Psychological and Cosmological “Castle”: Wilhelm/Baynes’s I Ching and The Secret of Golden Flower in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle

2.1 The “High Castle” of Protestant Resistance

Consciously, Dick has contemplated two layers of historical and political meanings of the “High Castle” as part of the novel title. In response to the inquiries of Patricia Warrick (1925–2023), one of the leading scholars of Dick’s science fiction,^[2] Dick revealed these two levels of his intended meanings of the “High Castle.” Firstly, it alludes to a “historical fortress revered by the Bohemians because of the role it played in the Thirty Years […] When the Protestant Elector Palatine, Frederick, revolted against Ferdinand, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the High Castle came to symbolize the center of religious and political freedom against the autocratic Catholic Habsburgs. I used the mention of it in the title of my novel as a symbol of Abendsen’s “revolt” against the tyranny of the Nazis, suggesting a similarity between the monolithic rule of the Catholics in Europe before the Thirty Years War and the Nazi rule in my novel (Dick 1993b, 106).^[3]

In a letter to Kingsley Amis (1922–1995), an English novelist and literary critic, Dick further elaborated the theme of revolt against tyranny by using the “High Castle,” being one of the strongholds of the Bohemian forces in the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), “I wished to make a cryptic reference to the wars of liberation engaged in by the Czech and Dutch Protestants against the Catholic powers — the idea being that underlying THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE there is the theme of revolt against tyranny expressed in the act by Mr. Tagomi of refusing to sign Frank Frink’s extradition papers vis-a-vis the Nazis. This heroic act by Mr. Tagomi resonates with the heroic acts on the part of the Elector Palatine [sic] Frederick V — futile and tragic, but so inspiring as to dazzle us and make us humble” (Dick 1993b, 248–49).^[4] Against the historical contexts of the Thirty Years War, Dick applauded the immense courage of the fictional characters Abendsen and Nobusuke Tagomi, the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, following in the footsteps of Frederick V,^[5] in revolting against the tyranny of Nazi Germany in the novel. In other words, the “High Castle” symbolizes the center of the fight for religious freedom and political liberation, as exemplified by the audacious act of Abendsen in revealing the historical “truth” by writing The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and of Tagomi who fearlessly refuses to succumb to the political pressure and authoritarian order of the Nazi regime by releasing Frank Frink, a convicted Jew doomed to be executed.

2.2 The “Castle System” of Nazi Germany

The second connotation of “High Castle” points to the Nazi “Castle System” in the Third Reich (1933–1945) when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party ruled Germany, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship, and alleged that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). According to Dick’s research, various lofty and beautiful castles from the ancient European monarchs were taken over by the Nazi Party. These “High Castles” were used as secluded fortresses to train young SS^[6] men into hideous inhuman behavior modes and become an elite corps cut off from the “ordinary” world. In essence, such a “Castle System” formed the military bases from which the Übermenschen^[7] would emerge to rule the Third Reich (Dick 1993b, 107).^[8] As a matter of fact, this evil “Castle System” of Nazi Germany has been explicitly depicted in High Castle. In the wake of the unexpected death of the German Chancellor Martin Bormann, the novel gives an account of a list of potential successors, including Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German SS, who is portrayed as a “Product of elite training and yet anterior to so-called SS Castle system” (Dick 2017, 81). Furthermore, General Tedeki from the Home Islands of Japan remarks that the Japanese emperor expresses contempt for the Nazi “Castle System”: “Reichs elite corps, wherever the black uniform is worn, the death’s head, the Castle System — all, to him, is evil” (166).

Given the fact that Nazi Germany claimed to be the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, the Second World War demonstrates some historical connection or resonance with the Thirty Years War of the early 17th century, where the “High Castles” played a significant part in both of these military campaigns. Strikingly, these two connotations of “Castles” are bipolarized in High Castle: the legendary “High Castle” of Protestant freedom and resistance in the Thirty Years War versus the notorious “Castle System” of the elite youth corps of Nazi Germany. In this connection, the former constitutes a “yang castle” representing the quest for light and freedom, while the latter a “yin castle” symbolizing darkness and evil forces. These two contrasting “castles” evolve into a perennial source and pivotal center of power struggles and political conflicts in High Castle. Ultimately, Dick celebrated the victory of the “yang castle” in High Castle in which “the Protestant cause triumphed, which is to say, our world […] me as perceiving the truth” (Dick 1993b, 249–50).^[9] Like a mirror image of Dick, Abendsen, the “Man” in the “High Castle,” discerns and reveals the “truth” of the triumph of the Protestant Allied Powers against the oppressive Nazi Germany, by means of the powerful force of fictional writing.

