I Ching - Um Novo Ponto de Vista
A Brief Summary of the Book, by Ely Britto
Ely Britto's I Ching - Um Novo Ponto de Vista (Yijing - A New
Point Of View) was published in São Paolo by Editora Cultrix in
1993. The following summary is by the author herself; the English
has been edited and revised for publication here.

 

The goal of the book is to help people interpret the response of the Yijing *based on previous studies of the Chinese Thought and culture. The Yi Ching has a principle, a structure, theorems and philosophy. It is a complete system mirroring the laws of nature and life. In this way it is not a Chinese book but an universal book that can be understood and apply in any culture since we open our mind to its proper system. To interpreter the Yi is to know deeply how those laws and principles act in nature and in our own life indicating if our decisions are in harmony or not with a wide system that we call life or movements of change.* In my view, the most difficult part of using the Yi is interpreting it, the interpretation demands that we learn its own system and harmonise our free will to those movements of change*

Wisdom, in my understanding, is knowing the movement of change in nature and harmonising our personal decisions with that movement. Over many years of consulting the Yijing I realised that it is much more than a book: it is something which can be compared to a virtual teacher of the processes of nature, a living entity which can interact with the mind and transform it by mysteriously manipulating the primal forms and energies underlying reality. In other words the Yi is a system, a living system, which works with number and form through the combinations of yin and yang energy to transform the user, by balancing the elemental components of life.

I see the Yijing as something created with a purpose, a kind of ancient science, far more advanced than our technology-directed science. Our science separates the object from the person who is studying it. The old cultures of India, China and Greece always integrated the object and the person studying it. For this reason I can't see how someone can study the Yijing without consulting it. It is by consultation that we can connect to its wisdom and learn with it. My purpose is not to study the Yijing, but to use it to learn the laws of life acting on our relationships with the world inside and outside our being. By this process we become familiar with movement and repose, with the known and the unknown, and in summary how the two opposite poles relate to each other to bring about Change; this process in turn transforming our viewpoint on life and bringing about a change in the way we see or think of the world. Our model of reality is transformed to a more open one and, at the same time, a more integrated one. This is the reason the book is called "a new point of view", or new way to think of the world.

This book is divided into three to express the three powers controlling destiny. Book One talks about a method of interpreting the Yi, based on communication theory. * Firstly I describe its principles and structure as we read in all the good classics and its best commentors: King Wen, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Wang Bi and the cosmogony, philosophy and principles of Chinese thought. After I describe the laws of the theory of communication; its basic rules.* We know that the medium is not the message, and the meaning of the message comes from the source that sends it to its recipient. A communication process is successful when the recipient understands the message as having the same meaning as that intended by the source. In the Yijing the source of the message is that wise 'virtual teacher' who knows the laws of change, the medium is the hexagram, the trigrams and their attributes, and the lines and their relationships, and the recipient of the meaning is the consultant or ordinary person. The meaning is found by interpreting the response of the Yijing. The first book studies the characteristics of each part of that process of communication (Yijing/consultant).

1. The characteristics of the sage, the source of the communication. How the Chinese saw and thought about the world.
2. The medium carrying the message: the text and the structure of the Yijing. Here I explain how you can understand the text by analogy and the symbols by the formal structure of the Yi. I consider the hexagrams, trigrams and lines as part of a language: as the complete text, the phrases and the letters respectively.
3. The person to whom the sage directs his message: what does it means to be an ordinary person? Here I talk about the person as someone who is still evolving, rather than fully completed. I use Jung's concept of the persona to talk about the contradictions of our thoughts and desires, and the mask we use to communicate with the world and with others.

If a message is successful when the recipient understands the meaning intended by the source, then to do a good interpretation on the Yijing we must learn what the source wishes the teach: the laws of nature. Only when we learn how to subordinate our desires to natural law can we really say we did a good interpretation of its message, and at that time we become wise and know the laws of change *expressed in its structure *.

Book Two contains a commentary on each hexagram and line, trying to explain what kind of law the Yijing is trying to teach us. This is not difficult to do if one understands the theory of yin and yang and can see how many of our prejudices and opinions come from the antagonism we believe exists in the interaction of these two forces. To write about that I examine the point where the two forces integrate and what sort of relationships and processes are occurring in the hexagram (what it is expressing about the interaction of yin and yang). However, rather than using the Chinese terminology I describe in a very simple way what kind of antagonistic attitude the hexagram represents and how, using the advice of the judgement, we can learn to integrate or balance those two forces.

Book Three consists of analysis of four cases and their interpretation, demonstrating the practical use of the concepts and explanations I gave in the two first books. Here I show how I read the lines, the judgments and the trigrams, to find a way to help the person who came to consult the Yi with me. The research for this section was based on my consultation-records. Over two years I followed those four people in their improvement and I explain how the Yi did or did not help them in their process of self-development (which in my book means to become wise, and to use their free will wisely).