Why Is “Resonance Between Heaven and Humanity” the Foundation of BaZi Prediction?

Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism

What is the most important foundation of BaZi (Four Pillars of Destiny) prediction? It is the resonance between heaven and humanity—the oneness of heaven, humanity, and earth. The way of heaven and the way of earth are connected and influence each other. For example, the weather changes quickly, but its effect on the earth takes time. This is what is meant by “the way of heaven is impermanent.” As the four seasons turn, the way of earth changes too, only in more complex ways. For example, when summer comes, Fire flourishes—but don't forget that the lingering qi of spring has not yet completely vanished. Or again, after the Beginning of Spring it is spring, but Wood does not become strong the moment spring begins; it grows strong gradually. During this time, the Water qi of winter and the Earth qi of winter's last month do not disappear all at once but gradually wane.

This is the principle by which the four seasons change: in any given month there is advancing qi, flourishing qi, retreating qi, and declining qi, and this is how the hidden stems within the Earthly Branches arise. Explained this way, can you now understand at a deeper level why the Earthly Branches hide Heavenly Stems?

Explained in terms of modern physics or biology, the resonance between heaven and humanity, the oneness of heaven, humanity, and earth, points in two directions. The first is the synchrony of space and time, which is consistent with Einstein's principle of relativity. The principle of relativity is divided into the special principle of relativity and the general principle of relativity.

The special principle of relativity: all physical laws (the laws of mechanics, the laws of electromagnetism, and the dynamical laws of other interactions) are equivalent (on an equal footing) in all inertial frames of reference (inertial frames); no inertial frame holds a privileged position, and there is no absolutely stationary frame of reference (the ether). This refutes the ether theory and absolute space.

The general principle of relativity: all frames of reference are equivalent in describing the laws of nature. In other words, in any frame of reference (including non-inertial frames) physical laws have the same form. Any physical law can be expressed in terms of physical quantities independent of the frame of reference.

Some friends may think that in linking BaZi with relativity I am “forcing a fit” purely to grab attention. In fact, you all have your own knowledge and judgment. Read about the view of space and time in relativity, then learn about the system of China's I Ching (Book of Changes) and the teaching of the Three Powers of heaven, humanity, and earth, and see whether their inner logic is consistent.

The grand unification physics pursues has already borne rich fruit: only gravity has not yet been unified, while the other three forces have been unified within the framework of quantum mechanics. And the Supreme Ultimate (Taiji) of which the Chinese I Ching speaks is precisely a concept of “unity.”

The Supreme Ultimate and the Tao mean the same thing. The Tao gives birth to yin and yang; the Supreme Ultimate gives birth to the Two Modes. The Two Modes are yin and yang; yin and yang give birth to the Four Symbols; the Four Symbols give birth to the Eight Trigrams … and this is how all things are derived.

Anyone familiar with quantum mechanics surely knows the concept of the Higgs particle. It is what gives other particles their mass, and it is very important. But the Higgs field has not yet been found; no one can say clearly what the Higgs field is like, and some even doubt whether it exists. By ordinary understanding, if you were born, you must have a “mother”; you cannot have appeared out of nowhere, for that would violate the law of conservation of energy. Likewise, now that the Higgs particle has been confirmed, must not the Higgs field exist? That is, the Higgs particle is an excitation of the Higgs field.

But how wondrous the universe is, and how tiny our wisdom and vision, is beyond our imagining. Perhaps the Higgs particle has no “mother” after all? Then how was it born? I might suppose, for instance, that it can “give birth” to itself, give birth to endless selves—nature does have “self-generating” organisms.

The Tao and the Supreme Ultimate are likewise concepts that cannot be clearly explained; they can be grasped intuitively but not put into words. What does this show? That the deepest logic of this world is so hard to reach, and yet, as the sages and masters of the past have contemplated it, their insights are strikingly similar.