3.1 Dick’s Psychological Exploration

From the late 1950s onwards, Dick was intrigued by the unfathomable complexity and profundity of the psychological world of human beings, where he acknowledged to have been deeply influenced by the European existential psychologists, particularly Carl Jung (1875–1961), regarding the projection of one’s “unconscious archetypes” in the private world (idios kosmos), or the perception of the universe in the mind of an individual, onto the external shared world (koinos kosmos), or what most people believe is objective reality. Dick elaborated that for each person there are two worlds, “the idios kosmos, which is a unique private world, and the koinos kosmos, which literally means shared world (just as idios means private) […] this theory of plural worlds is not generally known (the idea parallels Jung’s concept of projection, by the way, projection of unconscious archetypes onto the ‘real’ outer world), and in all of my books, well virtually all, the protagonist is suffering from a breakdown of his idios kosmos — at least we hope that’s what’s breaking down, not the koinos kosmos. As his idios kosmos breaks down, the objective shared universe, the koinos kosmos emerges more clearly” (Dick 1996, 263).^[13]

Dick went a step further to reveal his own “idios kosmos” which was intricately interrelated with his twin sister who had tragically died just three weeks after birth. Dick had all along felt guilty about this adversity, and perceived that somehow, he “carried his twin sister inside of him” (Sutin 2006, 99). He asserted that “What I have is my sister. Permeating this cosmos — my kosmos. Her blood and body — my sister; I am in her […] I am in her body, and she is in me as my anima.” Stunningly, he even visualized this perception by drawing a taichi, with her sister as the black dot (yin) [anima] within the yang of Dick, and Dick as the white dot (yang) [animus] within the yin of her sister (Jackson and Lethem 2012, 508). From the lens of Jung’s psychology, the anima refers to the “Woman Within,” a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man’s psyche, such as vague feelings and moods (Jung 1988, 177), while the animus is the “Man Within,” the male personification of the unconscious in woman (189).

This psychological perspective has also been vividly manifested in Dick’s fictional world: “I was interested in Jung’s idea of projection — what we experience as external to us may really be projected from our unconscious […] I began a series of stories in which people experienced worlds that were a projection of their own psyches” (Streitfeld 2015, 67).^[14] Furthermore, each of Dick’s major novels describes a person or persons “whose world is beginning to deteriorate, much in the manner of the world of a person entering a schizophrenic episode […] a good deal of each person’s world consists of projections from his own unconscious, as the existential psychiatrists in Switzerland (and Jung) believe” (Dick 1996, 269).^[15] To put it another way, Dick believed that the so-called external shared world (koinos kosmos) is simply the projection of one’s “unconscious archetypes” in the private world (idios kosmos). Notably, some of Dick’s novels, like Eye in the Sky (1957), Ubik (1969) and A Maze of Death (1970), have some strikingly similar plots: a group of individuals find themselves in a perplexing reality and attempt to use each other’s individual perceptions (idios kosmos) to make sense of what is happening to them all (koinos kosmos) (Sutin 2006, 308). Such a worldview of Dick could also illustrate a more profound connotation of the “High Castle,” particularly in light of The Secret of the Golden Flower.

3.2 The “Golden Flower”

According to the recollection of Anne R. Dick (1927–2017),^[16] Philip K. Dick’s third wife during the period from 1959 to 1965, they had, by 1961, acquired and read Golden Flower, in conjunction with Jung’s volumes of Psychology and Alchemy, and Transformation Symbolism in the Mass (Dick 2010, 66). Intrigued by the Taoist alchemy and Jung’s psychological interpretation of the Golden Flower, Dick directly referred to the Golden Flower in his 1967 correspondence to Cynthia Goldstone, “You are an ascending soul, what in THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER is called a Yang spirit, lifting toward change, growth and newness.”^[17] Moreover, Dick mentioned and discussed the notion of “golden flower” in several of his subsequent correspondences with Patricia Warrick. For instance, in a letter dated January 11, 1981, Dick quoted from the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s article on Taoist alchemy (Jackson and Lethem 2012, 922),^[18] “Instead of externalizing vital energies, especially sexual energies, the Yin and Yang forces of the body are made to unite in a hierogamy (holy marriage) and to create the ‘elixir of life,’ the ‘golden flower,’ the ‘mysterious embryo,’ the ‘infant,’; i.e. the new immortal being that eventually leaves the mortal body through the occiput (the top of the skull) and ascends to heaven” (Dick 2009, 38–39).^[19]

