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Myshkin

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  1. That kinda just sounds like the persona (latin for "mask") of jungian psychology.
  2. I see this idea floated around a lot, that all tulpa-like things are actually tulpas but with some additional qualities. I believe this idea comes from the fact that most tulpamancers are only really familiar with the language of tulpamancy and so end up trying to apply it to all phenomena that sound even vaguely tulpa-like, and so we end up with people saying things like "God is a tulpa". The problem with this approach is that the word "tulpa" carries certain connotations that don't apply to daemons, soulbonds, etc., which means it can't be used as a general lalbel for all these things. A more appropriate label for all the categories you mentioned, except maybe alters, would be "sentient thoughtform".
  3. I can't yet say whether or not I agree with the point about all thoughtforms being of the same "nature" or "species", but I definitely disagree with the part about categories and labels all being contrived or cosmetic. Even if all thoughtforms are fundamentally the same "species" in the same sense that all humans are the same species, that doesn't make the different labels meaningless, it just means they're not describing the nature of the thing they're labeling. I think words like "tulpa" and "soulbond" describe the relationship between the thoughtform and human, like the words "dad" and "uncle" describe the relation that one human being has to another. Tulpas and soulbonds are distinguished from each other by the fact that tulpas are consciously developed while soulbonds appear without conscious intent; it's like the difference between a biological and adopted child. There may be other distinguishing features but this is the main one.
  4. Well, first of all, "supernatural" only makes sense as a valid ontological category in the context of specific religions, such as Christianity, in which God is conceptualized as being literally above nature. In the Greco-Latin religion, for instance, where the gods were acpects of nature, it makes no sense to say that they're somehow separate from nature. That the majority of western atheists accept the category as universally valid shows that western atheism is still intellectually dependent on categories and assumptions that originate from the Christian mindset. You don't "know" that they're different things, you only conceptualize them as being different. It's like how tomatoes are considered fruits in science but vegetables in cooking. The criteria for what counts as a "fruit" and "vegetable" are different in both cases. Neither classification system is objectively correct or objectively wrong, they just use different definitions of those words. Similarly, tulpas can be considered magic or non-magic depending on how you define certain words and interpret certain phenomena. Of course that would be the assummption. The spirits he's talking about would be akin to "fully developed" tulpas, which don't need any help with speaking to the host aside from the host being willing to listen to them. The article mentions nothing resembling narration, and parroting wouldn't be a concern at all because you're supposed to be talking with an independent entity, not something that exists in your mind. The closest parallel to parroting in the article is this paragraph. Of course, the phenomenon is interpreted as your own words being mistaken for the spirit's, not as you making the spirit speak your words. That was Alexandra David-Neel, who traveled to Tibet, learned about Tibetan Buddhist religious practices and became a buddhist. She was the person who introduced the word "tulpa" to the West with her book Magic and Mistery in Tibet.
  5. Their discussion touches on a few points I've been thinking about in relation to the tulpa community, namely the role of anecdotal evidence in the belief in tulpas. A tulpa is a phenomenon for which the best existent evidence is the direct experience thereof; you can't deduce the existence of tulpas based on extrapolation from any known law of nature, nor can you prove to anyone else that you definitely have a tulpa. Anyone who believes in tulpas does so either because they have one or because they believe other people's claims of having tulpas. At the same time, in what is one of the great ironies of the "skeptic" tulpa community, a good number of tulpamancers are quick dismiss anecdotal evidence out of hand if it's being used to support the existence of anything paranormal, without realizing that by those same standards belief in tulpas (even under the psychological model) can be dismissed in precisely the same way, as shown by the user D. Shropshire in that thread. Indeed, evidence for tulpas is of the same nature as the evidence for many "paranormal" phenomena, such as astral projection. If belief in tulpas is to be justifiable, then, what is needed is an epistemology by which anecdotal evidence can, at least in certain situations, be used to justify claims of knowledge. The thing about that, though, is that, because many paranormal beliefs are justified by the same type of evidence as tulpamancy, any justification of one would at least imply the possibility of the other being justifiable. Of course, that's without getting into the much more serious problems that pop up from the idea that anecdotal evidence is inherently without value.
  6. While the statement does not hold universally true unless certain qualifications are added (such as the sufficient specification of the action taking place and the relevant context in which it takes place), it's still generally true that certain actions (not necessarily all actions, mind you) produce certain results. I personally don't care either way about there being a "science of tulpas" or "tulpology", but in my opinion, part of the reason at least is that no one seems willing to lay the philosophical groundwork necessary for tulpology to actually be capable of becoming a coherent field of study. People here are all like "Science FTW!", but even science itself is based on certain philosophical principles which give it its coherence and its explicative power. Expecting that you'll be able to jump right into the science part of this new field of knowledge without even establishing solid philosophical foundations is like expecting to learn how to play the piano without any practice whatsoever. What are the goals of tulpology? What does it seek to achieve? To what degree can the methods of science help reach those goals? Are there other methods that could prove more useful? Could tulpology even be considered a science? Does it fit in better among the humanities? Or is it perhaps better described as a discipline, like martial arts or singing, whose focus is the transmission of a skill, not of knowledge? Not only have these questions not been answered, I don't think they've even been asked. Small wonder, then, that what little progress has been made is a scattered set of facts that have yet to be fit together into a coherent narrative.
  7. By doing certain things certain results will follow, regardless of what you believe. That is to say, faith is not necessary: if you go through the tulpa-creation process and you do it corectly, you'll end up with a tulpa. If that alone is enough to make something scientific, then yes, tulpas are scientific, but then again, so are many schools of mysticism which operate under the same philosophy of certain actions bringing certain results. That which you're calling "faith" is more properly called "choosing a more profitable interpretation". Much of what people consider facts are actually interpretations. Interpretations are coherent narratives people come up with in order to make sense of certain facts. They are not true or false in the same way facts are; they are only true insofar as they fit all the relevant facts and false insofar as they contradict known facts. Take the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, for instance. The two theories contradict each other, so they can't both be considered absolutely true. At the same time, they both hold true in the vast majority of cases. Also, unlike facts, two conflicting interpretations of the same thing can both be true if they both fit all the relevant facts. To bring this back to tulpamancy, consider the event of getting a certain thought that you think may be from your developing tulpa. You can interpret it as being your thought, or you can interpret it as being their thought, and both interpretations will be equally true, but because the latter interpretation is more useful in the tulpa-creation process, it's better for you to work with that one. This is not the same as having faith that it's your tulpa's thought because there is no evidence of who the thought belonged to; to assume that the thought was yours is no more or less faith-based than to assume it's your tulpa's.
  8. Reading your posts about unconditional love, I was reminded of The Brothers Karamazov, which I just finished reading for the first time and in which universal unconditional love is a major theme. In fact, I find that simply reading bits and pieces of it is enough to instill that emotion in me, at least for a little while. I was going to post some quotes from the book that exemplify this feeling, but as it turns out it's never so explicitly stated in the book that it can be conveyed through any quote of it. It just kinda pervades the whole of the book, really. Still, I did find two that I felt worth sharing here.
  9. I think they're asking if imposed tulpas experience things only through the host's senses or if they can experience your mind's model of your surroundings in "first person", complete with the proper smells, textures, tastes, sounds, etc. So if the imposed tulpa were to "touch" an ice cube or "smell" a rose that's somewhere in your environment, would they experience the sensations associated with those actions? Or if you're in your house and they "walk" into another room, would they "see" the room?
  10. Today marks the 4 month anniversary since I first started forcing my tulpa, so I figure it's a good time to post an update. Since my first post, my tulpa has changed form again, to one based on a certain character who I don’t care to name here. Character is a young girl, about 12 years old I think (haven’t watched the source material). Also their name is no longer prince. Haven't figured out a good name yet so I'll call them Tulpa in the meantime for the sake of simplicity. As for the puppeting, I think I went a bit overboard on it for a couple days after reading a certain guide, now I’ve got it down to more reasonable levels. Mostly I just use it to help get their form’s movement and anatomy down, and to have them follow me around while passive forcing. Anyway, we had a wonderful breakthrough two days ago: while narrating, I felt what I thought might be an early form of communication from Tulpa, a tingly sensation at the sides of my head. Later on, while active forcing, I tried to establish whether or not it had been Tulpa. First I tried asking her if she could do the tingly thing on just one side of my head, and sure enough that’s exactly what I felt right afterwards. Then I tried to see how much control she had over it so I asked her to move the feeling from one side to the other and back again a few times. Then we established a communication system wherein left was yes and right was no. I asked a few questions, got a few answers that I didn’t expect, and came away satisfied that it had in fact been her communicating with me. She also said that she was the one responsible for the change in her form.
  11. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but Istrongly suspect that, in your research on lucid dreaming, you haven't read anything on Tibetan dream yoga, right? In which case, perhaps you'd be interested in this book about it. I haven't read the whole book myself, much less put any of it into practice, nor have I ever had a proper lucid dream, but the Tibetan monks have been teaching this practice for many centuries, so I assume there must be something to their methods. And hey, maybe simply looking at the problem from a different angle will give you some useful insights. If you do decide to read it, then let me to give you some words of advice: If the religious flavor of it puts you off, just ignore it as best you can. Nevertheless, try not to skip anything unless you're certain that it has nothing to do with achieving lucid dreaming. And if you decide to try out the methods in the book, should the book tell you that you need to do some chakra-working or whatever in order to achieve lucid dreaming, then do it. If you don't believe in chakras, that's fine, but still do it. Whether or not chakras are real doesn't matter, what matters is whether or not you get results from working with a model of lucid dreaming which assumes the existence of chakras. Think of it like how physicists' current model of the universe assumes the existence of dark matter and dark energy, despite the fact that neither one has actually been proven to exist, simply because their calculations get better results if done under the assumption that DM and DE do in fact exist. Regardless of whether or not you read the book, best of luck to (all of) you either way.
  12. I suppose it depends on how you define both consciousness and language. Ants and other social insects, which very few people would call conscious beings, are nevertheless perfectly capable of communication, just not through spoken and written language as humans do.
  13. Schopenhauerian Will isn't a conscious thing. Schoppy attributes it even to the forces of nature.
  14. Apparently it's pronounced like "Mushkin". [video=youtube]
  15. Since we're talking about Nietzsche here, I'm guessing the word is being used in its Schopenhauerian/Nietzschian sense. According to wikipedia: And to Schopenhauer:
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