Gate 4 — Youthful Folly — The Gift of an Answer

Full breakdown

The energy to deceive and succeed in spite of ignorance. Freedom from consequences.

We've arrived at the logical collective. Experience on the abstract side always moves from the present toward the past; experience of the individual process happens in the present. When we're dealing with logic, there's a need to look ahead, to project into the future. The essence of the logical process is to find a way to stay safe on the path we've entrusted our life to, so that humanity can preserve itself and survive.

The 4th hexagram is the need to offer a solution that can be experimented with, in order to ensure the perfecting of the human process. Logic is universal — present in every form of life — which is why the logical mind carries enormous value for humanity. It's the only part of the mind that asks questions and gives answers. The 4th hexagram is called Youthful Folly. The question comes from gate 63, Doubt, and together they form the Channel of Logic — a design of mental ease mixed with doubt. Gate 4 is the gate of formulating, of building formulas; its potential is a conscious judgment about whether something in a pattern is doubtful or not.

The potential of awareness here is to concentrate on a pattern and find an answer. The question sounds like this: "does this raise doubt, or not?" The answer is the process of resolving the question about the pattern. Everything about the logical process comes down to patterns. Doubt is always triggered by a pattern. The answer should always be: "Is this pattern worth doubting? Does it deserve doubt?" Recall the nature of gate 18 in the process of correction: gate 4, like gate 18, carries a gift. At any given moment, gate 18 has the capacity to spot what needs correcting. Gate 4 has the gift of always finding an answer. Both gifts carry risk, because what can be corrected at any given moment, and the answer that can be offered at any given moment, aren't necessarily true. And they're by no means necessarily of value to all of humanity once they're actually tested and experimented with. Logical answers are always best met with thorough suspicion. Answers are the start of a process. It's the generation of formulas. Gate 4 is the gate of Formulating — of building and constructing formulas. An answer is a formula. The formula reads: this raises doubt, or it doesn't.

The commentary above the lines says: the energy to deceive and succeed in spite of ignorance. Freedom from consequences. This always reminds me of Groucho Marx, whom I love dearly. A waiter comes up to him and asks, "How do you find your steak?" "It's lying right next to the tomatoes, under a lettuce leaf." The ability to find an answer has nothing to do with truth. Answering is a gift — I know, because I carry the fourth gate myself. Answering doesn't at all mean stating the truth, and that's very important to understand. An answer can only become truth after it's been tested and put through experiment. It doesn't matter how clever the answer sounds. The point is that, for the good of humanity as a whole, everything logical has to be checked and run through experiment. An answer is only ever the beginning of a process.