According to the Golden Flower, the “golden flower” (jinhua 金華) constitutes the symbol of the “Elixir of Life,” in Chinese jindan (金丹), literally “golden ball, golden pill” (Wilhelm 1962, 23). The “golden flower” or “golden pill” refers to the embryo of the immortal body in the wake of the successful cultivation of Taoist inner alchemy, by the work of warming, nourishing, bathing, and washing of the “true seed” in order to create the “elixir of life” (24). In the cultivation of Taoist inner alchemy, or the “Way of the Golden Flower,” the term shengtai (聖胎), or Infant (ying’er 嬰兒) or Embryo of the Dao (daotai 道胎), denotes the achievement of the elixir of immortality. This embryo represents a new life, true and eternal in its quality, generated by the inner alchemical practice (Pregadio 2008, 883–84).^[20]

Evidently inspired by Jung, Dick underscored the psychological dimension of the “golden flower” which is the “psychological hierogamy, the unification of the opposites in the collective unconscious, that produces psychological wholeness, according to Jung” (Dick 2009, 38).^[21] In his 1981 letter to Patricia Warrick, Dick illustrated the relationship between “golden flower,” “Taoist alchemy” and Jung’s notion of “collective unconscious”: “obviously this is Jung’s collective unconscious […] This is also Taoist alchemy […] the golden flower, the mysterious embryo, etc.” (183).^[22] Strikingly, Dick went a step further to elucidate his understanding of “golden flower” with the language and symbols of Christianity: “This is the ‘born again’ or ‘birth from above’ or most accurately ‘birth in the Spirit’ of Christianity. The wound in Christ’s side has made him female and he gives birth — to those who are ‘born again’ or ‘born in the spirit.’ [W]hat is immortal is not the person but the ‘golden flower’ born from the union of the person with the discorporate Christ […] When the new recipient is born he or she does not know that he or she contains this ‘elixir of life’” (38–39).^[23]

Dick’s distinctive understanding of “golden flower” was creatively incorporated and represented in his fictional works. On the character Angel Archer in his final novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982), Dick commented that “her true life is yet to come (like the golden flower or mysterious embryo of Taoist alchemy, she is born from the hierogamy of yin and yang and leaves the person’s skull upon his death, ascending to heaven, immortal and never changing)” (185).^[24]

3.3 The Yellow Castle

Taoist alchemists perceive the human body as a microcosmic world, with all its “inner landscape.” Kristofer Schipper’s The Taoist Body astutely depicts the human body as “a country […] with mountains and rivers, ponds, forests, paths and barriers, a whole landscape laid out with dwellings, palaces, towers, walls, and gates sheltering a vast population” (Schipper 1993, 100). Huangting jing 黃庭經 (Scripture of the Yellow Court), an important Taoist classic written in rhymed verse, gives a detailed description of the Taoist body and its related practices (133). It discusses the main practices of visualization of the inner bodily organs and their gods, visualization and absorption of inner light, visualization of astral bodies (Sun and Moon), and so forth (Pregadio 2008, 511–14).^[25] The practitioner obtains the inner vision by looking within, by keeping the eyes half-closed to let in light from the outside. The eyes not only relay light from the sun and moon, but also add their own luminous energy in a bid to become themselves the sun and moon of the inner universe. These sources of light are to be directed towards the center, in the head between the eyebrows (Schipper 1993, 105).

It is worth pointing out that Huangting jing (Scripture of the Yellow Court) was translated by Wilhelm and Baynes as The Book of the Yellow Castle (Wilhelm 1962, 22). Part and parcel to the Taoist inner alchemy, the notion of “huangting” (黃庭), “Yellow Court” or “Yellow Castle,” embodies the qualities of center, where all transformation takes place (Pregadio 2008, 775–77).^[26] “Yellow” being a color of the center or middle, the “yellow middle” (huangzhong 黃中) constitutes an alchemical term, figuratively “Yellow Castle” (huangting) in The Book of the Yellow Castle, denoting the innermost palace or chamber located in the region of the brain and is the seat of the spirit (shen 神) (302–3).^[27] In essence, the “Yellow Castle” is one of the most important places in the Taoist body, designating the sacred area and central space of the Inner World (Schipper 1993, 133).

