Resonance theory
Resonance Theory
One thing I’ve been thinking about more and more recently is resonance theory. In Chinese this term is called 感应 Gan Ying. Gan means feeling, ying means echo, so literally the feeling of an echo, but many people call it resonance theory in English.
This concept which originated in the Han dynasty has been seriously influential on Daoism, Confucianism and Yijing studies (including divination, Fengshui etc) and basically tells us that what happens in the environment not only resonantes with us, but that our actions resonate in the environment.
To get a basic grasp of resonance you have to understand the concept of San Cai, or three levels which include:
heaven: the sky or the upper line of a trigram, or upper two lines of a hexagram,
earth: the earth, lower line of a trigram or lower two lines of a hexagram,
humanity: the people, the middle line of a trigram or middle two lines of a hexagram.
Understanding these locations you will come to recognize the formula 天地间人为贵 Tian Di Jian Ren Wei Gui “between heaven and earth humans are of the highest value” (let me know if you want to learn more formulas here at IS and I’ll be happy to share, they are very helpful short statements which are easy to study and remember) since humans are at the center of heaven and earth and thus receive half of their energy from the Yang sky and half of their energy from the Yin earth. This is a profound topic which closely relates to the pre and post heaven Bagua, the River Image etc... We will discuss this in future courses about Bagua cosmology for use in internal alchemy and lifestyle orientation.
This also means that human actions impact the operations of heaven and earth.
Modern people can understand this topic very easily without delving too much into Chinese spiritual beliefs since we know that humans can profoundly alter the nature of landforms and the atmosphere, thus having massive effects on all living things on this planet. This is probably one of the reasons why European Christians have traditionally viewed stewardship of land as important since what you put into the land impacts what you take out of it and vice versa.
However, even though modern, materialist explanations can help us grasp a topic quickly, we should also pay proper attention to the role of Chinese belief in this process. China is an ancestor worship based society and great respect is given to historical ancestors of the Han people. It is commonly understood that before the earliest ancestors such as Fu Xi there were cosmic forces which came together to form reality, so when Chinese people offer prayers either in a Daoist, Confucian or folk context, it is common to address the prayers to particular ancestors or deities of importance in the Chinese civlizational story. This is part of the structure of imperial Chinese ritual which gave legitimacy to emperors. Ritual society is organized around particular important figures and prayers are made with offerings of various kinds along with incense. The belief is that the incense offering carries the prayer to the heavens and the invoked ancestral dieties send good fortune to humanity on earth.
This is a very simple, but also valid understanding of resonance. If you perform the appropriate ritual observation you will offer a small aspect of balance from your section of reality which in turn adds to the overall cosmic balance, thus the cosmic balance repays your sincerity and good heart with good fortune. The idea may or may not sound superstitious to you depending on your personal beliefs, but the core premise can be explained by saying that when you formulate sincere intentions at set times every day it creates a psychological impact on you, your family and your society, thus if everyone in a society does this it creates a general trend of goodness carried on prayer and smoke. Resonance occurs on account of these practices being widespread and many people agreeing on the same fundamental ethical premise. This is the beauty of the teachings of Confucius.
At the same time resonance applies in other ways too, for instance in the Qing annotation of the Classic of Burial a claim is made that by burying ancestors, even those not directly connected by blood in a place with healthy Qi, you will receive their blessing and fortune.
There are many applications of this theory, but there is also another formula I want you to take account of which is 在冥冥之中 Zai Ming Ming Zhi Zhong “within the center of profound darkness.” in other words the ebb and flow of human relationships is mysterious at the core and not easy to portend, so even though we know that resonance occurs and have some tools to measure it, in the end it is still impossible to know all the ways it impacts it. This is why people who study the Yijing, Ming Li (fortune telling) and Fengshui often believe that even though destiny exists, how we arrange our lives can transform our relationship with the future. In other words, the benefit of being a decent person and working hard is in the transformation of destiny. Every culture has some similar idea, but we all have different rationales. In the Christiandom it is normal to think of this as letting God into your heart and that the result is maintaining the covenant. China uses resonance with ancestral deities, but the core idea is not entirely different which is probably why Catholic missionaries during the Ming Dynasty regarded Confucianism as the only belief system on earth to be equal in terms of civilizing power with the Church.
I hope you learned something here.
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Today is the second section of the Min Yilin article from Fang Dao Yulu, it details various Neidan levels and describes how to maintain a practice that can get you there.