cultures to foretell the future was to carefully observe the symbols occurring around the beginning of any major development, whether a personal relationship, a public works project, or even an idea. This belief might be referred to as the "law of conception." Understood esoterically, the context surrounding a phenomenon's birth holds the seeds of its unfoldment and eventual outcome, provided one knows how to interpret their symbolic language.

In many cultures, great attention was paid to events on the first day of the new year (or, in some cultures, the day of the winter solstice or spring equinox). A similar notion is echoed in our observance of the twelve days of Christmas, each of which was traditionally seen as foreshadowing the weather to be expected in the corresponding month of the new year. The events seen on a person's birthday likewise assume significance as possible omens of the person's upcoming year. Regarding this general principle, the Renaissance mystic Cornelius Agrippa remarked: "All the auspicia [omens] which first happen in the beginning of any enterprise are to be taken notice of . . . if going forth thou shalt stumble at the threshold, or in the way thou shalt dash thy foot against anything, forbear thy journey." With this in mind, it is worth recalling what happened to Darwin's great contemporary Alfred Wallace as he was about to begin a sea voyage home to England after an exploratory trip through South America and the Pacific. Just as the ship was about to set sail, his pet toucan plunged into the ocean and drowned, a fact Wallace dejectedly noted in his journal. Within weeks, the ship was destroyed by fire at sea, resulting in the loss of almost all his research. Again, the timing of this event at the start of the trip was the key element conferring on it omenological importance.

Applied to the arena of personal relationships, this principle can sometimes yield intriguing if comical results. A friend once related to me the problems she was encountering in a current relationship. "He used to seem like such a nice guy," she sighed. "But this last year he's been a real monster." I asked her if she recalled their first meeting or their first time out together. Yes, she said, they went to a movie. Could she recall the name of the movie? "Let me think," she strained to remember, "Oh, yes, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!"

It was with this belief that traditional cultures carefully noted the symbols arising around any person's birth. We are perhaps most familiar with this practice in the context of astrology, which looks at the positions and relationships of the celestial bodies at the moment of birth. Yet anything in the environment during these critical moments may serve as a symbolic clue to unlock an individual's destiny. In many Native American tribes, for instance, it was common to look for unusual events or symbols in the immediate environment at the moment a child was born, to seek indications of his or her future character and to suggest the child's name. A deer seen running by might suggest the name Running Deer, indicating that the child might be particularly swift or graceful. Native American lore likewise tells us of the dramatic omens accompanying the births of powerful leaders, such as the great shooting star seen at the birth of Tecumseh or the winds, lightning, and hail said to coincide with the birth of Pontiac.

A third source of potential omens is dreams. Reflecting the widespread esoteric notion that dreams precipitate from a higher realm of reality, the study of dreams has sometimes been felt to yield glimpses into the underlying symbolic patterns of daily life before they crystallize into manifestation. Dream symbols are generally regarded as occurring prior to physical, waking reality. The question of how much time must pass between a dream experience and its manifestation in waking reality is often debated. For some esotericists, dream symbols find expression in waking reality almost immediately, with dreams foreshadowing events to occur on the following day. For others, however, the period varies considerably; in the Kriya Yoga tradition, for example, this process is commonly said to take around seventy-two hours.

However long it takes, dreams tend to foreshadow physical events in largely symbolic rather than strictly literal terms. For instance, a dream of falling down the stairs may herald not an actual accident but rather an emotional fall from grace, as might accompany a romantic rejection; similarly, a dream of death might symbolize the closing off or transformation of some outworn habit pattern, such as quitting smoking, rather than actual death.

Divination

The problem with omens, however, is that one can never be entirely sure when they will occur. One can't very well wait for a comet to blaze through the sky or an animal to appear at one's window before one makes an important decision. As a result, humans developed a wide assortment of methods to induce omenological messages on demand.. Given the order and harmony underlying all events, it was believed, the inherent meaningfulness of the universe could be tapped at will to obtain answers to specific questions.

Thus arose in classical times the distinction between natural omens (in Latin, omina oblativa) and artificial omens (omina impetrativa), or those that naturally present themselves and those humanly provoked. This latter category is conventionally known as divination. Technically speaking, divination may be used to uncover information concerning any situation, past, present, or future; conventionally, however, we associate it almost entirely with foretelling future trends.

As in the case of natural omens, the ancients developed an astonishing array of methods to ascertain the future, including watching the shape of smoke rising from specially tended fires, examining animal or human entrails, opening scriptures or other books at random, gazing into crystals, and studying the pattern of tea leaves.

In the category of divination, we may also place seeking prophetic advice from an oracle, a man or woman thought to have the ability to speak of past, present, or future events while in a trance state. Such human "mediums" are still around today, though we call them "channelers." From the ambiguous pronouncements uttered in poetic meter by the famed oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece to the inspired prophecies of indigenous shamans in trance, societies across the world have drawn on the psychic capacities of the human mind for insights into the future as an alternative to (or in conjunction with) the purely external sources we've been considering thus far.

Subjective or Objective?

When discussing the underlying mechanism of omens and divinatory techniques generally, it is sometimes asked whether the prophetic aspects of such processes are the result of the events themselves or simply a reflection of the intuitive capacities brought to bear on those events. According to the latter view, the event or technique is nothing more than a neutral screen onto which the unconscious projects its own insights about coming events, which the conscious mind then interprets as deriving from an outside source.

While no doubt true in many cases, the projection theory doesn't fully explain the range of examples that characterize the classical understanding of omens. For instance, a meteorite plunging into one's neighborhood would, to the traditional mentality, be viewed as deeply meaningful omen, yet one could hardly classify this as just another event onto which one has projected omenological significance. It is, by any standard, a genuinely unusual occurrence.

For this reason, it is more helpful to speak of a spectrum of omenological systems, ranging from those involving little intuition to those requiring a great deal. At the far end of the spectrum are "low data/high subjectivity" systems such as crystal gazing or tea-leaf reading, where the mind has minimal information to work from; at the other end are "high data/low subjectivity" systems like astrology or even the tarot, which provide relatively high levels of information that the individual can draw upon. Even with such data-rich systems as astrology, however, it must be stressed that personal intuition always remains important, since the essentially symbolic nature of the information lends itself to interpretation on many levels.

The Symbology of Endings

Traditional cultures in general placed great emphasis on all important endings and conclusions. As with births and marriages, for instance, deaths have long been viewed as accompanied by symbols that reflect this greatest of threshold crossings—what might be called the "law of completion." As one example, it is said that at the moment of Carl Jung's death, a bolt of lightning hit the tree he frequently sat beneath. In Grace and Grit, transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber described the unusually intense windstorm that blew through Boulder, Colorado, where they lived, at the precise moment his wife, Treya died. Checking the newspapers the next day, Wilber was intrigued to learn that this meteorological quirk did not seem to extend beyond that specific locale. Among the more common phenomena associated with death is the stopping of clocks at the moment of their owner's demise—an explicit metaphor, one may presume, for "time running out." History informs us such a timely malfunction occurred at the passing of Frederick the Great.

Because of their high visibility, the lives of celebrities provide an unending source of symbolically provocative anecdotes involving death-related synchronicities. For instance, in 1928 humorist Will Rogers died in an airplane crash along with aviator Wiley Post; amid the wreckage was Rogers's typewriter, showing that the last word he had typed was death. Film director John Huston's last completed directorial effort was prophetically titled The Dead. When actress Natalie Wood died during the early 1980s, she had been working on a film titled Brainstorm in which death was a prominent theme. Before her death in 1985, actress Anne Baxter played her final role in an episode of the TV series Hotel, in which her last on-screen line was "Shall we have one last waltz?" At the time of his death, Star Trek producer Gene Roddenberry was at work on his last film, subtitled The Undiscovered Country, a Shakespearean allusion to death. When Francis Ford Coppola's son died in a tragic boating accident, the famed director was directing the film Gardens of Stone, which concerned a cemetery. And when martial artist Bruce Lee's son Brandon died during the filming of the fantasy drama The Crow, many viewers were later startled to see how explicitly the film centered around death; indeed, Lee's resurrection from the grave in the opening shots was viewed by more than one critic as uncannily analogous to the renewed popularity the actor experienced during the posthumous release of this film.

