Glossary

Dharma

From the Sanskrit root dhr, to uphold, sustain, to nourish.  Dharma is deemed the essential natural law of function in the universe.  In human affairs, dharma is most comfortably regarded as universal moral law, or more theologically as eternal righteousness and the foundation of ethical and social conduct.

Within human consciousness, and more specifically within individual awareness, dharma aptly unites veracity and virtue.  To the intuitive mind (see below), this is known as one’s enhanced common sense and authorizes much more than a digital image of some physiological, gut-level emotion.  Dharma inherently, unerringly beckons the correct course of all behavioral decisions.

Every psychological theory of personality development assumes the foundational workings of psychic energy and psychic force.  Dharma brings them into unity.  The activity of dharma becomes known by the degree of orderly and consistent personal and social conduct throughout one’s life.  As such, dharma plays a most significant role in the developmental of one’s countenance and character, one’s personality. 

Dharma’s natural tendency to affirm personal growth is an essential part of the grand mystery that functions always for the betterment of an individual throughout one’s life.  Genuine cognitive dissonance is essentially going against one’s better judgement. In actuality, it is an individual’s cognitive awareness of the intentional negation and/or repression of dharma’s influence.   Doing so results with the increase of psychic entropy (see below) within the psyche. 

According to degree, an increase of psychic entropy will most often produce an autonomous, idiosyncratic propensity toward feelings of anxiety, stress and guilt. Yet the character of dharma itself provides an avenue for honest, introspective personal contrition.  This one behavioral act is recognized to play a paramount role within all the world’s major religions.

(See References, The Foundation, Part I to savor the robust individual and societal contextual evolution of dharma.  “Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems.  The deeper you dive the more treasure you find.”  Mahatma Gandhi)

Entropy

The individual psyche provides the connection to the entirety of human consciousness; and it is within the psyche where entropy interacts with dharma.  The interplay results with the establishment of thermal guardrails that set the normal conditions for an individual’s personality development and behavioral decisions.  

Basically, the strength or degree of entropy becomes known to the self (and others) by multifaceted, idiosyncratically determined stages of anxiety, stress and/or guilt.  More severe levels of psychic entropy can breach established homeostatic psychic guardrails.  This will often manifest as inappropriate outbursts and displays of psychologically dysfunctional behavior that clearly inhibit an individual’s (naturally) evolving life process altogether. 

Intuitive Mind

The intuitive mind is always available if we but seek then listen for its silent voice.  Many attribute the ubiquitous nature of the intuitive mind to be a gut-level feeling that is rooted in some emotional, ephemeral state of being that penetrates awareness.  C.G. Jung and Sri Aurobindo among others all seem to acknowledge this unique state of consciousness by what is known to ancient Sanskrit as darśana. 

Although there is no direct one-for-one English translation, darśana can be thought of as an impulse from dharma, the first extension of one’s enhanced common sense. The experience is that of direct knowing and is antecedent to cognition. 

Darśana also embodies profound nuances of vision or insight spontaneously stimulated directly from within the psyche.  The inherent psychological nature of darśana is fundamentally integrated into Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions, and into the many yoga and philosophic disciplines derived from those theological traditions. 

Karma

From the Sanskrit root kri, to act; to do; to make. It is also known as the law of action and reaction, cause and effect. At any point in time, an individual is the sum total of previous thoughts and acts and simultaneously, at every moment, the active builder of one’s personal, idiosyncratic life process going forward. Karma Yoga seeks to actively align one’s cognitive conduct with the universal impulse of dharma.

Psychic Entropy

It is the individual psyche that provides the connection to the entirety of human consciousness; and it is exclusively where entropy interacts with dharma. The interplay of dharma and psychic entropy results with the establishment of thermal guardrails that set the normal conditions for an individual’s personality development and behavioral decisions.

Intrinsically, the degree or strength of entropy becomes known to the self (and others) by multifaceted, idiosyncratically determined degrees of anxiety, stress and/or guilt. More severe conditions of psychic entropy can thermally breach established homeostatic guardrails. This will often result in manifest outbursts and displays of psychologically dysfunctional behavior that clearly inhibit an individua’s (naturally) evolving life process.

Psychic Homeostasis

An individual’s normal behavioral balance attained during the continual thermal interplayof dharma and entropy within the psyche.

Realization — This is how we come to know

We all have dreams, hopes and desires. They spontaneously formulate within the psyche as gossamer threads that are barely a blip on the screen of cognitive awareness. And yet they can mature through time with profound influences upon manifest behavior.

Hopes>>Beliefs>>Knowledge>>Wisdom

Our hopes will, at times, strengthen with experience into beliefs.

In like manner, some beliefs strengthen with experience to consolidate knowledge.

With time and trial, knowledge may strengthen and spontaneously yield wisdom.

Applied with rectitude, wisdom reveals unassailable truth.

Synchronicity

CG Jung’s concept to explain the personal, meaningful coincidence of a series of seemingly unconnected events that unmasks intent during the individuation process. Throughout his Collected Works, his Depth Psychology looked no further into the phenomenon and instead focused upon the psychological dynamics of the psyche, archetypes, myths and occult practices.

Synchronicity is a fine label for the occurrence, but Jung’s explanation doesn’t go far enough to reveal how things happen. Yet, somewhere within the vast horizon of one’s consciousness, deep within the fog of one’s sentient awareness, meaning had already been attached to an identified set of events and anchored by memory (engram?) formation. It is specifically that psychic activity which supports the architecture upon which they, the synchronistic set of events, eventually/actually became noticeable as such!

The Unconscious

Dharma Dynamics has no need of this psychological construct.  I only include this term in the Glossary because there are those who steadfastly, almost religiously, cling on to this relic of the late 19th century.  In doing so, they presuppose a vast, inestimable reservoir of unresolved personal issues of an individual where a trickster like Loki, Dolos or Atë stands guard with virtual god-like abilities to render behavioral judgments of good and evil.   

My clinical observations have indicated that maintaining the concept of an unconscious adds absolutely nothing affirmative to the life process for anyone.  Actually, it severely cripples the therapeutic process by increasing the degree entropy within one’s personality developmental systems.  To be sure, it directly underscores a person’s feelings of helplessness and inhibits an individual's innate abilities of self-discovery while it weakens self-reliance and debilitates personal responsibility. 

Also, interlacing the idea of an unconscious into the therapeutic process immediately creates a two-tiered environment that disproportionately subjugates the client to the assumed therapist’s expertise.  As such, it becomes a useful artifact that therapists can conveniently hide behind when they are unsure of their diagnosis, therapeutic movement and direction.  And, truth be told, it is can also become a useful catchall for therapists to unnecessarily extend the timeline of treatment for pecuniary enrichment. 

Yoga

Derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning to yoke and bind together (as oxen to work as a team). The word “yoga” dates back to the Rig Veda, then more fully developed during the early era of the Upanishads within Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. The foundations of yoga discipline were (and are) deeply devotional religious practices. For an individual, the reverent practitioner, yoga provides a pathway to union with God.

In Building Block #4 I mentioned “method” as a quick one-for-one translation. Indeed, yoga is methodology for it prescribes a system of self-actualization and of great sacrifice and obedience. And yoga discipline can be individualized, tailored and taught as one-on-one teacher to pupil, guru to disciple.

As many variations as there may be, yoga orthodoxy recognizes four overall paths:

Raja Yoga, the Royal Road of Meditation

Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge

Karma Yoga, the Way of Action

Bhakti Yoga, the Joy of Devotion

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