In the process of the cultivation of Taoist inner alchemy, or the “Way of the Golden Flower,” the eyes not only relay light from the sun and the moon, but also become themselves the sun and the moon of the inner universe. These sources of light are to be directed toward the center, in the head between the eyebrows, so that one obtains the inner vision by looking within (105). The radiance of the light of the “eye” is considered the essential energy facilitating the primal transformation: “In the midst of primal transformation, the radiance of the light (yang-kuang [yangguang 陽光]) is the determining thing. In the physical world it is the sun; in man, the eye. The radiation and dissipation of spiritual consciousness is chiefly brought about by this energy when it is directed outward (flows downward). Therefore the Way of the Golden Flower depends wholly on the backward-flowing method. Man’s heart stands under the fire sign [Trigram Li ☲ The Clinging/Fire]. The flames of the fire press upward. When both eyes are looking at things of the world it is with vision directed outward. Now if one closes the eyes and, reversing the glance, directs it inward and looks at the room of the ancestors, that is the backward-flowing method” (Wilhelm 1962, 31).

More specifically, the eyes look inward by focusing on the tip of the nose, and the thoughts should be concentrated on the “yellow middle” (34). Then the eyes “illumines the house of the Abysmal (water, K’an). Wherever the Golden Flower goes, the true light of polarity comes forth to meet it. The Clinging (brightness, Li) is bright outside and dark within; this is the body of the Creative. The one dark [line] enters and becomes master. The result is that the heart (consciousness) develops in dependence on things, is directed outward […] This is the moment of true creative union […] In the midst of this darkness, the heavenly heart suddenly begins a movement. This is the return of the one light, the time when the child comes to life” (54–55). While the Trigram Li is the sun and Kan the moon, the marriage of Kan and Li is the “secret magical process which produces the child, the new man” (18).

Jung frequently employed the image of “Yellow Castle” to elucidate the notion of “golden flower.” He described the “golden flower” as “the light, and the light of heaven is the Tao […] the ‘germinal vesicle’ is nothing other than the ‘yellow castle,’ the ‘heavenly heart,’ the ‘terrace of life,’ the ‘square inch field of the square foot house,’ the ‘purple hall of the city of jade,’ the ‘dark pass,’ the ‘space of former heaven,’ the ‘dragon castle at the bottom of the sea’” (101). He supplemented that “in water [Trigram Kan], and from the depths below, fire [Trigram Li] penetrating the seed makes it grow and causes the formation of a large golden flower from within the germinal vesicle. This symbolism refers to a sort of alchemical process of refining and ennobling; darkness gives birth to light” (102). Kristofer Schipper maintained that the elixir of immortality, corresponding to the child or the immortal embryo, is produced through the hierogamy, the union of the antithetical elements Water and Fire, coming from the kidneys and the heart (Schipper 1993, 152). In a nutshell, “Yellow Castle” refers to the most sacred space of the inner world of the Taoist body where the “Golden Flower” or “Elixir of Life” is born.

3.4 The Mandala

The Taoist concept of “Yellow Castle” is intricately related to Jung’s notion of “Mandala.” In his article “Concerning Mandala Symbolism,” Jung argued that some primary elements of mandala symbolism include “[c]astle, city, and courtyard (temenos) motifs, quadratic or circular” and “[e]ye (pupil and iris)” (Jung 1969, 361).^[28] Simply put, mandala means a “circle, more especially a magic circle” (Wilhelm 1962, 99).

Jung had once examined a mandala done by a middle-aged man: “Painting of a medieval city with walls and moats, streets and churches, arranged quadratically. The inner city is again surrounded by walls and moats, like the Imperial City in Peking. The buildings all open inwards, towards the cent[er], represented by a castle with a golden roof. It too is surrounded by a moat. The ground round the castle is laid with black and white tiles, representing the united opposites […]” We read in the Golden Flower: “The Book of the Yellow Castle says: ‘In the square inch field of the square foot house, life can be regulated.’ The square foot house is the face. The square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly heart? In the middle of the square inch dwells the splend[or]. In the purple hall of the city of jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and Life” (Jung 1969, 377–78).^[29] The Taoists call this center of emptiness the “ancestral land,” or the “dark pass,” or the “yellow castle” (Wilhelm 1962, 22).

It is worth noting that this particular mandala has been incorporated into the concluding section of the Golden Flower (Plate 10). In Jung’s commentary, this mandala visualizes a “fortified city” and “castle” surrounded by wall and moat: “A mandala as a fortified city with wall and moat. Within, a broad moat surrounded by a wall, fortified with 16 towers and with another inner moat. The latter moat surrounds a central castle with golden roofs whose center is a golden temple” (136) (Figure 1). In other words, this interior “castle” is a heavily fortified and securely defended structure deep inside the human psyche, with highly restricted access.

