The BIG BANG
How it all came
about
Many many years ago, I fell in love with the I Ching. That was
the one Wilhelm translated, and although there are many words and
sentences I think should be translated different, I still love that
translation very much. Legge is good, and many others are, but I don't
think any of them would have triggered that feeling of love and
understanding.
Later, there were other translations who could have done the job,
like Whincup’s, but in those years I lived very secluded, I did not
know of any other I Chings. What I came across though, by the way of
astrology, were the Sabian Symbols. I devised a way of combining them
with the I Ching-lines, and that worked fine. I could find a meaning now
for many lines that were incomprehensible before.
In 1993, I finally could buy more books, and the first one was
Ritsema and Karcher’s word-by-word translation. Well – that was a
real Big Bang, my first one. I suddenly realized that it was possible
for a layman to translate Chinese. And what I found was a huge garden of
beauty, a garden to play in day after day, and never be bored. It not
only made the I Ching clear, but the Chinese characters themselves are a
treasury of insight and beauty and poetry.
I can use the old book now any moment, and I am never puzzled by
what it says. It awakens my intuition every time I need it. Its wisdom
is becoming part of myself and I know the discoveries will be
inexhaustible. Every time I find more insight. The world created by that
first Big Bang will expand the rest of my life.
Then came another Big Bang. A year ago, I got a computer. I
started to make my findings transferable. Writing them down, and
explaining what was obvious to myself, but not for others (mainly
because it was a mess of pieces of paper). And finally
making them look beautiful. Well, it is a never-ending job, this new
universe is also expanding and expanding and expanding and…
If I can manage to add one hexagram and translate one “saying of
the master” every week, then maybe this site will be complete after 1
or 1½ years. But if it continues the way it does now, there will be new
possibilities announcing themselves from time to time. So I guess I will
be site-making for many years to come.
I love doing it! I hope others will love it too.
A fortune-telling book - or
a book of wisdom - or a device to make your intuition audible?
The I Ching is all of these things. The
fortune-telling appeals least to me, but that is for everybody
different. What I like most, is the book of wisdom that answers at the
moment you need it.
Usually you encounter a piece of wisdom that hits you,
and then after a longer or shorter time there is suddenly a situation
where it helps you. But the Yi helps at the moment itself. How? No idea,
and I am not going to find out. Because I think that not-knowing is one
of the reasons.
If you want your intuition to speak, you have
to silence your rational thinking. And the best way is something
absolutely irrational. I know someone who goes outside and looks at the
movement of the clouds when he has to make an important decision. He is
a clever and rational businessman, but he found a way they already used
in stone-age.
