#4 The Perfection Ideal & Psychic Homeostasis
I mentioned in the beginning of Building Block #2, “Energy, Systems & Dharma”, that the compelling themes of personality development presented on this site will necessarily repeat albeit with differing contextual applications. Those are mainly due to the varying universal complexities related to dharma. So, for all who are unfamiliar with the term beyond the description presented in the Glossary, it is worthwhile to spend a bit more time with dharma before presenting the nut-n-bolts of this fourth Building Block.
Our western culture has no one-for-one translatable equivalent for dharma. None can capture the all-encompassing depth and breadth of the ancient philosophical, psychological and religious subtleties of its nature. Dharma is experiential; like gravity, more is known of dharma from its observational qualities and effects rather than its actual material composition.
Commonly adopting dharma within English usage, as another addition among the abundance of words and phrases from other cultures and nationalities, would add another invaluable page in this longstanding tradition. Whether applied correctly or not, the use of say “yoga” or “karma” is virtually ubiquitous throughout the English spoken world these days. So why not dharma, especially since its Sanskrit etymology is essential for any dedicated appreciation of the richly applied cultural and philosophic origins that underlies both yoga and karma?
It is known that within human consciousness the self can discipline to access, observe and participate directly with the thermal activity of the psyche. What is revealed to the self is why and how dharma subsumes both method (yoga) and action (karma) to direct their intent in human affairs. The Vedas attest to this hierarchy and application.
All Hindu, Jain and Buddhist ascetic and religious traditions are built around this one principle. Indeed, there are other world religions and lengthy, meticulous philosophic discourse that elaborately coordinate an essence of dharma; but none, save perhaps Tao, are as uniquely singular and all-inclusive of space and time so intimately integrated into the fabric of one’s personal and social behavior.
We, sentient beings all, inherently attune to dharma’s thermal impulse from the psyche as morality. We intuitively sense it as an innate, life-affirming force perpetually trending toward rectitude. Dharma’s character and essential theme is simplicity; always guiding the individual with an uncluttered, common sense rationale to do the right thing.
Some may think it a psychological overreach to assert such a prominent role to morality within the life process. However, the Eastern belief of dharma as a built-in moral compass is not a concept without foundation here in the West. Research studies have concluded that babies are born with a moral sense of right and wrong 1 and may exhibit that binary distinction as early as 18-24 months.
Set aside for a moment all questions of morality and human behavior and focus upon the more basic interactivity of human consciousness with the entirety of the phenomenal universe, our individually lived moment-by-moment world-reality. This is an extraordinary task and one that has been a nemesis to rational clarity for millennia with results being a capricious admixture at best.
Within the multidimensional criss-crossings of philosophy, occultism and religion one can find a myriad of answers to life’s most miraculous and mysterious events. Indeed, there is value to be had since each avenue offers, in their own way, an architecture of excellence and dignity to the human condition. Many still support practices, trod as they have been for ages, though they are now dressed more fashionably and persist mainly upon broad social generalities rooted in myths, archetypes and events from ancient oral traditions.
With thermodynamics the vanguard, quantum physicists have transformed all of that theosophical amphigory. A special nod goes to Erwin Schrödinger and his Cat for bringing forward the undeniable, interactive universe of human consciousness in a most simple and elegant way.
The integration of thermodynamics with personality systems had to wait for the evolution of ultra high-speed computers and their ability to create intangible, yet actual things of value. The foundational theory brought forward on this site is not an end in and of itself. Rather it represents a discourse and reference point to further investigate the thermal activity of the psyche and the energy dynamics of dharma that always tend toward personal well being and correct behavior.
C.G. Jung’s Ideal of Personality
At some point during their academic careers, all licensed and certified mental health professionals studied personality development. It is the bedrock of all psychological theory, research, clinical analysis and therapeutic practice. Freud and Jung probably carry the brunt of classical and socially fashionable concepts of personality theory while the contributions of Maslow, Sullivan and Rogers among several others certainly extend credence to the fact that personality is indeed something very dynamic.
