While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment. The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetical reasons that seemingly account for the coincidence. The moment under actual observation appears to the ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurring causal chain processes. The manner in which the I Ching tends to look upon reality seems to disfavour our causalistic procedures. Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance.

What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception. We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions. What Kant's Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in.

Our science, however, is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. It is a curious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as the Chinese has never developed what we call science. In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. JUNG Foreword to the I Ching translated by Richard Wilhelm

I ching psychic science