Dharma Dynamics brings forward a unique theory of morality and human behavior. While acknowledging the importance and contributions of cognitive science, Dharma Dynamics takes a different tack. Here the infusion of thermodynamics with psychic systems provides a psychology rather than a physiology of human consciousness.
The overall theme is that of a mechanical system applied to the energy dynamics within the psyche. This brings the focus upon the usefulness of work by the system and the personal value of the resultant product, behavior. Thus, psychic energy takes on explicit definition and application.
Entropy is introduced as an opposing, complementary force to dharma. Together they affect an idiosyncratic decision-making process that assesses value to resultant behavior. Additionally, the theory then extends these principles of individual personality development to assert that the same fundamental energy dynamic holds true for groups and even cognitively created abstract entities such as contractual agreements.
Personal Biography: the Synthesis of East/West Psychology
Throughout life events occur; some big some small, some life-changing and some barely perceptible if at all. I’m one of those who believe that things do not happen by chance. Although some events may appear that way from a certain perspective at the outset allowing for the passage of time most often clarifies any initial inaccuracy. This is not to imply that life is predestined. After all, how could it be while individual choice is a main staple of the life process. Actually, I prefer Jung’s preference of synchronicity, meaningful coincidence, to explain a seemingly unconnected sequence of events. But this doesn’t really help all that much since somewhere within the psyche our human consciousness had already attached meaning to the synchronistic event(s).
Immediately, and imperceivable within human consciousness, the energy dynamics of subjectivity and objectivity collide with an initial event engram and anchors it to personal reason. Whether or not that rationale becomes part of cognitive awareness can only be known initially to the individual, then potentially to others by some manifest result, observable behavior. That gap in awareness from reason to behavior presents a hurdle for those who delve into the mechanics of brain function science. Current transdisciplinary cognitive research teams probe, test and analyze biochemical, neurophysiological and psychological hypotheses all seeking to explain the riddles of the psyche, mind and memory accompanied by digital images and EEG records.
My decision to move from Long Beach to northern CA so I could further my graduate studies in San Francisco had nothing at all to do with chance. I knew very specifically what I was looking for in a doctoral program and the only other acceptable locale was back in New York City. What with centers like Esalen Institute cropping up hosting weekend retreats and workshops along with ongoing programs, seminars and selected speaking guests at local universities, a plethora of bookstores and other resources all catering to the humanistic/transpersonal consciousness movement, as it was then collectively known, the Bay Area was indeed the more opportune of the two venues.
I brought to the California Institute of Asian Studies (CIAS) a fairly extensive personal study of the I Ching that began in 1969. Initially I was drawn to the dualistic simplicity of yin and yang, the natural imagery ascribed to the eight primary trigrams and the sometimes whimsical allegories offered within the Notes, Commentary and Judgments of the sixty-four hexagrams. I was not immediately lured to the oracular element inherent to the I Ching. Admittedly though this is hard to neglect since tossing coins or manipulating yarrow stalks is actually integral to utilizing the boundless benefits this great work has to offer.
One of only a very few survivors of Qui Shi Huang’s book burning rampage that began in 213 BCE, the Book of Changes presents a binary philosophy of correct and incorrect behavior while cryptically revealing the evolution of human consciousness. It speaks directly to you - the individual - and how to most propitiously navigate social interactivity within the varying circumstances presented during the life process. The social precepts inherent to the tome have been expanded through the millennia within the tenets of Taoism, and later with Confucian and neo-Confucian adaptations.
Jung’s forward in the Wilhelm-Baines edition remains a wonderful guide into the depth of not just the *Book of Changes*, but also into his Depth Psychology which was a significant departure from the more traditional clinical/experimental program I endured at Long Beach State. My final thesis1 was a statistically analyzed, all-volunteer, self-report inventory of altered states of consciousness – dream, hypnotic, meditative, and drug-induced states - a very diligent and impassioned topic of psychological research at the time.2
Such was some of the foundation that spirited my selection of CIAS as the pedigree for my doctoral studies. Chance? Hardly. But then things started getting…how should I say…curious. From the first seminar I instinctively knew I had definitely made the right choice.
My instructor for that initial toe-dip to test the waters was Hilary Anderson, PhD in a class titled "Yoga and Psychology." Hilary’s doctoral work on Sri Aurobindo’s Purna Yoga has yet to be surpassed for its academic scholarship.3 Little was I aware that first night of how significant that information was to be.
Hilary was one of three “adopted daughters” of Haridas Chaudhuri, the founder and first president of CIAS. Sri Haridas (the title bestowed posthumously) had been sent by his guru, Sri Aurobindo to found an ashram and educational center in the US. Nobody this side of the Pacific picked up the torch brought by Chaudhuri and knew Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga Psychology better than Hilary. Her time spent at Aurobindo’s ashram in Pondicherry, India profoundly augmented her academic expertise.