A similar pattern is visible in the uncanny significance of song titles or lyrics surrounding the deaths of many famous singers. When he died, Hank Williams's most popular recording was "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." At the time of his death in 1960, rock and roll singer Eddie Cochrane was beginning to enjoy the popularity of "Three Steps to Heaven" Pop music legend Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in 1959; at the time, his song "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" was experiencing wide popularity. When ex-Beatle John Lennon was murdered in 1980, he was witnessing his first top-ten single in many years, with the appropriate title "Starting Over." At the time of his death, rhythm and blues singer Chuck Willis had two songs on the charts, titled "Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes" and "What Am I Living For?" Otis Redding's hit single "Dock of the Bay" was ascending the charts at the time of his death, including among its lyrics the plaintive lines "I have nothing to live for; looks like nothing's gonna come my way." Singer Marvin Gaye's music experienced a posthumous resurgence of popularity with the rerelease of his song "I Heard It through the Grapevine" as part of the soundtrack to the movie The Big Chill, which went into nationwide release a day after his death; his song played over the film's opening funeral sequence.

This awareness of the symbols surrounding death is important in the mythologies of virtually all religions. In the New Testament account of the Crucifixion, we learn of the natural wonders, including earthquakes and the darkening of the sky, that took place at the moment of Christ's death. At the death of Krishna, we are told, a black circle surrounded the moon, the sky rained fire and ashes, and spirits were seen everywhere. At the moment the Buddha determined that he too would die, a major earthquake shook the land; three months later he was dead. In a similar vein, many Buddhists contend that the deaths or cremations of all great spiritual figures are accompanied by natural phenomena like unusual cloud formations or rainbows.

A more controversial contention held by some is that the actual mode of death contains clues to the life or karma of an individual. Just as the opening moments of a life in some way preview what is to follow, so the specific circumstances of a person's death summarize key lessons or aspects of his or her life story. At first glance, this theory seems questionable in cases where peaceful individuals died exceptionally violent deaths (such as Mahatma Gandhi's assassination by a political extremist) or criminals died under serene circumstances (such as Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele dying of natural causes). It may be, however, that it isn't the actual cause of death that contains the relevant clues so much as the subtler levels of symbolism.

For example, only hours before he died by electrocution while sitting in the bathtub, famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton proclaimed to an important meeting of world religious leaders that the times ahead were "electrifying." Clearly, it would seem we should look not to the manifestly violent nature of his death so much as the deeper symbolism (a subtle reference, perhaps, to the radical or electrifying nature of his efforts to harmonize Eastern and Western spirituality). Similarly, for many esotericists, drowning in the ocean has been viewed as one of the most auspicious deaths possible, due to the mystical connotations traditionally associated with the ocean, a symbol for the divine immensity.

Looked at deeply, every death has some significance symbolically. Say a man on his way to church is broadsided by a truck and dies. Here again, the significance of the death may reside less in its violence than in the fact that the accident occurred on the way to church. When we examine the patterns in the man's life, we may find he had continually been "broadsided" by circumstances seemingly beyond his control in pursuit of his spiritual goals. Perhaps he wanted to be a priest but had to drop out of the seminary to get a job when his father died; perhaps a long-anticipated pilgrimage to Rome many years later was canceled because of a fire in his home. As a person becomes more sensitive to the fine shadings of symbol and archetype rather than being limited by simplistic judgments of good and bad, even seemingly negative events can reveal deeper (and potentially spiritual) significance.

Conclusion

What, then, of divination? In the end, it is perhaps best understood as but one element within a far more extensive web of ideas concerning the symbolic dimensions of life. Through the divinatory act, we are able to "divine" the hidden messages encoded in the seemingly mundane phenomena of ordinary experience; yet as the examples here suggest (and as I explore more extensively in my book The Waking Dream), those selfsame messages permeate our experience in a wide range of ways—if only we could recognize them. "The whole world is an omen and a sign," the American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. "Why look so wistfully in a corner? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle."

---

Ray Grasse worked on the staffs of Quest Books and The Quest magazine for ten years. His most recent book is Signs of the Times (Hampton Roads, 2002), an in-depth study of the unfolding Aquarian age. This article has been adapted from his book The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives (Quest Books, 1996). He maintains an active astrological practice in the Chicagoland area and can be reached at jupiter.enteract@rcn.com.

---