Figure 1:

A mandala as a fortified city with walls, towers, and moats.

3.5 Abendsen’s “High Castle” and “Inner Light”

Returning to the fictional world of the High Castle, Abendsen used to reside in the “High Castle” constructed and fortified on a remote mountain where he anxiously “developed a phobia” (Dick 2017, 222). Consequently, he departs from the fortified castle and moves his dwelling place to the city. From Juliana Frink’s perspective, the Abendsen residence, the so-called “high castle,” was simply an ordinary house in the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming. With Juliana visiting in the evening, the image of “light” of the Abendsen house is repeatedly underscored in the narrative. The house is “lit up” and Juliana can hear “music and voices. It was a single-story stucco house with many shrubs and a good deal of garden made up mostly of climbing roses […] The house was ordinary, well maintained and the grounds tended. There was even a child’s tricycle parked in the long cement driveway” (211). The image of “light” is once again highlighted towards the end of the novel. After leaving Abendsen’s house, Juliana retraces her steps back down the flagstone path, into the “patches of light from the living room and then into the shadows beyond the lawn of the house, onto the black sidewalk” (229).

Like the “High Castle,” the name of the “Man,” the protagonist “Hawthorn Abendsen,” was also a conscious construct on the part of Dick who revealed its hidden cryptic meaning: “‘Morgenland’ is the German word for the Eastern part of the world; “Abendland” for the West. Hence the name ‘Abendsen’ decodes out to mean ‘Son of the Western World’ to which the Nazis are, essentially, an Eastern power. Abendsen is the West revolting, as did the Elector Frederick c. 1620” (Dick 1993b, 107).^[30] In other words, the “Man” Abendsen is intricately interrelated with the “High Castle” as the symbol of revolt against tyranny in the contexts of the Thirty Years War and Nazi Germany. Remarkably, Hawthorne Abendsen (H. A.) has the reverse initials of Adolf Hitler (A. H.), which demonstrates a mirror image of Abendsen’s yang forces of goodness and freedom fighting against Hitler’s yin forces of evil and totalitarianism.

By decoding “Abendsen” to mean “Son of the Western World,” Dick adopted the more archaic meaning of the German word “Abend”: “The west.”^[31] The more common meaning of “Abend” is “evening” (Terrell 2005, 3). Along this line of definition, Patricia Warrick deciphers Abendsen’s name as “evening and sun,” suggesting the elements of yin (dark) and yang (light) (Warrick 1987, 57).^[32] Admittedly, “Abendsen” could further imply the “sun” (light) shining in the dark times (evening). This resonates with the image of the Trigram Kan, where the middle yang line is locked within two yin lines, as Tagomi aptly puts it, “The heart, locked within two yin lines of black passion. Strangled, sometimes, and yet, even then, the light of yang, the flicker at the cent[er]” (Dick 2017, 78). Within the fictional world of High Castle filled with dangers, oppression and death (Lai 2024, 227–49), the world of Abendsen, as exemplified in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, symbolizes a world of light and hope, a world of freedom and without oppression. Symbolically, the light of Abendsen’s house shining in the darkness resonates with the hidden meaning of his name “evening and sun,” with the implication of the “sun” (light) shining in the dark times (evening).

From the perspective of the Golden Flower, the “light” of Abendsen’s house may convey more profound psychological and cosmological connotations. The Golden Flower discusses the living manner of the circulation of one’s inner light, by quoting the True Man of the Purple Polar Light 紫陽真人 (Ziyang zhenren): “If one cultivates one’s action while mingling with the world and is still in harmony with the light […] he lives among men, mysterious yet visible, different and yet the same, and none can compass it; then no one notices our secret actions” (Wilhelm 1962, 53). In this connection, with his house, the so-called “High Castle” in the city, Abendsen lives among ordinary men, mingling with the world and yet taking secret actions in harmony with the light.