And Hilary came to Aurobindo’s yoga with a rich background in Jungian psychology and proficiency with symbology that she adeptly applied to her teachings with oracular systems of consciousness and creativity. Her particular forte was Tarot. Beyond class, our time spent together both broadened and complimented the creative overlay and practice of Tarot with the I Ching for us both. Various tarot spreads in use today can be attributed to her including a “Jungian Spread” whose powerful psychic archetypes are skillfully integrated with Aurobindo’s yoga psychology.
Unavoidably, Aurobindo’s written works are generously sprinkled with Sanskrit4 terminology. The task of transliteration inherent to the subtleties and nuances of the language has to be appreciated through the lens of a contiguous Indian civilization with a deeply rooted religious culture spanning thousands of years. Modern western renditions of Sanskrit words and phrases often lose the essence, the grit and traction of the cultural history inherent to the language.
To capture the essential depth, breadth and width of any oriental yoga philosophy can be a formidable, even monumental task for the western head. Intuitively, Hilary knew how Aurobindo’s grand mosaic came together and worked; yet to have a Eastern lotus blossom as a Western rose seemed a task too great for any mortal.
I can recall countless hours spent at Hilary’s apartment atop Twin Peaks when she and Dr. Jim would parse and rehash, and then further refine and rehash again, the technical subtleties of how Aurobindo utilized the most recent comprehensive yoga iteration of Tantra into his Integral methodology. Her patience would wear thin with Dr. Jim’s pedantic persistence at times, but her reliance upon his expertise was steadfast, and with good reason.
Dr. James Plaugher received his doctorate from Stanford University Philosophy Department in Indian Studies with a focus upon Gandhi’s ahimsa principle under the mentorship of Friedrich Spiegelberg.5 Dr. Jim was a philosophical Sanskritist extraordinaire. His travels in Asia and the wisdom gained from his guru, Swami Ramdas, afforded him gracious insights to the folly of human strife and the divinely inspired virtuous character inherent to all of us. During the handshake of our initial introduction, Dr. Jim’s first words to me were, “Are you chasing dharma?” followed by a generous and warm basso profondo laugh, his signature characteristic for the pure delight of those special moments each of us are presented during the life process. Little did I realize how prophetic his words would soon become. Chance? Hmm!
I was indeed fortunate to have the time to absorb Dr. Jim’s and Hilary’s specialties beyond the classroom setting. There were times I was the student while my mentors instructed, and others when I was another colleague. It’s no small wonder that they both wound up as co-chairs of my dissertation committee and dear friends for life.
Another individual that synchronistically appeared at this time and wound up on my committee was Dr. D.I. Lauf. He was a visiting professor at CIAS from the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. His specialty was archetype symbology and world religions, most notably with Tibetan Studies. He was sponsored and brought to CIAS with the advocacy of both Dr. Spiegelberg and Hilary.
Behind his glasses and youthful countenance, Ingo, as he preferred since he hated his given first name of Detlef, epitomized the look, credentials and erudition of a visiting European academic of the late 1970’s. Outside of class he loved to laugh and share anecdotes about the twists and turns of religious studies while stroking his full goatee in between quaffs of Anchor Steam Beer at a couple of favored watering holes he’d ferreted out for himself not far from his downtown hotel.
Bon-Po mysticism and early Buddhism was really not my thrust of interest so I never registered for any of Ingo’s classes. Nonetheless, Ingo’s acumen of dharma and the subtle Sanskrit inflections interwoven into Hindu, Buddhist and Jain theological architecture was invaluable. Ingo stressed the significance of elevating the Dharma as one of Buddhism’s three jewels. Along with the Buddha, and the Sangha (the brotherhood [of priests]) they comprise the three pillars supportive of all Buddhist thought and practice. In this respect, Buddhism epitomizes the value-based nature of reality as the absolute affirmation of dharma’s role within the individual life process.
Three is a number of procedure or process; it adds dimension and relation to the number two. But was it really just chance occurrence that I would encounter these three individuals, all under the same roof at the same time, all of whom would had a most profound effect upon my academic progress and career? Early on Hilary was my advocate and credited my previous work with the I Ching to the ease that I apprehended the subtleties of Aurobindo’s yoga psychology. Dr. Jim and Ingo unconditionally trusted Hilary's intuition and both lavished me with their knowledge and wisdom.
But there was something missing, something else was needed; a fourth element to provide greater strength and stability to the process I envisioned. It needed something to ground all of this high-minded, seemingly counterintuitive, abstract psychological yoga methodology. It required a touchstone, a component to provide an objective, analytical foundation for my premise.
Enter Wing Y. Pon whose rookie listing among the classes simply read Physics and Psychology. This seemed a fairly innocuous title and clearly out of place among others like Freud, Reich and the First Chakra in Tantra, Intentional Use of the Dream State, and Shamanism and the Primal Scream. But there it was and I couldn’t resist.