Although compellingly so palpable, “personality” is purely psychological; a consensual academic construct reflective of an abstract, experiential phenomenon essentially and intimately interwoven with selfness and one’s evolving life process. In the broadest sense, personality has been professionally accepted as “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine…characteristics, behavior and thought."
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Clearly at variance with others of his time, Jung distinguished personality to be more than unconscious libidinal emanations egoistically interlaced into personal thoughts and behavioral patterns. His concept was both a radical extension of and departure from classical developmental theses
Jung regarded personality as an almost unknowable “ideal”, an archetype of psychospiritual unity. He envisioned an entity that embodied the quintessential realization of the self in balance and integrated with a universal consciousness. And Jung was very clear that his ideal is entirely experiential; it is at once “…the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being…the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual.”3
Jung surmised human nature to be an inherent energy force, one that necessarily directs and/or organizes psychological events to be life-affirming throughout the life process. This is, first and foremost, the universal function of dharma.
Essentially, Jung’s extensive writings about personality development describe an inherent psychological system principled upon the dynamics of dharma. He envisioned a thermal event as energy coalescence into something that immediately permeates the dimensions of the mind.4
It was there, somewhere within the mental domain, that Jung proposed an autonomous assessment of the personal self with his universal ideal. He theorized that all possible behavioral outcomes are uniquely fashioned there from an established idiosyncratic decision history bonded to prior sensations and perceptions. His description is an inherent plugging into one’s life process. Unless this thermal activity is interrupted by ego intentionality, Jung’s ideal, like dharma, always supports the affirmation of life and correct behavioral action.
Expanding upon Jung’s ideal, Dharma Dynamics asserts an undeniable knowing5 that gently and routinely nudges an individual to actively participate and maintain an effectual affirmative involvement with life’s moment-by-moment creation. This is a deep iterative process of self-evaluation that assesses value to one’s behavior. A wise, experienced surfer acknowledges the energy of the wave and intentionally integrates that force with an expert control of the board in order to maximize the value of the ride, a behavioral result that can even be objectively judged and scored in competition.
As effortless as it may seem, we all intentionally defy the force of gravity when we choose to get up from a sitting position. In similar fashion, individuals can just as easily defy the thermal impulse of dharma with cognitive decisions and ensuing actions.
A maturing ego can always find a convenient rationale to mitigate and/or repress doing the right thing. The human faculty of choice is the binary ground floor for all decision merchandise -- yes or no; go here, go there; do this or do that -- and all of this constantly occurs whether or not we are cognizant to account for the role of one’s ideal personality and the thermal influence of dharma.
Possibly as the result of active cognition, intuition, or some compelling limbic response, or maybe some uniquely individual and stylized combination of all these, an action -- any action -- still remains a personal choice and one that will affect the degree of entropy within the psyche.
In small affairs, like doggedly clinging to the veracity of some insignificant factoid known to be untrue, the actual change in entropy may be minimal and have negligible effect upon day-to-day psychological activities. However, persistent and prolonged repressive behavior, whether cognitively charged or not, and especially actions involving others, may increase psychic entropy to clinically alarming and potentially dysfunctional levels.
Psychic Homeostasis
Virtually all systems throughout the universe are deemed open. Only under very special circumstances would a system be considered closed, and we, as Earth-bound human individuals, meet none of those conditions either physiologically or psychologically. We already know that entropy is a measure of thermal disorder within systems and that individual choice to inhibit or close personality systems will naturally increase psychic entropy to some degree.
The ceaseless thermal interplay of dharma and entropy set the conditions for individual psychic homeostasis. In the broadest sense, this is both Aurobindo and Jung’s psychic systems’ of energy equilibrium now defined by flexible, personally resolved safeguards.
Subjective and objective variables are idiosyncratically defined and thereby provide the range of thermal activity within the psyche. That individually assessed range set the guardrails for what is commonly deemed normal behavior.
