Has anyone here ever heard of Tulpas? It was originally a Buddhist practice in which accomplished meditators or mystics would 'create' seemingly sentient, autonomous entities that existed in their minds to interact with on the path towards enlightenment. It seems to have gotten reincarnated (ha ha) as a practice in the My Little Pony internet subculture, wherein people will create similar, autonomous, sentient, 'imaginary friends' (called Tulpas), with whom they can interact, and will sometimes even take over control of their body (it seems like they have sex with their Tulpas a lot, which should come as a surprise to no one).

I personally know very little about how they claim to do this (or why, really), but there are lots of people on line who swear up and down that they are creating, and interacting with, sentient, autonomous entities that they share a brain/body with.

The parallels to the DMT entity-contact experience seemed obvious to me, and I'd like to see what other folks thought of it. It seems like, based on this, and the earlier, Buddhist practices, that the brain is capable of creating and maintaining multiple 'selves' within itself. What's happening here psychologically, and neurologically, seems like it would be really interesting.

VICE did an interesting article about it here. I won't post the whole thing, but here's a salient quote:


Blessings
~ND

Seems like it could be a defence mechanism. Given our social nature, we already partition ourselves based on the environment we find ourselves in.
Work sphorange is different to nexus sphorange. And if nexus sphorange went to work one day, instead of work sphorange, they both might lose the ability to buy food. So they must be sperate entities in the mind. The degree to which they are separated is probably a dynamic variable that command centre sphorange can manipulate.

It would be strange if they had sex.

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First of all wow - thanks for sharing ND.

Second, in response to what you said, Sphorange, about it possibly being a defense mechanism - I can definitely see how it could be, and probably is in some/many cases. But at the same time, it could also be a tool to get in touch with parts of the mind we are not normally conscious of in our day-to-day mindstate.

There's a picture in that article of a diagram showing where in the brain a tulpamancer feels his/her tulpas - implying that he/she feels their own personal consciousness in the front of the brain, and the tulpas in other regions of the brain. It's also mentioned how tulpas can recall memories that the person can't on their own.

Perhaps it is sort of a personification of other regions of the brain/aspects of consciousness - sort of how lucid dreamers claim to interact with their dream characters and often learn valuable things from them. I'd assume that many, if not all, of a person's dream characters would be aspects of their consciousness that they don't identify with - and in interacting with them, they're able to assimilate more of themselves into their conscious awareness through what is experienced as lessons, realizations, instructions, etc.


Very interesting...I definitely hadn't heard of this.

This sounds very similar to the people who believe that DMT entities are self-created in their imagination. Though, that would suggest that our imagination is vastly immense and predominantly cutoff from our ability to manifest it consciously without an incredibly strong aid like DMT & Deep Meditation.

It sounds kind of like you're implying that entities are not self-created in the imagination.

If that's what you believe, why?

Blessings
~ND

Yes, I also read the same Vice article a little while ago and did some research. I came across a forum 'Tulpa.Info' and it struck me that most people seemed genuine. I guess if people with no knowledge of psychedelics were to read the Nexus and look at some trip reports they might disbelieve stories of merging with the universe etc so I suspended disbelief and found that the Tulpa forum had an internal consistency. The Tulpa.Info forum also seems to be really focussed on discovering what can be done with these tulpas and encourages members to take a scientific view of the phenomenon and run tests like seeing if their tulpas have a different writing style to them or if the host and the tulpa can parallel process maths problems. Interestingly lots of the 'tulpamancers' also view starving your tulpa of attention until they disappear akin to murder.

I also found out some stuff I didn't want to know about when I was reading up on the brony (My Little Pony) aspect of the culture - please whatever you do don't go looking for 'clopping' pictures <shivers!>.

Further research led me to occult forums where they view tulpas and the tulpa culture as an undeveloped and undisciplined version of thoughtforms or servitors which they use in their magical practices.

Thanks for starting the thread. I'd love to hear some more viewpoints.

I agree with both views, I do feel that our imagination is vastly immense and predominantly cutoff from our ability to manifest it consciously without an incredibly strong aid like DMT & Deep Meditation. To the contrary I also believe it is likely that we are ourselves part of vast networks of an interdimensional matrix and the part of our self that does interact with higher dimensions are either dormant, not in our ability to control or suppressed in our everyday brainwashed, egotistical, sheeple type mode of operating consciousness. What the latter view implies is that we also interact with 'real' entities in those dimensions.