Abendsen’s pursuit of this “inner light” was chiefly visualized through the prominent portrayal of his eyes and gazing in the final chapter, particularly the minute details about the transformation of Abendsen’s eye expressions from scrutiny, somberness, emptiness to clarity and brightness, after a moment of turning inward in a meditative fashion and gaining some form of enlightenment. In their first encounter, Abendsen’s eyes and glasses are depicted from the perspective of Juliana: “Juliana saw an immensely tall man with black curly hair; his skin, too, was dark, and his eyes seemed purple or brown, very softly colored behind his glasses” (Dick 2017, 222). With the deepening of their conversation, Dick portrays the different looks, glances and expressions in Abendsen’s eyes: “Hawthorne said nothing; he rubbed his knuckle against his upper lip, staring past her and frowning.” “Did you use the oracle?” Juliana said. Hawthorne glanced at her […] Chewing his lip, Hawthorne gazed down at the floor” (223). Abendsen faces Juliana, “jiggling his glass, studying her” (224). He takes a scrutinizing attitude towards Juliana through his glasses which, to some extent distorting and hindering his sight, may symbolize some form of bias or reservation. “His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somb[er] than ever” (225). In the wake of the final episode of divination of the Hexagram Zhong Fu (䷼ Inner Truth), “[r]aising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression” (227). Then “[f]or a time he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned inward, she realized. Preoccupied, by himself […] and then his eyes became clear again.”

It is worth noting some minute details about the transformation of Abendsen’s eye expressions from scrutiny, somberness, savageness, emptiness to clarity and brightness, after a moment of turning inward in a meditative fashion and gaining some form of enlightenment. Subsequently, Abendsen allows Juliana to follow him to his bedroom, the inner chamber where his private copy of the I Ching is securely stored: “Hawthorne started off. She and Caroline followed, through the room of people, toward a closed door. At the door he left them. When he re-emerged, they all saw the black-backed twin volumes” (226). Remarkably, Abendsen “lifted his hand and rubbed his eyebrow, partially dislodging his glasses in doing so […] He restored his glasses in place” (228).

In the specific context of the Golden Flower, the radiance of the light of the “eye,” as symbolized by the Trigram Li (☲), essentially points to the psychocosmic dimension of a person’s “inner light,” “golden flower” and “yellow castle.” Apart from the perception of external physical light, the eye image of Trigram Li may further symbolize inner light, brightness and intelligence, or “awakened inner eye.” In Wilhelm/Baynes’s translation of the Golden Flower, the interconnection between the sun, the physical eye, the inner light and even the “golden flower” has been given a thorough examination. To illustrate the symbolisms of the eight primary trigrams, Wilhelm remarked that “The trigram Li ☲, sun, fire, the lucid, the Clinging, plays a great role in this religion of light. It dwells in the eyes, forms the protecting circle [mandala], and brings about rebirth […] Li stands for logos” (Wilhelm 1962, 18). Besides, the inner light of the eye is considered the “united light of the sun and moon outside” (40). Echoing Wilhelm’s comment “Li stands for logos,” Dick also discussed the important notion “Logos” in relation to the element of fire. Referring to the definition of “Logos” given in his Merriam-Webster II unabridged dictionary, Dick understands “Logos” as “[t]he rational principle in the universe […] the moving and regulating principle in things, identified with the element fire, and the element in man by which he perceives the order of things” (Dick 2009, 47).^[33]

In comparison with the “half-open door” (Dick 2017, 221) of the main house which holds an “open house here […] letting anyone walk in” (224),^[34] Abendsen’s bedroom, where he securely stores his private copy of the twin-volume I Ching, has a “closed door.” To acquire the I Ching for the final divination to discover the inner truth of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Abendsen started off, with Juliana and his wife Caroline following, “through the room of people, toward a closed door. At the door he left them. When he re-emerged, they all saw the black-backed twin volumes” (Dick 2017, 226). Symbolically, Abendsen’s inner chamber represents the most sacred space of “fortified castle” or “Yellow Castle” where nobody, except Abendsen himself, is permitted to enter. The sacred scripture I Ching is securely deposited in this sacred space. Abendsen has taken a transcendental journey to reach the internal “Yellow Castle” or his “heavenly heart,” where he “smiled a meditative smile” (222), conveying a Zen Buddhism allusion of “picking up a flower and smiling” which signifies the direct transmission of wisdom without words.

During that spiritual journey, Abendsen’s “gaze had become empty […] Turned inward […] Preoccupied, by himself […] then his eyes became clear again” (227). With his eyes gaining inner brightness, clarity, and intelligence, Abendsen restores his glasses in place because the glasses, as an external object, may no longer distort or hinder his eyesight, while he may be able to penetrate the exterior phenomena and perceive the inner truth. This resonates with Jung’s discussion of a mandala that the eye image signifies “the self” with the birth of a “new insight or conscious awareness” (Jung 1969, 380),^[35] as well as Dick’s psychological interpretation of Hexagram Li ䷝ which manifests “the essence of intellectual insight” and “psychic consciousness” (Dick 1996, 138).^[36]