“I feel sick today.” is a common moan from every child at some point in time. And the immediate parental response is to feel the child’s forehead and maybe the kid’s cheeks too. If indicated, that is followed by a thermometer for greater accuracy which in this hypothetical example is 102.8o, well above the generally accepted normal of 98.6o.
The child is feverish and lacks energy. Even getting out of bed to go to the bathroom is a taxing physical event. Most often, appetite is also reduced inhibiting necessary nutrients to the body. Thermally, the overall efficiency of the child’s physiological systems for productive work is severely reduced. Entropy is increasing and will persist until a successful therapy is introduced to restore the child’s aggregate physiological system to a normal state, a homeostatic range of thermal balance for personal equilibrium and well being.
Awareness of the self sets in rather early in life, exactly when and how that is defined is an unsettled subject of debate among professionals. Nonetheless, the event transacts an energy dynamic within the psyche where the id’s uninhibited, non-stop instinctual pursuit of “I want.” is now forced to allow for a greater expansion of the self as “I am.”
This newly evolved awareness-in-consciousness is derived and unlocked from the initial DNA at conception. It is a time-release event, the psyche’s equivalent to what we see physically in adolescents with the onset of puberty. And henceforth, this awareness now acts as an ever-available, autonomous, introspective register of personal evaluation and history.
It is this non-stop thermal activity, the moment-by-moment fluctuations of available and wasted energy during the life process that set one’s homeostatic guardrails within the psyche. Normal behavior results from staying within this self-prescribed thermal range.
Every choice an individual makes will affect the thermal guardrails within the psyche. Minor breaches usually initiate feelings of anxiety, stress and/or guilt; while a more severe disruption will naturally result in a more disordered or chaotic state of psychological well being. Simply put, people generally feel good about themselves and what they’re doing when things are normal and going smoothly. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do is in harmony.” (M. Gandhi) In other words, happiness occurs when there is a trustworthy balance cognitively struck between one’s inner and outer worlds.
It is a fact of life that people love to concern themselves with themselves. Of course, everybody attends to their personal hygiene and grooming. The vainglorious and narcissists however indulge in this exercise to great excess and extremes. Even so, each of us has a deep, inherently engrained allure and curiosity to gain some deeper personal and teleological insight of who we are. Whether we act on that availability or not is, again, a choice.
Avenues of self discovery intended to explore and extend the limitations of waking-state awareness run in all directions. Some folks choose an inward path of meditative austerity while others may seek some external oracular divination. Then there are those who choose creative fantasy and vicariously identify with ethereal characters in books and movies, while still others seek penance and absolution. And there are mental health professionals aplenty who help individuals unwind self-inflicted webs of personal entanglements so they may gain a deeper, more affirmative grasp of who they are and how best to navigate the ongoing events in their daily lives.
The physical, emotional, mental and psychospiritual elements are all idiosyncratically woven into the cohesion of life’s journey. All together they coordinate the behavioral results that formulate individual personality. This is a thermal process that happens without egoistic intervention within the psyche. It is simultaneously an observation of and participation with a personalized awareness-in-consciousness that provides both a evaluation process of the self for the self, and a projected assessment of one’s self into the world-reality and social interactivity.
These two personality dynamics do not necessarily have to be the same. How we see ourselves is not necessarily how others see us. Nonetheless, these Building Blocks are the rudimentary thermal components that personally determine the manifest character and countenance of individual personality.
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1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-moral-life-of-babies/ and
https://noldus.com/blog/infants-social-moral-development
2. Allport, G. W.; 1961, Pattern and Growth in Personality; APA publication.
3. C.G. Jung, Collected Works, Bollingen Series, Vol. 17, Development of Personality, 1964, p.171.
4. Reference Jung’s Collected works Volume 8, “The Structure and Nature of the Psyche”
Also: Sri Aurobindo subtly weaves his presentation of the thermal dynamics of
dharma throughout his writings while discussing his Purna Yoga of Integration. He
meticulously presents the psychodynamics of the mind by further distinguishing the
activities of the higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, and supermind.
5. See Glossary: How We Come to Know
6. Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga II, Tome One, Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1958, p.254.
