Thread: Tulpa/Tulpae

When I first heard about tulpa years ago, I started to get worried that my anime obsession meant I had tulpas in my head!

I was really obsessed about this one anime, since childhood. I had made a website dedicated to the anime and the website was just for fanfiction and fanart. It was dedicated to the fandom and I couldn't get enough of it. I wanted more fanfiction, more fanart. I secretly still feel that way.

But over the years I started to notice that the characters were - changing. Its as if the characters had a life of their own *something authors experience a lot*. And they weren't just "alive", they had taken on characteristics from the fans.

So there were all these anime fans, with really charged emotions and they were pouring all their emo-ism and angst into the same imaginary characters. Daily.

Things started to get weird for me. Anything relating to the anime made me really emotional - unhealthily emotional. I went from being able to draw fanart as a fun silly past time to.... if I even try to draw fanart my mind is exploded with all these emotions. I felt crazy. I didn't feel myself either.

I closed my website and I tried to avoid the fandom as much as I could. It helped, but only a little bit. If I even thought about the characters on my own that whole emotional world explodes in my head again. I finally decided I had to make some sense of this mess. I did a crazy technique that authors do - pretend the character is real and have a conversation, lol.

So I sat down, got a piece a paper and I long conversation with these imaginary characters and why they make me feel crazy. I was shocked with what I found. I found all these emotions and ideas I didn't recognize. I didn't really recognize them as being my emotions or my ideas. I didn't recognize these emotions or ideas as having come from the anime either. Where the hell did they come from?

When I looked at what I found - it was like my best friend was in the room with me! These were her ideas and emotions, but not just hers alone.

I met her through my website. She was a fanfiction writer and fanartist. But, she was also suffering from clinical depression and her views over the anime were simply dismal. Well her entire outlook on life was dismal. There were tons of emo fans who made the anime really depressing like them. I hated reading emo fanfiction. But since I was the website owner I felt obligated to read every submission.

I felt gross. I just wanted these foreign thoughts and emotions out of my head. They had been there for years.

I found, I wasn't the only one who had this same experience. My other close friend, who I also met through the website, she used to love drawing fanart. It was a silly fun thing to do. Years after being a fan and frequenting my website, things dramatically changed for her. Anything relating to the anime made her depressed. And she confided in me, that it was overwhelming. She couldn't watch the anime, she couldn't read the manga. She had to completely disassociate from it.

The characters had become MONSTERS created by the fans. They didn't even resemble anything from the anime anymore. You had to be in the fandom to understand.

Things really did get weird for me. There was one point where I couldn't focus on anything constructive. If I tried to meditate, I got sleepy. If I tried to focus on my art, I got sleepy. Yoga, too sleepy. I didn't have the motivation to do anything...but dream of the anime I was obsessed with even if it makes me depressed.......Wait, what the hell is wrong with me?

I went to my favorite spiritual website. The website suggested I was under slight demonic possession. Well damn. I followed the websites instructions to call out to Archangel Micheal for protection and went to sleep. The next two weeks were awesome! I had never felt so energized. All of the crippling symptoms of depression vanished.

But if I even think about that anime...even for a little bit....it comes back! And its so hard to not think about this thing that had been a part of your little nerdy fandom world since you were seven! So for me, this is a tulpa. It lives in my head because I'm crazy. All I can do, is starve it.

I also think I've "seen" the tulpas. For me, its two tulpas, because there were two central characters in the story. I've seen them in sleep paralysis. Two shadow beings looming over my bed. The freaky thing is they never freak me out. When I saw them it was like "well of course theyre standing there, why not? They've always been there".

Originally Posted by juroara

When I first heard about tulpa years ago....

Great post, thanks for sharing. At the end does starving them work? I understand that there have to be walls, and limitations. But in the end is there some part of you in it that you can't just lock away in a dark room forever, that you have to integrate with the rest of you and do something positive with? I'm not trying to imply this, I'm really asking, because I'm not sure. Tentatively, it seems to me that the spirits have to have a proper place in the scheme of things, its just become distorted somehow, like a small child who becomes boss of the house when raised by weak willed grandparents.