I was only registered for dissertation when Wing showed up at CIAS and didn’t need any further class units. I decided to sit in on his first lecture anyway since I had been struggling to successfully incorporate energy dynamics into my psychological framework. Beyond the realm of science fiction, there was little worthwhile academic resource material on the topic.
Also from Stanford's graduate school, Wing’s background in mathematics, physics and biology, his personal knowledge of Taoist medicine, plus his previous experience and work at NASA, turned out to be an ideal fit for the information I needed. Together we struggled through the language barriers to apply thermodynamics and systems theory to Jung’s use of psychological energy and force, then further have that reflected in the dynamics of Hindu yoga traditions, and Buddhist and Taoist philosophy.6
With Wing’s help I came to understand and appreciate the dual nature of wave/particle dynamics within quantum field theory, the pivotal importance of Schrödinger’s Cat, and the thermodynamic importance and role of entropy in systems. I in turn provided him insight to psychological phenomena, archetype symbolism and yoga methodology. Like parallel tracks, we learned from and grew together and eventually hammered out a workable dialogue.
Dr. Jim, Hilary and Ingo didn’t quite understand where I was going with the inclusion of energy dynamics with Aurobindo’s yoga and Jung’s psychology in my dissertation proposal. After talking things over with Wing, together they could feel something intuitively strategic, but tactic rationality evaded them. They finally consensually agreed, “Okay, let’s see what Joe’s got. We can always decline his proposal.” They put their academic credentials and professional reputations on the line by allowing my project to proceed. My eternal gratitude to them all for permitting a theoretical venture into human consciousness to move forward within the rigid strictures of academe.
So, was all of that chance, synchronicity, or something else? Was it fate or kismet that brought me to read an article in financial news that provided the final key decades later?7 Hilary would simply say of the grand mystery at times like these: “The Divine provides.”
1. Subjective Relationships Between Reported Experience with Psychotropic Agents and Alpha Production, CSULB, 1972
2. Charles Tart, ed.; Altered States of Consciousness, New York, Wiley, 1969. This volume set the academic standard for further psychological and psychiatric research and theory.
(Although not my specialty, I’ve wondered about young children, say ages two to three on up to about eight or nine, and whether excessive repetitive behavior, often deemed aberrant behavior, may actually be a natural expression to modify some baseline experience of normal consciousness; if, for example, things like repetitive spinning or twirling, running in circles or randomly about to induce dizziness and fatigue, or even mild self-induced pain by incessantly banging a body part on a hard surface or repeatedly tumbling recklessly down a staircase are activities to intentionally create an altered or even disoriented world-reality. To date, there is scant research in these areas.)
3. Hilary Anderson, PhD; Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga of Transformation, CIAS, 1977
(I was surprised and flattered to be mentioned as the one “who untiringly checked the final manuscript.” At the time, I simply thought it a privilege to be afforded Hilary’s profound insights of Aurobindo’s yoga psychology.)
4. Sanskrit, known also as the Devanāgarī, and according to custom may be translated as heavenly script of the city or more directly as the language of the gods. Sanskrit is also deemed the Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Truth that subsumes Hinduism, and by extension both Jainism and Buddhism as well.
5. Dr. Friedrich Spiegelberg joyously brought his decades of experience, knowledge and wisdom of a world class scholar to each of his lectures. The reference notes for his classes were hand-written scrolls from years past, and punctuated with personal episodes with his friend “Carl” during his tenure lecturing at Jung’s institute in Zurich. The man was delightfully erudite, a mentor who both teasingly and lovingly challenged students to contemplate theses like, Is there anything of Metaphysics that Psychology cannot grasp?
6. Early on, Jung intuited the connection between physics and his psychology. Without going into any of the details, he and Wolfgang Pauli designed an attempt using astrological charts of married couples. Their work was a dismal failure; no statistical correlations were found according to the criteria employed. As far as I know, Jung made no further endeavors to connect physics to his Depth Psychology.
7. See Building Blocks: In A Nutshell
Joseph Blofstein, PhD
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Email: dharmadynamics1@gmail.com
C.W. Post College of Long Island University, BA (Psychology/Biology), 1968
California State University, Long Beach, MA program & clinical internship at Norwalk State Hospital, 1972
California Institute of Asian Studies, PhD, East-West Psychology, 1979
(CIAS received its full accreditation the same year along with a formal name change, thus I was also awarded a doctoral degree from CIIS, the California Institute of Integral Studies)
Initially launched in March, 2022, Dharma Dynamics will continue to post new material.
Added: December, 2022: “Energy Dynamics of Group Personality”
April, 2023: “Guidance: A Clinical Example: Brenda”
September, 2023: “Analysis: The Personality Dynamics of Public Education in America”
October, 2023: Remembering CRT’s Progenitor, DEI
In the Mix:
Thoughts on Oracular Disciplines and the Cosmic Watermelon