Chinese philosophy describes the onset of qi in the universe and the process of revelation through the development of Yin and Yang; From the Oneness, to the trinity, to the duograms etc. until finally to the 64 hexagrams and the 10.000 beings. In this seminar we will discover how the expansion of Yin and Yang takes place and how the different steps in this development can be helpful in order to understand psychological and spiritual development.
Eastern philosophy, in its richness, teaches us, besides a pattern of revelation, also about the development of consciousness. The philosophy states that the qi of the original Oneness in Heaven, when fragmented, emanates and gives life energy to create the Earth and then Man. Man, through his consciousness, is able to answer back towards the Oneness in Heaven, and is consequently also responsible for the quality of the Oneness! This framework of thinking shows that it is very important to be conscious of our way of living.

The consciousness of Man acts like a bridge between our inner world and our outer world. It is the link between the stimuli from the outer world and the Shen, the spirit of Man, in our inner world. Often Man reacts with thoughts and emotions on the stimuli from the outer world, without consulting the Shen in the inner world. Thoughts and emotions seem to have their own life, not being influenced by our own being, but more by circumstances and stimuli of the outer world.
Imagine consciousness as a rowing boat moved by two paddles. On one side there is the paddle with the force of the thought-life and on the other hand the paddle of the emotional-life. Our being with its consciousness goes forward by the use of these two forces. Sometimes we row in a straight line, but most often through disorder and independent acting of our emotions and thoughts, we row in curves, not being aware that the paddles don’t coordinate. As result of this type of development of our consciousness we create and construct our world based on attachments.
The course of another type of development of consciousness is in a different direction. It goes counter the above mentioned movement of creation and revelation, back toward the Oneness in Heaven. By calming down and ordering our thought-life and emotional-life we might be able to stop reacting and being attached. By ordering the instinctive powers and ignoring the impulses, we could find in ourselves a point of silence. Here we can turn around and focus towards the source of our creation. Experiences in this direction teach us how to confront the world again, now with spirituality: with compassion and sense of oneness of everything that exists.
Even without being fully in contact with the source of our being, the nature of our spirit, we are still able to live a life rich in spiritual experience.
The development of Yin and Yang and the arrangements of Fu Hsi and King Wen, the so called pre-heavenly and post-heavenly arrangements with the trigrams from The Book of Changes (the I Ching), show us the way. The arrangement of Fu Hsi shows us the key towards Oneness, the arrangement of King Wen the way we relate to the world. It is our challenge to combine these. The revelation and development of Yin and Yang, superficially seen, is just a way to describe how Heaven reveals itself. The inner structure of the arrangements gives guidelines how to deal with emotions and thoughts and life as such, and consequently with the way we might be able to develop consciousness.

In this seminar we will explore the inner structure of the arrangements of the I Ching in an attempt to gain understanding of psychological and spiritual development of consciousness.

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