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I've been rolling this topic over in my mind as an idea for a thread for a while now, but this topic doesn't exactly make for light reading/writing. There's lots of information, perspectives, history, and techniques to sort through when it comes to tulpas. Lucky for you though, I'm gonna sift through it all for you. Because I'm great like that. So first, as with all good research topics, we start with a definition. We'll talk about what a tulpa is and why we should care.
A tulpa is basically a being/entity that is created in one's mind through sheer tenacity of thought and force of will. These beings can have any personality we can imagine along with any form we can imagine. If they even have a form at all. There have been tulpas created that almost perfectly resemble another human being all the way to tulpas that resemble a non-sentient computer terminal. The possibilities are, needless to say, massive here. And believe it or not, if you've seen Inception, you've actually "seen" a tulpa before.
Although I should say, Mal is a bit of an extreme example due solely to her rampancy. It's very much implied that Cobb does not actually want to stop her until the end though, so even then, it makes sense that she would be like that. A much more laid back and friendly example would probably be Hobbes though, if you'd like another.
The earliest mention of such things in history actually go back to ancient Buddhist texts. They believed that the tulpa was more of a spiritual thing than a purely mental thing. After this though, they didn't reemerge into popular thinking until 2009 with the rise of My Little Pony. ( :frown: ) Putting all that aside, to this day, there are debates as to what EXACTLY a tulpa is. Some believe they're actual sentient beings and others more popularly believe they're merely the brain purposefully tricking itself into creating a separate mental profile. I tend to lean towards the latter, but that's purely my opinion. In any case, I find tulpas to be one of the most interesting things the mind is capable of.
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So now that we know what a tulpa is and where exactly they came from, we can move on to techniques of tulpa formation, which is called forcing. When we force, we are thinking constantly about our tulpa and interacting with it in our minds, usually through talking. (Although you can talk to them out loud, you should talk to them in your mind for obvious reasons.) We do this to essentially strengthen the existence of our prospective tulpa.
Before you start anything though, know that creating a tulpa is a (mostly) permanent affair. This is not something one lightly creates, even if you believe they are mere mental playthings. Once a tulpa has been formed, they will not go away at the flick of your wrist here. Getting rid of a tulpa, at the very least, takes a long while. And at worst it's incredibly painful and hurtful for both the tulpa and host.
Now, first of all, remember: the tulpa is independent from the start. Expect it along with other desired personality traits. And you need to truly expect and believe these traits are in your tulpa.
You choose a model, you breathe life into it, and you focus on that person's presence/unconscious feeling we associate with that being, assuming it has its own thoughts/thought process you CANNOT see. You interact with it and observe it.
So let's say you wanted, I don't know, Cortana as a tulpa. You would take that model of who she is, her form, and voice (forming the "interface"), and you would expect vocal, visual and emotional pseudo-hallucinations from this form/interface, but you would have no idea what goes on inside it - you would not perceive its thoughts form as you made the assumption that they're private. And you would begin to interact with it. This will take some time, although the exact time it takes varies wildly between people. Some need only a week to get them fully formed, and for others, it takes them at least a month before their tulpa begins to at least talk.
Remember to use the voice as an interface and NOT their thoughts. Don't simulate the tulpa in your mind and instead just observe it acting freely and unconstrained. And remember to allow it to interact with you by visual, auditory, and sensory pseudo-hallucinations. Expect them to be like a REAL person. And like a real person, you cannot predict anything about them. You can also think about it like this. You can know a person. Sometimes very well. But you of course, in the end, can't truly know exactly what the person will do right now or what they will think. Or at least not 100% accurately at all anyway. And so it is for your tulpa.
Some people, for some reason, feel like they need to tell others they have a tulpa. Honestly, unless you're having romantic relations with your tulpa and your fat ass actually got a girlfriend, this is a bad cringey idea. Nobody needs to know about your tulpa(s). Nobody (usually) cares. Now, obviously there are tulpa communities where you can talk about it and have your tulpa chat and stuff, but that's about it. Tulpas are a personal thing and don't need to be dragged out into the public light. So as a general rule in public, unless you're specifically asked about it, keep your tulpas to your damn self.
-
Now there's actually many kinds of tulpas I haven't talked about here like non-sentient "servitors" and incomplete "fragments" plus many tulpa-forming, manipulating, holding, and destroying techniques, but I'm not going to go into all that in this thread. For now, I just want to go through the basics here and get everyone at least comfortable with the concept. With that said, tulpas are pretty awesome, even if just to study. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this guide. Until next time, keep it good.
