Transmission Beyond the Changes
Authored by Yu Yan, a scholar at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, this work was roughly completed in the jiashen year of the Zhiyuan reign period (1284).
It is a one-volume text, included in the Taixuan Section of The Daozang. There is also another one-volume version incorporated in the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries).
Transmission Beyond the Changes
This book interprets Taoist inner alchemy theories through the lens of the diagram-based I Ching studies of Confucian scholars in the Song Dynasty. The author claimed that he had learned the method of studying the I Ching from a reclusive scholar, thus fully grasping the esoteric secrets of the Innate Diagram created by Shao Yong. He then compiled this book to elaborate on the main principles and essentials of the elixir cultivation path. The book enumerates sixteen diagrams in total, including the Taiji Diagram, Innate Diagram, Linear Diagram of the Sixty-Four Innate Hexagrams, Diagram of Earth Receiving the Qi of Heaven, Diagram of the Moon Receiving the Light of the Sun, Innate Hexagram Diagram, Acquired Hexagram Diagram, Diagram of Qian, Kun, Kan and Li, Diagram of Heaven, Earth, Sun and Moon, Diagram of Eight, Seven, Nine and Six, Diagram of Water, Fire, Metal and Wood, Diagram of the Interchange of Qian and Kun, Diagram of the Interchange of Kan and Li, Diagram of the Opposition of Tun and Meng, Diagram of the Opposition of Ji Ji and Wei Ji, and Diagram of Myriads of Things from One Origin. In addition, it extracts passages from Shao Yong’s Huangji Jingshi Shu (The Book of Supreme World Order), quotes Taoist classics such as the Cantong Qi, Yinfu Jing (Scripture of the Hidden Talisman) and Huangting Jing (Scripture of the Yellow Court), as well as the theories of Song-dynasty Confucian scholars including Zhu Xi, Cheng Yi and Zhang Zai, to interpret the meanings of the aforementioned diagrams. On the whole, it develops the Song-dynasty I Ching studies’ theories about the Taiji generating the Two Principles, the Four Symbols, and the changes of the lines and images of the sixty-four hexagrams, applying these theories to explain the inner alchemists’ doctrines of the intercourse of Kan and Li and the cyclic heavenly fire tempering process. Since inner alchemy is not considered the orthodox school of I Ching studies, the book is therefore titled Extra Transmission Outside the I Ching.
The version in The Daozang includes two additional works written by Yu Yan at the end of the book: Ode to the Gate of the Mysterious Female and Poem on Metal in Water, which describe the Mysterious Female (referring to the upper and lower elixir fields) as the foundation of the great elixir, and Metal in Water (referring to essence and qi) as the essential medicine for the elixir of immortality. The Siku Quanshu incorporated these two poetic works into Yu Yan’s Orthodoxy of Metaphysics. Its theoretical system is deeply rooted in the core doctrines of Taoism and the five elements theory of traditional Chinese philosophy.
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