The distinction is What Is The Imagination? is it something in your brain? If I concieve of entities in my imagination alone, how can I distinguish whether or not my imagination is confined to a concept of a brain in a finite physical system or a concept of my imagination that exists beyond the limits of my skull and skin? In other words, how can I be sure that what I am witnessing isn't either me existing as I usually do and have access to an increadibly humungous imagination that was hitherto unknown or unviewable or how can I be sure that I am existing as I usually do while imprinting sensory data from another dimension or how can I be sure that I am me existing in a different format of existance to how I usually exist and imprinting what is already sensory information is already there but is unavailable to my mind during my waking consciousness.

As philosophy tells us, there is no way to PROVE that an objective existance is any more true than an entirely subjective existance. If you are a subject, all you can know is subjectivity and any claim you want to make about objectivity is beyond your position to make. Although you can do experiments on physical matter you still are not in the position to claim whether it is just physical stuff and totally objective (unintelligent, dead and outside of you) or subjective (mind being fundemental and precedes your existence)

^^^Niiiiice^^^

When I was little, I would say about 10-11 years old. I would pretend that cars were people and would talk to them in my mind. I pretended I was talking to them psychically. They even had a gender. I would determine their gender by associating them with those sort of masculine and feminine traits that people give cars or things. Some cars were both male and female in my head. Mind you, I did not start doing any psychedelics until I was 27 years old. I mean if you don't count cannabis, I started smoking that when I was 22. My boyfriend likes to point out that we have DMT in our brains. We synthesize it every night when we dream. Apparently we also synthesize it when we die too. Since this substance is already in existence in our minds by birth and if we are in fact part of these vast networks in an interdimentional matrix then when I was 11 years old I might have been practicing Tulpas without even knowing it. I have this theory (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) that if we are all connected as one entity, then perhaps the adults who are taking care of themselves and making real connections with entities, could be pulling the chains of say a child who is not yet aware of spirits and entities. I use the word chains as if to say the child is in a prison. We are all in sort of a prison if you look at it the right way. Lack of knowledge is a prison of a sort. A child lacks knowledge. A child depends on others while an adult is interdependent. So let's say a soul that is a child, this young soul may be dependent on the souls of the adults. I was raised in a very negligent environment and I love to wonder if the winds of good parents had any influence on my path in life or the blind choices I would make.

I've been doing a lot of research on them as of late and will soon be in the process of creating one in order to become more aware in my dreams. Whether they actually exist or are just constructs of the brain means little to me. One day when science advances enough to actually answer these questions I surely would like to hear an answer . In the world of the occult experience trumps knowledge so I propose to anyone interested in tulpas to go out there and try to make one yourself. That being said, google searches on egregore ghost creation, should make for some interesting reading

Sounds alot like Servitors in Chaos Magic of which I am familiar. Although I have never gone through the process to create one myself.

Basically Chaos Magic says you can create autonomous entities to do certain task like healing, creativity, love etc. You would pour heart and soul into creating a heavily programmed digital/mental being that you can call up to do your work when you want to. They make all the rules of the entity then do a ritual to bring it into being. Then it is available when called and leaves when done a task. They can be destroyed if need be.

I read all this in, Liber Null & Psychonaut, a great into book on Chaos Magic [which is magick by your own rules and tendencies]

This is a very old idea that is likely just resurfacing. Weird that bronies are using it for their own diabolical ends.

This is a great topic btw.

And sleepermustawaken, that was beautifully put.

I personally have summoned people/archetypes to myself while in a lucid dream state. So if I can focus my imagination on a particular person in my life or just a particular type of person they'll show up in mere seconds.

It's not always so easy though, considering the chaotic nature of dreams. To do it you have to achieve the purest of the lucid dream states. Some states can be controllable but fuzzy, while others you can have complete control over. Like if say weird dream goblins are attacking you, and you're in a lucid state and you want a sword, you usually can find it easily just through sheer force of will. Though more complicated ideas are more difficult. Like summoning a construct/archetype/person. No matter what you do, they always seem to retain the feel of autonomy. They have their own personality.

As a hobby, I like writing, and I think that all of the characters are just fractals of my personality coming out with their own exagerations from who I am. Like in terms of Jungian psychology all of my female characters are part of that anima side, in that way of describing it. Likewise all my antagonists are my inner shadows. That sort of thing. When I don't have writers block it's therapeutic to get the characters moving in a narrative.

Dreams have their own chaos to it, some much that a narrative in a dreamscape is realitively nonexistent. But on paper it becomes an excerise in imagination. So the more I write, the better I am at summoning things or people in my lucid dream state. Sort of an ebb and flow between the conscious and subconscious as I meet the different voices in my head, so to speak.