Quantum Physics and the I Ching?!

The Man in the High Castle - Thinking Man Book Club Finale

John’s Comments:

Was The Man in the High Castle my favorite PKD book? No. Was it a good book? Yes. The story was interesting, not particularly engaging, but it did give you a pretty decent amount of stuff to think about. The world building in it was well done. I don’t particularly know if antique dealing was the best path forward in an idea this great, but Dick consulted the I Ching to help create the story—so if this is what the Oracle gave him, who am I to judge? Plus, it won the Hugo Award (the only of Dick’s career) so who cares what I think about the antiques business?

No one. Exactly.

Moving on. The “mind fuck” that was the ending. It couldn’t have been a PKD book without some element of porking one’s mind. This was no different. Tagomi’s walk through San Francisco at the end of the novel was my favorite part. He saw our world, and then was sent back to his own. Which one is real? It seemed like Juliana figured that ours is the real one and all the characters in the book were living in an alternate dimension that wasn’t real. Maybe. That was my takeaway at least.

Did you enjoy the “man” in the “high castle”? I was pretty disappointed with a character so hyped throughout the whole book to be a rather uninteresting part of it. The whole book was just confusing. What was the purpose? Maybe I missed something. It did introduce us to the I Ching, so I’m thankful to have read it. But that’s all I got. It wasn’t a thriller or a read that kept you onto the edge of your seat. It really just made me go “hm” a few times. But I guess that’s better than most other books.

Did the Thinking Man book club pick a winner this time? Meh. I hope Timeline can do what I hoped this book would do, but I’m not so sure about that either. See you next time! Mmmmkay?!

Melissa’s Comments:

Well, John pretty much said it all. If you’re thinking of reading this and you’re a big PKD fan, give it a shot. If this will be your first book of his, you might want to pick up a copy of Ubik instead.

That being said, I’m glad I read it. While the book wasn’t exciting, it was certainly thought-provoking, and like John, I found the I Ching to be the most interesting thing about it.

In fact, I was so enamored by the I Ching that the remainder of my discussion is going to focus on Carl Jung’s foreword to it, written in 1967, five years after the publication of The Man in the High Castle.

I know, I know. I’m supposed to be talking about The Man in the High Castle. But this is not coming from nowhere. There are some parallels.

For one, PKD used the I Ching to write The Man in the High Castle (and Hawthorne Abendsen used the I Ching to write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy). Carl Jung actually consulted the I Ching in writing his foreword to the I Ching .

If you’re interested in what the I Ching said about itself, read Carl Jung’s foreword. The gist was this: “I contain spiritual nourishment.” If you’re interested, I’m sure you can find a PDF somewhere.

The I Ching is supposed to be a book of divination, and this actually turned out to be pretty legit. John and I consulted it a few times, and were shocked by the targeted results we received.

I know, I know. It’s up for interpretation and you can find an answer to your question in any result you receive and blah blah blah. I think this thing is cool, and so did Carl Jung. Here’s his explanation for how it ‘works’:

“The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation. Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events. The causal point of view tells us a dramatic story about how D came into existence: it took its origin from C, which existed before D, and C in its turn had a father, B, etc. The synchronistic view on the other hand tries to produce an equally meaningful picture of coincidence. How does it happen that A′, B′, C′, D′, etc., appear all in the same moment and in the same place? It happens in the first place because the physical events A′ and B′ are of the same quality as the psychic events C′ and D′, and further because all are the exponents of one and the same momentary situation. The situation is assumed to represent a legible or understandable picture.”

Confused? I don’t blame you. I’ll try to summarize his whole ‘theory’ here:

The ancient Chinese viewed reality differently than we do. We look at things in terms of cause and effect, while they viewed everything that happened as the outcome of chance. In our causal view of the world, flipping coins or playing around with yarrow stalks or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with the thoughts going on in your head as you’re doing so, but according to the ancient Chinese, they’re all linked by virtue of simply occurring at the same moment (I think, anyway—might’ve butchered that part a little). Therefore, the results are meaningful because the laws of chance or synchronicity or whatever which govern the world also govern the coin flips or yarrow stalk-pulls or however else you figure out which passage in this book to read.

Here’s what got me the most, though: Jung mentions that this has something to do with the way modern physicists view reality?

I don’t know. I might revisit this later when/if I learn some more physics, but I figured I’d throw this out there in case any of you know the answer.

I also feel like it kind of relates to the timeline stuff that PKD was getting at in The Man in the High Castle (differences in the outcome of chance, perhaps?), but I don’t really have a definitive answer to that, either.

Anyway, sorry if this take on this book was a little underwhelming. John and I went on vacation and we’re still getting accustomed to our return to real life.

Check back next week for an introduction to our next TMBC pick: Michael Crichton’s Timeline.

I’m still waiting for a Thinking Man Book Club pick that I won’t be able to put down. Here’s hoping this is the one.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy these posts and would like to support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If chance will allow it, you can also buy us a coffee.