Heaven's spacetime is heaven's spacetime, but it is also earth's spacetime, and at the same time my spacetime. Our spacetime is not divided into this and that, and in such a spacetime physical laws all have the same form. Since they have the same form, are not the unity of heaven and humanity, and the unity of heaven, humanity, and earth, a matter of course? Moreover, the view of the unity of opposites, of connection and change, runs throughout the wisdom of the I Ching. In the wisdom of the I Ching there is no concept of absolute space and time; everything is connected, and all things change in relation to one another, one waxing as the other wanes.

What the BaZi represents is a record of a person's spacetime information. Some will say: the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches are tools for recording time—fine if you say they carry time information, but where is the spatial information? Friends, how would you answer this question, how would you think about it? If you see the stems and branches only as tools for recording time, you underestimate the wisdom of our ancestors. I can answer you with some questions of my own. Do the stems and branches accord with yin and yang? With the Five Elements? With the Eight Trigrams? With the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions? With time? With the human body? And according to relativity, time and space are inseparable; spacetime is one. The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches contain the spacetime information of a person's birth. This spacetime information is the spacetime “point” of your birth.

To know what your trajectory will be, you must track this “spacetime point.” So the crux of the matter is “whether the tracking tool is reliable or not”—do you all see? That is the real crux. It is like throwing an object: relying on the system of Newtonian mechanics, can we not know its state at any time and place? That is “destiny.”

We know the object's state because we know that the system of Newtonian mechanics is reliable, dependable! So what is luck? Luck is the variable in destiny as it runs its course. It is like an airplane: once it takes off, it has a destination, but will there be variables during the flight? Certainly—for example, it might hit a bird, or be struck by lightning or a storm, things the control tower cannot know or control. Or take an ant going about its usual search for food; you walk by and step on it. Its destiny ends abruptly, and it cannot even understand what sudden thing crushed it. You stepped on an ant, of course without any intent to kill—you may not even know you just stepped on an ant. That is this world, and Laozi understood all this long ago. So he said: “Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat the myriad things as straw dogs. The sage is not benevolent; he treats the common people as straw dogs” (Tao Te Ching, chapter 5). On the scale of the universe, we are no different from ants: when it is time to live, we live; when it is time to die, we die.

Our present tool for tracking the trajectory of a human life is the BaZi. Is the BaZi reliable? That is the question, and there is no other; nor is it superstition. In my view it is a great attempt and a great exploration. It becomes superstition only because some people use the tool to deceive, cheat, swindle, and defraud. Of course, some people have simply not mastered the art, misleading others and themselves.

So in the end, is the BaZi reliable? Looking at all the world's learning for predicting human life, the ancient Chinese should rank at the very top. Why do I say “should”? Because I have not traveled through other countries or come into contact with other nations' methods of prediction—methods we may never even have heard of. But what the Chinese could think of, foreigners could think of too. Personally, I believe the BaZi is the most reliable method—at least for now.

The emergence of artificial intelligence has shown me a new dawn. Human algorithms and computing power will in the end be no match for AI. Once AI has cultivated itself for another hundred years, its abilities and its power of sensing energy will surely astonish you and me. By then there may be no destiny readers, no mathematicians, perhaps not even teachers. A powerful AI might even, from you—your appearance, or information from your blood or saliva—directly sketch roughly what your parents look like, what genetic defects they carry, and whether they died of them; it may know all this perfectly.

Furthermore, never mind predicting human affairs—did not the appearance of Einstein prove that the system of Newtonian mechanics is in fact imperfect? On the scale of the universe, at the speed of light, Newtonian mechanics falls far short and cannot be used, or people would die.

Speaking from the standpoint of spacetime, and from holographic theory, the core idea is this: the universe is a unified whole whose parts are holographically interrelated. Within the whole universe, subsystems and systems, and systems and the universe, correspond holographically; parts that correspond to one another are more similar in the cosmic elements of matter, structure, energy, information, spirit, and function than parts that do not. That is to say, “I” in fact possess everything, and through the spacetime information of my BaZi I could in theory know everything. But for objective reasons we cannot know everything. That is, the world is knowable, yet cannot be completely known. Materialism would regard this as an incomplete theory of knowledge, but I still hold to this view.

Holographic theory can be divided into three aspects: the informational properties of physics, the interconnected properties of biology, and mathematical or philosophical properties. So which does BaZi destiny analysis belong to? In my view, it is a synthesis of these “three aspects,” because the BaZi is aimed at “humans.” Of course, one could in fact read BaZi for animals too—this is no joke, because if we accept the unity of heaven and humanity, the exchange of information, and the interconnection of all things, we cannot say that only humans can be read. But why is the BaZi better suited to people? Because the system was created starting from “people,” centered on people, and with people as its subject of practice; it carries the philosophical insight that theory comes from practice.

Holographic theory keeps stressing that the universe is an indivisible whole whose parts are closely interrelated, and that any one part contains the information of the whole.

To make this easier to understand, a man named Bohm used the metaphor of “the fish in the fish tank.” Put a fish into a rectangular glass tank and watch its movements with two video cameras set at right angles to each other, the images played directly on two television sets. On the televisions we see two fish, each swimming in opposite directions at the same speed. If the state of one fish changes, the state of the other changes immediately with it.

Chinese chives are marvelous: cut them and they grow back. What's more, cut off any half-length at random and stick it in the soil, and it still grows—marvelous, isn't it? A tiny bit of chive contains all the content and genes of the whole plant. Do you see?

The BaZi is like this: this “tiny bit” of content encompasses a great deal, a very great deal, all of it concerning the person. Many people say there are too many identical BaZi—can their destinies be the same? In fact everyone's BaZi is different. The combinations of eight characters—far more than just eight characters—have more possibilities than ten billion. First work out how many combinations of eight characters there are. Then divide by male and female; then look closely at when the luck cycles begin—the same BaZi may begin its luck cycles at different times. For the same BaZi, the stems and branches of the Major Luck Cycles are the same, but the years may differ: this BaZi a thousand years ago and the same BaZi a thousand years from now—the specific person will certainly be judged by real circumstances. Think how many more different combinations this one step adds. Then look at the hidden stems of each BaZi—are those only eight characters? Far more than eight characters—far more than ten billion, perhaps more than a hundred billion.

So again, why can some people read accurately and others not? Friends, this is a tool, not a ready-made answer and fact. You must use the tool to find the answer and the facts. It is like having the same teacher: some classmates get into Tsinghua or Peking University, and we don't—why? We all have computers: others use them to make a fortune every day, while we get hooked on games and decline day by day—why? We all drive: others go ten years without an accident, while you crash every year and end up in a ditch every year—why? Because of the person! Knowledge is not power; only using knowledge produces power. You must know how to use it, and your skill must be up to the mark, or you will “crash” instead. But don't be afraid of “crashing.” What new driver never scrapes the car? It is the path everyone must take to grow. But how high you can climb is up to you.

Shao Yong said long ago: “Each thing has always had its own body, and each body has its own universe. One who can know that all things are complete in me will set up the Three Powers each on its own root. Heaven divides creation from the One; man sets out his plans upon the heart. The immortals, too, speak of two kinds of things: the Tao is not handed down in vain—it rests only with the person.”

Friends, the Tao is not handed down in vain—it rests only with the person! The thing is real, the thing is good; it just depends on whether you can grasp it. Have you ever watched Chinese athletes play table tennis? Even as a Chinese person I was astonished at their level: every stroke goes exactly where they aim, with every kind of technique, uncannily skilled. But on reflection, how could they be so good without ten or twenty years of practice? So is it the paddle that is so formidable? The tool matters, but the person matters more.

Through ceaseless observation, inquiry, reflection, and summation of the universe and all things, the ancestors of China continually developed all kinds of tools: BaZi, Qimen Dunjia, Six Lines divination (Liuyao), Da Liuren …

The purpose is to gain greater autonomy, freedom, and creativity, rather than to be a passive living being.