The I Ching > III. The hexagram, junzidao of Confucius = Jung’s individuation

III. The hexagram, junzidao of Confucius = Jung’s individuation

In the West, the I Ching has won a place of its own as an oracle and teacher and is more popularly associated with the articulation through Taoism than with Confucius. What has been overlooked is the amount of time and energy Confucius apparently has invested in it to find in it a guide to life, via the larger psyche, not only in the commentaries he wrote for it, but in the implicit worldview in which all his words are imbedded. (To be sure, these commentaries are only attributed to Confucius, and scholarship aims to disprove Confucian authorship. But the Confucian connection is clearly there, if not via textual analysis, then via the substance.) His own comment, as quoted in Analects 7:16, expresses his knowledge of the profundity of the I Ching when he says that if he had 50 more years to live, he’d devote them to this book.

From the substance of Confucius’ teaching, we can derive the Tao of the human being and set it in the largest cosmic context, as intimated by the I Ching. The Tao of the I Ching for the human being, (as we have seen), is indicated in the hexagram. The 64 hexagrams offer a comprehensive description of change and variation in manifesting Tao. The six lines of the hexagram each indicate our involvement in Tao at a given moment. This means that, at any given moment, our total self is imbedded in all the structures that concern us, psychic, social and cosmic. The hexagram even suggests these structures. The lower trigram usually represents the self, while the upper trigram represents that which is outside the self. Counting from the bottom, line 1 indicates the innermost psychic stratum, line 2 the stratum that can receive from a teacher, line 3 the boundary between the self and the outer world. Crossing from line 3 to 4, we move from self to others. Line 4 is the minor official, representing all social structures. Line 5 is the prince, representing the ruler or governing principle. Line 6 is the edge of our universe.

What should be immediately evident is that the hexagram asks us to see our personal part as our imbeddedness in the world. Translated into practical language, this means that our personal psyche is only our window and avenue to the larger, common psyche. What we normally call advancement in the world, such as the advancement into positions of power, really reflects the ability to move the personal psyche to a place where a common center can be intimated. The ruler, thus, sits on the throne of the common Self center.

The same is true for the individual. Our growth means the growth of the psychic perspective, from the small self to Self of the universe.

Confucius’ junzidao, the way of the junzi or the way of individuation, is about inviting this Self center forth to become the hub of the individual.

Junzi is a deliberate word choice. In the old days, a junzi is a ruler or nobility. Confucius’ choice of the word suggests for the common person the ability to reach for character nobility and requires a prince or ruler to be a junzi. For Confucius, then, personal development means to move the ego center to the larger self center of the collective, if not of the universe.

The little book called The Great Learning, which is placed at the beginning of the Confucian canon, outlines this development of the personality. Some of you may be familiar with the Eight Items of Passages D&E, which I call the Eight Concentric Circles of Self, and will recognize the last four steps itemized to achieve the stature of a “prince.”

Xiousheng (Self-cultivation)

Qijia (regulation of family)

Zhiguo (governance of country)

Ping tianxia (pacification of world = mingde for all)

Three of these appear to be activities directed outwardly to managing the collective. But to get to that point, one would have to do considerable work on one’s psyche. The fifth step, xiousheng (Self-cultivation) presupposes the first four:

1—gewu (study of things)

2—zhizhi (taking knowledge/consciousness to ultimate extent)

3—chengyi (make intentions sincere)—straighten path of consciousness and unconscious

4—zhengxin (rectify heart/mind)—align all heart/mind in a single core

Only after these steps can we do Self-cultivation.

5—xiousheng (Self-cultivation) bringing the inner psyche to meet the outside world

The injunctions here are comprehensive in scope. The Self-cultivation mandated is the cultivation of the larger Self as it means to act through our little personalities. The previous step is to align our core to this larger core. These can be done only as we become conscious.

Tao of Jung—individuation or development of personality
The Tao of personality discovered by Jung shows the same general movement. Jung did not create any maps or outlines to us to follow. He did, however, discover the presence of an archetype of Self that moves through the individual psyche. This over-arching and most basic archetype actually is what we are here to manifest, but, until we are cognizant of it and become its partner, we really have not found our destiny. Nor have we found our path of development. That is, we have not begun to individuate into the fullest beings we can be. In other words, becoming full beings or developing our personality means reclaiming this Self center. In more tangible terms, this means that we align our ego center, which is the center of consciousness and manager of our personality, with this larger Self center. The ego becomes an instrument or channel of the Self.

As the Self center is shared by all, Confucius’ junzi is doing exactly the same thing when moving to the common self center of the collective. Based on these parallel ideas, we can conclude that Confucius junzidao is the same path as Jung’s individuation.