The I Ching
The following paranormal phenomena statement is about the secrets of the I Ching and is an extract from the first spontaneous paranormal survey conducted by Psychic Revolution. These accounts have not been edited but any information that may identify the original contributor has been removed.
267. SECRETS OF THE I CHING
Prior to the familiars occurring I had had an acupuncture session (actually I think he just did acupressure) and as I was walking up the street to my car I had an absolutely overwhelming ‘urge’ to get the I Ching book and read it. It was an almost all-consuming desire that made me smile at the time because I thought I knew it would not make sense.
I had bought a copy about 12 or so years previously when I was doing a massage course and other students were talking about it. I had tried to read the introduction, found it completely unintelligible, and put it on the bookshelf. We moved from … to … and the book came with me purely because I don’t like throwing books out. When I got home from the acupuncturist I got out the book, sat down to read it and it made complete sense. it was as if I was reading something I had already known something about. I read it through once and it was shortly after that that the familiars started. If you know anything about the I Ching and the Richard Wilhelm version it is not the knid of book that makes easy study yet the words seemed to really resonate at a deep level. I do not have a photographic memory and, indeed, during my illness, my memory had become so bad I was afraid I was getting early dementia – but it seems to have been a result of severe stress. I have been astonished at my affinity with the book and how it has woven so deeply into what I experience now. It feels like it is a natural part of me and my consciousness yet, a couple of years ago, I would have derided everything I have just written!
– end of secrets of the I Ching extract –
918.
had two areas of persistent pain that had not been relieved by what had been very effective and powerful Bowen therapy so I went to an acupuncturist. After a few sessions where, because of my extreme sensistivity (responses) to the needles he had ended up using acupressure, he suggested I might like to try the even less invasive method of visualization of the pain. I did so and the visualization was very vivid and ended up with pain in my shoulder blades that felt like wings growing out of them. This was followed by the “image” (by this I mean I ‘saw’ by ‘sensing’) a small animal that I described as a lizard with bat wings at my left shoulder and it was repelling what I initially said was a little black devil because of its tail but I then realised was a dark monkey. The pain disappeared and has not returned. The bat/lizard was the first of what I know call my ‘familiars’ (for want of a better term!!!) which “arrived” during my next few personal meditations completely unbidded and rather too fast for me to feel ‘in control’ – but I soon got used to it and it eventually settled down to what I have now and what I have divided into different categories of ‘familiars’ with different purposes. 8 what I call ‘social’ familiars stationed at different parts of my body and which I associate with the 8 I Ching hexagrams. (Another amazing thing was that I had only read the I Ching – Richard Wilhelm version – through once when all this happened so cannot fathom how I could have had a grasp of the underlying depth of character of the hexagrams that ended up being so well represented by each of my different ‘familiars’. Then there are my 3 stress-reaction familiars (larger). My ‘ego’ familiar. My ‘instinct’ familiar and two more ‘distant’ familiars representing to me ‘world affairs’ and ‘transition’. They become very vivid during meditation but I can bring up the ‘sensing’ of them if I want to in various situations and those that come to ‘being’ are what appear to have the characteristics necessary for the particular situation I am in e.g. if I have to deal with someone I do not care for particularly or if I pass animals on a walk. And other animals come into mind during meditations now depending on any issues I have to deal with where the characteristics of that animal show a way of dealing with the situation.
519.
I had been very ill – stress-related illnesses coupled with undiagnosed nutritional deficiencies – and was in such pain I felt I need the kind touch of massage. Someone was suggested but the massage left me in absolute agony which I knew should not be so I contacted the man and he said to come back the next day and he would “reverse it”. He used Bowen therapy on me and it worked so wonderfully well that I went every week for the first three months then every 2-3 weeks for a year and gradually lessened it. It was only after a year hat he told me that no-one else he knew made such major movements like I did as if a physiotherapist was putting me through an exercise regime. It was scary at first having incredible ‘urges’ to move parts of my body but, taking to heart what he had said about the body not going to push itself further than it could handle, I would work on my mental state to accept the urge, relax into it and, I suppose, go into a somewhat trance-like state while I just followed the urges.
The effect, though, as I said, were sometimes scary, ended up with the most amazing body relief. One of the most obvious things was that, a few months previously, I had been to the hospital to have my little fingers assessed and been told that, if they continued to curl round into my palm and became too much in the way they would cut the tendons. The Bowen therapy ‘urges’ to move them in the most bizarre ways that I could not bear to replicate after the sessions have made my fingers virtually straight. At the beginning of my meditaions now, if there is tension in my body somewhere, I will feel the urge to do certain movements that often surprise me in what is happening Ibut I am so used to it now that I just go along with it!) and I’ll do what I call a “moving meditation” which releases the tension out of my body – and always straightens those little fingers if they have curled a bit. Loads of crying occurred early on in the bowen prior to the moving started and then, also, once the moving started I began to have huge chunks of memory come to me e.g. my motorcycle accident – which explained pain on my left side when what was ‘seen’ was just on the right side.
Carrying on from the ‘moving meditation’, once I had become ‘familiar’ with my ‘familiars’ (mentioned on the previous page) I found that, to my initial amazement, I started to progress from just moving to ease tension to, once the tension was eased, ‘acting’ out by becoming different familiars in a particular way that I realised was like using myself rather than sticks for I Ching divination. It only occurs if I am concentrating on a particular question during a meditation and when I know I have plenty of time (all this doing and then contemplating what has happened takes the most enormous amount of time!!!!!). I also have to ensure that I keep in a particular mindset. If I start analysing while in the ‘trance-state’ it takes a lot of effor to continue. I have only just got used to all this as I was actually thinking of joining the sceptics before all this stuff with familiars occurred and I have not believed in gods or goddesses etc. since I was 6. It is quite bizarre to me that I would have such experiences but they have made such a big positive difference to how I deal with life that I accept it all and just keep thinking that there is a scientific basis for all this that just has not been discovered yet!