A tulpa is basically a being/entity that is created in one's mind through sheer tenacity of thought and force of will. These beings can have any personality we can imagine along with any form we can imagine. If they even have a form at all. There have been tulpas created that almost perfectly resemble another human being all the way to tulpas that resemble a non-sentient computer terminal. The possibilities are, needless to say, massive here. And believe it or not, if you've seen Inception, you've actually "seen" a tulpa before.
Although I should say, Mal is a bit of an extreme example due solely to her rampancy. It's very much implied that Cobb does not actually want to stop her until the end though, so even then, it makes sense that she would be like that. A much more laid back and friendly example would probably be Hobbes though, if you'd like another.
The earliest mention of such things in history actually go back to ancient Buddhist texts. They believed that the tulpa was more of a spiritual thing than a purely mental thing. After this though, they didn't reemerge into popular thinking until 2009 with the rise of My Little Pony. ( :frown: ) Putting all that aside, to this day, there are debates as to what EXACTLY a tulpa is. Some believe they're actual sentient beings and others more popularly believe they're merely the brain purposefully tricking itself into creating a separate mental profile. I tend to lean towards the latter, but that's purely my opinion. In any case, I find tulpas to be one of the most interesting things the mind is capable of.
-
So now that we know what a tulpa is and where exactly they came from, we can move on to techniques of tulpa formation, which is called forcing. When we force, we are thinking constantly about our tulpa and interacting with it in our minds, usually through talking. (Although you can talk to them out loud, you should talk to them in your mind for obvious reasons.) We do this to essentially strengthen the existence of our prospective tulpa.
Before you start anything though, know that creating a tulpa is a (mostly) permanent affair. This is not something one lightly creates, even if you believe they are mere mental playthings. Once a tulpa has been formed, they will not go away at the flick of your wrist here. Getting rid of a tulpa, at the very least, takes a long while. And at worst it's incredibly painful and hurtful for both the tulpa and host.
Now, first of all, remember: the tulpa is independent from the start. Expect it along with other desired personality traits. And you need to truly expect and believe these traits are in your tulpa.
You choose a model, you breathe life into it, and you focus on that person's presence/unconscious feeling we associate with that being, assuming it has its own thoughts/thought process you CANNOT see. You interact with it and observe it.
So let's say you wanted, I don't know, Cortana as a tulpa. You would take that model of who she is, her form, and voice (forming the "interface"), and you would expect vocal, visual and emotional pseudo-hallucinations from this form/interface, but you would have no idea what goes on inside it - you would not perceive its thoughts form as you made the assumption that they're private. And you would begin to interact with it. This will take some time, although the exact time it takes varies wildly between people. Some need only a week to get them fully formed, and for others, it takes them at least a month before their tulpa begins to at least talk.
Remember to use the voice as an interface and NOT their thoughts. Don't simulate the tulpa in your mind and instead just observe it acting freely and unconstrained. And remember to allow it to interact with you by visual, auditory, and sensory pseudo-hallucinations. Expect them to be like a REAL person. And like a real person, you cannot predict anything about them. You can also think about it like this. You can know a person. Sometimes very well. But you of course, in the end, can't truly know exactly what the person will do right now or what they will think. Or at least not 100% accurately at all anyway. And so it is for your tulpa.
Some people, for some reason, feel like they need to tell others they have a tulpa. Honestly, unless you're having romantic relations with your tulpa and your fat ass actually got a girlfriend, this is a bad cringey idea. Nobody needs to know about your tulpa(s). Nobody (usually) cares. Now, obviously there are tulpa communities where you can talk about it and have your tulpa chat and stuff, but that's about it. Tulpas are a personal thing and don't need to be dragged out into the public light. So as a general rule in public, unless you're specifically asked about it, keep your tulpas to your damn self.
-
Now there's actually many kinds of tulpas I haven't talked about here like non-sentient "servitors" and incomplete "fragments" plus many tulpa-forming, manipulating, holding, and destroying techniques, but I'm not going to go into all that in this thread. For now, I just want to go through the basics here and get everyone at least comfortable with the concept. With that said, tulpas are pretty awesome, even if just to study. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this guide. Until next time, keep it good.
