Paul O’Brien, author of The Visionary I Ching: A Book of Changes for Intuitive Decision Making, announces that Huaxia Publishing House, a state-owned publisher in Beijing, China will publish and distribute a Mandarin translation of his modern version of the great Taoist classic. The contract was signed September 2017. The projected date of the Chinese book’s launch is January 2019.
The Visionary I Ching is a modern and elegantly illustrated adaptation of the 3000 year-old Taoist classic known as the I Ching, or Book of Changes. Much more than one of the world’s oldest books, it is a system to stimulate the intuition around problems that logic can’t handle, to help leaders and individuals think outside the box in order to manage change, make strategic decisions, improve timing and reduce stress. The Visionary I Ching is a masterful modern adaptation that adds an evocative painting by Joan Larimore for each of the 64 hexagrams. O’Brien’s text is a modernized upgrade of the archaic patriarchal language, while striving to preserve the essence of the Taoist classic’s timeless wisdom and advice.
Paul O’Brien has a distinguished career that has involved consulting and teaching the principles and uses of the I Ching. O’Brien created the first I Ching software program in 1989, called “Synchronicity” after Carl Jung’s famous principle that describes how it works. That was followed by the “Oracle of Changes” I Ching CD-ROM in 1997, and the I-Ching.com website which featured an online interactive I Ching. The website eventually added Tarot.com and astrology that all served AOL, Yahoo and other large sites. O’Brien’s entrepreneurial venture—Visionary Software Inc.—began with the Synchronicity program and its embedded Visionary I Ching, which intersected ancient Taoist wisdom with Jungian psychology, America’s cultural revolution of the 1960’s, computers and the Internet.
After spending decades refining the I Ching for his use as an intuitive decision-making aid, Paul O’Brien attended our first Centers Gathering in Beijing in 2015 and in the post Gathering conference the Chinese were fascinated by his insights into their own culture. Paulo was honored to have been invited to China in 2017 to speak at a conference and chat about the psychology of his Visionary I Ching with PhD students focusing on Taoism at the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Like O’Brien’s speeches themselves, the publishing of a western I Ching book by a Communist-owned publishing house is emblematic of an emerging personal growth movement in Chinese culture. After almost 70 years of suppressing spiritual and religious viewpoints, Chinese society is opening up to Taoism and its great classics like the Tao Te Ching and The Book of Changes.
“On my trip to China, I observed a rapidly growing appetite for personal growth and higher consciousness and a greater openness to non-theistic philosophies like Taoism, which is native to China. It makes sense that the Chinese people would look to their own cultural heritage … and take advantage their own unique invention of the I Ching … and come to see it as a useful way to stimulate the intuition in order to improve decision-making,” observed Paul O’Brien. “It’s a sign of cultural evolution that the authorities are able to differentiate between mere superstition and a psychologically sound methodology that represents their own native way of succeeding in the world.”
O’Brien’s more recent book Great Decisions, Perfect Timing—Cultivating Intuitive Intelligence illustrates the author’s visionary decision-making system and the good timing of his own synchronistic success story. This book shows how nothing affects the probability of our success and happiness more than the quality of the decisions we make. The philosophy and practices in this book provide a catalyst for manifesting success in all areas of life, ultimately achieving a synchronistic lifestyle marked by abundance and joy—by means of a discriminating intuition and the sublime development of a superior sense of timing. The book includes a chapter on the skillful use of the I Ching to improve timing and decision-making.
[For media contact Nayana Jennings at info@divination.com]
Carole Ames says
Congratulations Paulo on this wonder-full development. I remember seeing you present concepts from your book in China in the “House of Dreams”. And I remember how enthralled the audience was. And I remember you saying you were open to your book being translated and published in Mainland China. Now here you are. Bravo!