I've had very specific thoughts and events from my life show up in fictional stories written by people I've never met. They are definitely psychically connected to their readers somehow. How to protect oneself? I'm mostly closed off, my artistic ability is almost totally shut down and undeveloped, along with most of my empathy and social grace, because I don't understand how to be open and protect myself. Other people's emotions grasp, seduce, they don't have a motive not to do that. Is there any motive that I can have that allows me to be open without losing myself? I'm thinking no, that for now its just a price we pay for being human, that the kind of openness I desire is only possible where our desires are better.

Gotta go.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Great post, thanks for sharing. At the end does starving them work? I understand that there have to be walls, and limitations. But in the end is there some part of you in it that you can't just lock away in a dark room forever, that you have to integrate with the rest of you and do something positive with? I'm not trying to imply this, I'm really asking, because I'm not sure. Tentatively, it seems to me that the spirits have to have a proper place in the scheme of things, its just become distorted somehow, like a small child who becomes boss of the house when raised by weak willed grandparents.

I've had very specific thoughts and events from my life show up in fictional stories written by people I've never met. They are definitely psychically connected to their readers somehow. How to protect oneself? I'm mostly closed off, my artistic ability is almost totally shut down and undeveloped, along with most of my empathy and social grace, because I don't understand how to be open and protect myself. Other people's emotions grasp, seduce, they don't have a motive not to do that. Is there any motive that I can have that allows me to be open without losing myself?

Equanimity, compassion. mercy and, if you feel up to it, love is the ultimate balm for the open heart. They're just like muscles which, after having not been flexed for a long time, become emaciated. Adopting a practice specifically for the development of loving-kindness like metta, or another self-forgiveness discipline is the best way to 'keep one's nose clean', so to speak, in highly sympathetic states of being. well-developed skill in concentration always helps too, since thought-forms depend almost entirely on how much attention they can attract from you, being able to easily move one's concentrated awareness from one object of meditation to another without 'getting stuck' is a great ally.

Also, and this is just a friendly suggestion - take up a creative pursuit. Mastery of the creative faculties is the best way to seal up 'psychic' holes, heal old mental wounds and integrate negative experiences.

Firstly, I have a Tulpa, and still consider the metaphysical theories of Tulpa creation and their abilities to be false. A Tulpa is a psychological phenomenon that can sometimes be accidentally created, but in most cases have to be created on purpose. You can ask us anything and we will do our best to answer. However you can find more detailed information about the creation process and their abilities at Tulpa.info

Originally Posted by Teryakywind

Firstly, I have a Tulpa, and still consider the metaphysical theories of Tulpa creation and their abilities to be false. A Tulpa is a psychological phenomenon that can sometimes be accidentally created, but in most cases have to be created on purpose. You can ask us anything and we will do our best to answer. However you can find more detailed information about the creation process and their abilities at Tulpa.info

'Psychological phenomenon' seems to imply that your tulpa doesn't do stuff like speak to other people or mess with electronic equipment. Mine started demonstrating that sort of thing about two years ago, at the same time it started talking to me less. Now it's no longer with me, at least not in a tulpa-like manner. My impression was that it existed for a purpose, and it would have been unhealthy for it to persist after that purpose was completed.

I realize this sounds crazy. I can't care too much about that.

Maybe you can ask your tulpa about mine, see if it thinks it knows anything. Mine, if it's still around, should be able to communicate with yours.

I only started using the word tulpa this last week, but it's a better fit than the muse/demon/poltergeist combo I was using before.

I don't even know what the religious theories about tulpa are, beyond what was posted here, but I'd probably disagree with them if I did.

Basically when I say psychological, I mean that the Tulpa cannot interact with the world around you in any way, beyond using its hosts body to do so. We have a member on the Tulpa.info forums who is trying to see if having a Tulpa would affect the results of a brain scan (EEG, MRI, or similar), but even that is as of yet inconclusive. We see such instances as, for example, if you walked past your TV and it turned off seemingly by itself, as being your Tulpa manipulating external sensory input. This has been proven possible; not only can you fool your brain into seeing your Tulpa in the real world, there have been people whose Tulpa helped them to turn the sky red.

I am part of the camp that dismisses a Tulpa as both a religious and metaphysical phenomenon, so I try to keep it in the realm of (pseudo)science.

Originally Posted by Teryakywind

Basically when I say psychological, I mean that the Tulpa cannot interact with the world around you in any way, beyond using its hosts body to do so. We have a member on the Tulpa.info forums who is trying to see if having a Tulpa would affect the results of a brain scan (EEG, MRI, or similar), but even that is as of yet inconclusive. We see such instances as, for example, if you walked past your TV and it turned off seemingly by itself, as being your Tulpa manipulating external sensory input. This has been proven possible; not only can you fool your brain into seeing your Tulpa in the real world, there have been people whose Tulpa helped them to turn the sky red.

I am part of the camp that dismisses a Tulpa as both a religious and metaphysical phenomenon, so I try to keep it in the realm of (pseudo)science.

Right, to verify that your tulpa can turn a TV off, you'd need another impartial witness, and you'd need to do it more than once, to establish a pattern.

As you must know, your tupla is highly sensitive to your beliefs. If you dismiss it as a religious and metaphysical phenomena, you will never see this. In my experience its not necessary to have faith though, just to be open to the possibility.

For the sky turning red, manipulating sensory perception rather than the sky would be the natural way to do that. The assignment of color to light spectra is in the brain anyway, and changing the way the atmosphere refracts light would be prohibitively difficult. Even if a tupla was causing other people to see the sky as red, it would still be by altering their perceptions not the sky.

Alright then. I'm not the best at interpreting what she has to say, but let's go ahead and experiment. Give me your tulpa's name and I'll see if mine has anything to say about it.

Alright then, make of this what you will....

My tulpa doesn't have a name that I'm aware of. It should be able to find you. It usually interacts with people by creating parable-like dreams, but since you're in waking contact with your tulpa, I would guess that would work.

As I think I've mentioned, it hasn't been very active in recent months that I've been aware of. In the past that meant that it was more available for interacting with other people, but I don't know what the situation is now.

If you have any dreams that seemed foreign or unusual tonight, or last night, I suggested sending them to me and I might be able to interpret.

If you want something like a name to key into, try this (picked somewhat at random):

Douce Dame Jolie - Annwn [ Orbis Alia Album ] High Quality - YouTube

When I've asked for a name, I've gotten images that communicate something of the nature of it, but they seem kind of generic, like the moon, or a white owl.

You might try the name 'red sky', a name that might describe a part of me. This is 'red cloud', but English forces a conceptual choice between singular and plural even when the choice doesn't apply, so 'cloud' isn't quite the right thought.

For about three years my 'tulpa' or whatever it was would push well developed thoughts fairly strongly into my mind. Last night I was aware at that level, but the other active mind wasn't doing that. I was just passive, helpless, and ignorant, out of my element. For about the past year its as if I'm supposed to fly the plane now, but I don't have any idea how, no muscles in that area.

I've always been bothered by ideas that require belief to work because of their inherent unverifiable nature; there is no possible objective view because the viewer becomes part of the situation. (There's an interesting resonance there with quantum effects and the absurdity of the observer having the effect on the situation.) There's just so little you can delve into with that sort of idea because if you try to take it apart, it stops working. We're not on a sufficiently high level to see how these things work. (They do work, but whether it's a spiritual effect, a hallucination, undiscovered psychological effects, undiscovered psi, effects of observation on the universe, I cannot say.) This is what has always made Inner Sanctum problematic to me. I cannot force myself to believe anymore. In theory the idea that the belief then causes the effect is quite logical (see yourself somewhere, and then you'll eventually be that, due to a whole host of psychological effects) but depression makes it difficult for one, and things that are well outside the physical sphere I still have a problem with, for two.

Tulpas on the other hand; I know them, if perhaps not with an experienced hand, at least fairly intimately. There is something that I feel was touched on earlier in the thread, which was the idea of entities who don't actually have any sort of existence outside the mental processes of others, and yet have significant effects, make their own decisions on issues, etc. This isn't a foreign concept; any writer will know that their characters sometimes deviate in unexpected directions, or push back against certain ideas. When a character is given certain traits by a large group then the lines start to become more blurred. If a number of people agree that Santa Claus and this guy on the street who's giving out money are both generous then their constructions are very similar to these people.

That was a bit of a digression and I'm not really sure where I was going with it.

Anyway, first entity I'd call a tulpa in the traditional sense is/was Rax, who you may have heard me talk about before a few years ago. He was brought on by a strange IRC channel who were making familiars through hypnosis to try and help them hypnotize themselves. The thing got a bit fucked and out of hand and I ended up with Rax (who was a dark purple catdragon - don't ask me, he was really more like a cat except for a weird pointed snout) who would be a classic example of the hallucinatory sort of tulpa. He hung around inside my head, nattered on a bit; eventually he started walking around outside. You'd know there was nothing there; but he was standing or sitting there anyway. He was around for a few months, and faded out for no particular reason that I can discern. Probably my nervous breakdown; I didn't really have any energy to put in.

I guess there's not that much to say about Rax now. He was a hell of a lot more optimistic than I was at the time; he was prodding at the train door one time when I was meant to get off there and hadn't remembered. If he'd told me that would've helped; but if only the most experienced yogis can make separate entities, I certainly wasn't up to it at age 14. I'm probably less up to it now.

Second up, Juroara's story has an uncanny resonance with part of my life, and I'm vaguely concerned now.

I've read good and bad things about them. What's the worst that could happen?

Originally Posted by Woodstock

I've read good and bad things about them. What's the worst that could happen?

You go insane, I guess.

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

Second up, Juroara's story has an uncanny resonance with part of my life, and I'm vaguely concerned now.

Oh don't worry about it too much. You just want to pass your seed on. It's natural and you should just let it happen.

Originally Posted by tempusername

Oh don't worry about it too much. You just want to pass your seed on. It's natural and you should just let it happen.

???

It seems to me that the character of a tulpa would tend to reflect the thought that produces it. So if it happens relatively naturally, and you don't go into weird contortions trying produce it, then it shouldn't be much of a problem. Of course it will tend to have whatever deranged characteristics you already have, but that's a similar kind of problem tulpa or no tulpa.

At the risk of contradicting myself, the question reminds me of that insane half demon half human monster that beowulf kills at the beginning of the story. I felt bad for it.

I don't know if my 'muse' qualified as a tulpa, maybe it doesn't, but it did feel like an invisible spiritual birth in some way.

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

???

Hey what happened to your thread about bullshit? I signed int o reply to it and it's fucking locked

I had something to tell user Nivv who had said

Well we have to occupy ourselves somehow, you know.

That is absolutely right. I told you, we are sages... seven-colored blossoms, timeless, self-inspirered, august prodigies exalted on high to ejaculate ourselves into the universe

It is written and so it shall be(!), forever, unless you're willing to change

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

story has an uncanny resonance with part of my life, and I'm vaguely concerned now.

^


uncanny
resonance
my life
concern

fvaguely concerned
look at you do you see what i Mean?

Originally Posted by tempusername

Hey what happened to your thread about bullshit? I signed int o reply to it and it's fucking locked

Nina interpreted it as spam. I had a point to make that I find subjective experiences very difficult but I was drunk and it came out badly.

Originally Posted by tempusername

look at you do you see what i Mean?

No, not really. Explain?

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

Nina interpreted it as spam. I had a point to make that I find subjective experiences very difficult but I was drunk and it came out badly.

Oh how unfortunate. You should probably avoid drinking while posting on public forums. Miscommunication and public displays of intentional vulnerability should never be something to strive for in a community setting.

No, not really. Explain?

I guess it's only appropriate with my stance on progeny that I shouldn't be fond of spoon-feeding.

Originally Posted by LucidJuggalo

No, as that condition is a chemical imbalance. No amount of imagining gives somebody a chemical change - you're either born with it, or you do too many drugs.

Actually, the brain is very plastic and can change easily. It wouldn't be that far-fetched for it to give itself a chemical imbalance. Also, no one really knows exactly why schizophrenia happens. Often, on psych med commercials and stuff, you hear the phrase "chemical imbalance" but really, that's an oversimplification by the pharmaceutical company who makes said drug. In reality, scientist are almost entirely unsure of what causes schizophrenia, whether it be a chemical imbalance, a problem with neuronal oscilation, a brain deformity, et cetera.

But yes, having a tulpa is not really even similar to schizophrenia. You don't literally hear the voice, and you don't literally "see" it. It's more of a mild image in your imagination. It's actually much more like DID.

Some tulpas, in some circumstances, can cause audial hallucinations. I agree with everything else you said though.