The Dharma Initiative, also written DHARMA (Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications), is a fictional research project and organization featured in the television series Lost. It was introduced in the second season episode "Orientation". In 2008, the Dharma Initiative website was launched. Dharma's interests were directly connected with fringe science. Dharma is a Sanskrit term used in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The logo is an octagon with the word "dharma" inside, all inscribed inside a bagua.

According to various orientation films, the Initiative was founded in 1970 by Gerald and Karen DeGroot, two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was financially backed by Danish industrialist and munitions magnate Alvar Hanso and his Hanso Foundation.
However, since The Lamp Post was built in the 1960s, the date of 1970 given by Pierre Chang in the orientation films may be incorrect, or some form of obfuscation.
According to Eloise Hawking, an unspecified man used The Lamp Post station in Los Angeles to find the location of the Island in the 1960s. Located underneath a church, the Lamp Post harnessed the unique pocket of energy in that area and used it to find other similar pockets around the globe. Though this man was only interested in one specific area: the Island. Since the Island was always moving, the Lamp Post was integral in finding its location. Within a few years' time, the location was uncovered.
At some point in the early 1970s, the DHARMA Initiative founded a tiny community on the Island. The Barracks became the center of operation for the DHARMA Initiative on the Island. Significant quantities of construction materials, electronic equipment and various vehicles and machinery were brought to the Island during the phase of settlement for the construction of the various DHARMA stations. Off the Island, the DHARMA Initiative's activities were coordinated from Ann Arbor in Michigan.
Not long after settling on the Island, the DHARMA Initiative fought an armed conflict with a group they called the Hostiles prior to 1973. The reasons for the conflict are not known, though Horace Goodspeed stated that the Hostiles were natives to the Island, implying that a conflict could have arisen from DHARMA moving into their territory or intruding on the Island. On August 15, 1973, DHARMA and the Hostiles agreed to a Truce, and an uneasy peace existed between them for nearly two decades.
DHARMA appears not only to have violated the Truce but to have taken steps as the conflict escalated, including devoting one of their stations (The Arrow) to developing new strategies against the Hostiles, installation of security cameras and other monitoring systems, weapon stockpiles (unusual for a utopian community), and even having a professional interrogator on their staff. The conflict between the two does not appear to have been helped by the appearance of the time shifting survivors in 1974-1977.
Regardless of the cause, the conflict ended on the 19th of December in 1987 or 1992 with an event known as the Purge. The Hostiles launched a toxic gas attack on the Barracks (and possibly other locations) that killed nearly all DHARMA personnel on the Island. Staff at The Swan survived, as they were sealed inside their station, and other DHARMA members, including Benjamin Linus and Ethan Rom, survived by joining the Hostiles. The bodies of those killed in the attack were piled into an open mass grave in the jungle. The Hostiles continue to survive today as the group Danielle Rousseau, the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 and the survivors of the freighter Kahana call "the Others".
After the slaughter, some of the DHARMA projects on the Island collapsed. For example, the polar bears escaped from their cages during the collapse.
Other than those DHARMA members who joined the Others (such as Benjamin Linus and Ethan Rom), there are only two DHARMA members on the Island who are known to have survived the Purge: Stuart Radzinsky and Kelvin Inman, who remained in The Swan after the Purge. Radzinsky committed suicide at an unknown date, and Inman, the last known member of the Initiative on the Island, died September 22, 2004.
The DHARMA Initiative collapsed or was destroyed off the Island as well, although the details of this remain unclear. In the Official Lost Podcasts, executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse also make frequent references to DHARMA's fall as a "collapse". In the Sri Lanka video, Thomas Mittelwerk stated that "we all know what happened: the DHARMA Initiative failed."
The date of DHARMA's collapse is unclear as well. In 2010, Benjamin Linus states that the DHARMA Initiative has not existed "for over twenty years". Hugh McIntyre of the Hanso Foundation said in an interview as part of The Lost Experience that the DHARMA Initiative's funding was cut in 1987. However, this seems to conflict with the 1992 date for the Purge (if we are to take the math of Horace Goodspeed's spirit literally).
By 2004 at the latest, The Lamp Post was in the control of Eloise Hawking. It is unknown whether other DHARMA facilities off the Island were similarly taken over by the Others.
The DHARMA Logistics Warehouse in Orote Peninsula, Guam, continued to function, delivering periodic resupply drops to the Island. This warehouse was run by Hector and Glen, who were unaware that the rest of the DHARMA Initiative no longer existed. In 2010, Benjamin Linus closed down this warehouse.
Nothing is known about the fate of Alvar Hanso, the DeGroots, or the DHARMA headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan.