Tulpa Phenomenon Overview Guide v1.4 By Amadeus and Purlox Contact: eienhander@gmail.com Some of the most real things we experience are not part of what most consider reality. If I told you it were possible to convince your mind that something existed when it physically didn’t, and that it would become real to you, would you believe me? Maybe down to small, inanimate things or superstitions – seeing faces in shadows or shapes in half-awake states that seem to be people. But what if I told you that you could create a separate entity in your mind – one that thinks, feels, and acts for itself? An entity that speaks to you audibly, an entity that you can see just as vividly as you see anyone or anything else? Would you believe me? If you’re interested, you’ve taken your first step into the world of the tulpa phenomenon. A tulpa is a consciousness that is very much like your own, in that has its own opinions, preferences, personality and so on. It can communicate with you, can have its own form, and can understand you like no one else could. It can give you second opinions on things and come up with original ideas of its own. A tulpa lives inside your brain, very much like you do. The purpose of this site is to educate people about tulpae, help people make a tulpa and be a source of information on tulpae from the scientific perspective. On tulpa.info you can find our research section, where we research and discuss tulpae and try to understand everything concerning them. We have internet relay chat rooms (IRC) where people can quickly find answers about tulpae. You can also read progress logs from other people that document their methods and experiences, and what happened to them during the creation processes of their tulpae. It’s recommended that you start by reading the following information first to learn more about tulpae. What Is a Tulpa? A tulpa is an independent consciousness in the mind, and is ultimately no different from you as far as how you think, act, perceive the world, etc. It isn’t a demon, a spirit, or an external entity of any kind. A tulpa is an internal personality separate from your own, but just as human. They are sentient, meaning they have their own thoughts, consciousness, perceptions and feelings, and even their own memories. A tulpa is essentially a mind that (usually) identifies with a form, created by an individual as a mental companion. Their form can be chosen by the creator of the tulpa, but it can also be left for the tulpa to decide on. It can communicate with you through mindvoice – a voice in your head similar to the one you use when you think or talk ‘in your head’ – or using an imposed voice, that will be similar to the way you hear sounds from reality, but the imposed voice is still internal. Not only voice can seem like it comes from reality, you can learn to impose your tulpa’s form, which will allow you to see it as if it’s physically there, despite that it still is in your mind. By being in your mind with you, they know you intimately like no external being can. You can decide to open to them everything about yourself, including your most intimate memories, your everyday thoughts and everything you know. There is no need to fear that they won’t understand how you acted in certain situation that might seem bad or shameful; most tulpae are very understanding of their host due to how close they are. To learn more about tulpae, visit the full “What is a tulpa?” page. What Isn’t a Tulpa? Tulpae are not spirits or demons. They are constructs of the mind; they have as much power over you as you’ll give them, and no more. They can’t kill you (not that we’ve tested it, but there are no records that would substantiate anything like that) and can’t physically harm you. A tulpa isn’t going to take over your mind or body out of the blue – some people experiment with possession, but anyone who does will tell you that it isn’t easy, instant, or something that can be done without practice on your part. Also, your tulpa will not be inherently malevolent unless you make it that way, or if you do something to earn its scorn to the point where it would wish anything negative towards you. Remember that the tulpa is a part of you – it won’t do anything that would jeopardize your existence. Having a tulpa does not inherently give you a mental health disorder such as dissociative identity disorder (DID) or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) and is definitely not schizophrenia. Some creators have experienced dissociation, and perhaps a disorder has manifested in a rare few people attempting to create tulpae, but such cases are extraordinarily rare. Dissociation doesn’t just happen because you have a tulpa. When it does happen it’s a signal that there was very likely something that needed addressing, like serious depression, trauma, abuse, or clinical anxiety issues. Ultimately, if you don’t perceive a threat from the process, there won’t be one. The common link between these cases is that the creators are paranoid of such things happening. If you can’t get over that fear, you may not want to try creation yet. Why Have a Tulpa? The process of tulpa creation is incredibly personal. For some it’s a journey of self-discovery; for others, enlightenment. Some are in it merely for the scientific and psychological breakthroughs it proposes. Some want a super best friend. Some want to push the boundaries of reality as we know it. In any case, it’s a rare occasion when a creator is disappointed in the result. The most prevalent reason is the bond. Creators tend to have incredibly close and personal relationships with their tulpae. And why wouldn’t they? A bond with one’s tulpa is often extremely strong, because they can know you intimately, understand you, and generally like and trust you almost implicitly and all this is due to them being in the brain with you. That allows them to understand you like no other person, because they can know (if you decide to open up to them) all your memories, your thoughts, reasons for doing things in the past that others wouldn’t understand. You might fear that tulpa might dislike you for what it can find in your memories or thoughts, but very often they are very understanding of the creator and so they will understand why you did those things. Being a part of your mind, a tulpa can also act as a controller of sorts for psychological processes. It can help you control your anger, it can help you calm down when you need it, it can help you concentrate more on what you are doing at a time, it can get help you get rid of your nightmares and it can help you with other things as well. The possibilities of what a tulpa can do are still a broad subject of research on tulpa.info, but we can certainly say they can help you with many things. Where Do I Begin? You should begin by doing research. That you’ve made it here is a good first step. We have a glossary hosted, with plenty of terms that are common things you should know, such as visualization, imposition, wonderland, etc. If anything you read uses a term that confuses you, check out the glossary. It’s under constant scrutiny, so it’s kept very up-to-date. Also there are a plethora of guides spanning the length of time that we as a community have been researching the phenomenon, each with different ways to approach creation and development of a tulpa. The guides are worth reading, but keep in mind that creating your tulpa is a process that is uniquely yours. Because of that, what you experience might vary from others without it being bad for the creation process. Don’t copy these guides, but learn from them and use them as a help to understand what you could do to help yourself when creating or developing a tulpa. Ultimately it will involve sitting and thinking, meditating and concentrating on your tulpa, but the approach to these things is something you have complete creative control over. Use the guides as a reference, not as instructions. There is a rather large section on the website for progress reports as well. These are the journals of creators as they go through the process of creation, imposition and the like, and they chronicle a great many stories that are all good reads. It’s easy to draw inspiration from these stories. If you’re a skeptic, then you might want to give a number of these your attention – you may find some more believable than others, but remember that everyone’s approach and experiences are nigh unique. Reading through the forums and consulting users on the IRC room #tulpa.info on Rizon are also great ways to find answers for questions or concerns you might have. The IRC in particular is a great place to talk to not only creators and interested folks, but also many tulpae that are present via proxy or possession. It can a bit of a trip to talk to a tulpa about tulpae at the start, but it can also help you understand them better. Planning out a Tulpa Many people have an idea of the kind of tulpa they want to make. While it certainly helps to know how you want your tulpa to look and what personality you want it to have, it isn’t necessary. You can even use a loosely defined form like a cloud or an orb of light and allow your tulpa to choose its own form later. You can do similarly with personality by not working much on it besides the tulpa’s ‘core’ personality. Or you can choose to not work on personality or form at all and see what your tulpa becomes. Occasionally tulpa will change something about themselves, and it may surprise you, but there is no reason to worry about it as long as both of you are content with it. It’s important to remember that fighting deviation does not help your tulpa, because more often than not the tulpa changes because it wants to. Imagine that you had control over your physical form, and the person closest to you kept trying to deny you some change that you wanted. You would likely find it very frustrating. In the experience of the users we have, tulpae generally hate when you fight deviation. So, don’t be controlling of your tulpa and instead be willing to accept change. Creating a Tulpa To create a tulpa, you simply have to think about and spend time with a sentient being (a tulpa) that is living or being created in your mind or brain. Spending time with your tulpa is often called (tulpa)forcing or (tulpa)forming, but it isn’t forcing something onto your tulpa – it’s called forcing because you often work on your tulpa’s form, personality, etc. during this time and can spend it in any way you like. Sitting down or lying down and focusing on your tulpa as the main focus of your attention is referred to as active forcing or just forcing, while focusing on your tulpa while doing some other task is often referred to as passive forcing. Many people like communicating with their tulpa when they are thinking about them. This can help people concentrate on their tulpa, add some meaning to the sessions with them, can make the sessions more interesting, can make the tulpa more involved and can be useful in other ways as well. This is commonly referred to as narration. You can talk about anything, and not just narrate what is happening around you. You can talk to your tulpa in mindvoice or out loud, but it doesn’t matter much to most tulpae. There are many ways a tulpa can communicate back: through head pressure, body language, emotional response, mindvoice etc. At first their thoughts or mindvoice may seem similar to yours, but they will get more and more distinct over time, so don’t dismiss them just because their mindvoice sounds like yours. If you can’t hear your tulpa yet, don’t become frustrated; it might be that they don’t want to talk, don’t have anything to talk about, you can’t hear them yet or you can’t discern their thoughts from yours. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are doing something wrong. As you likely already know, tulpae often use form. This isn’t strictly necessary, but most hosts and tulpae prefer it this way. There are many reasons for a tulpa to have form, some of them being that you might be able to direct your attention to your tulpa more easily, or have a spatial representation of your tulpa. They will be able to interact in a mindscape/wonderland (this term will be explained later), have the ability to communicate by body language, etc. The form can be anything from a realistic (or unrealistic) human body, a humanoid form, an animal (again, realistic or not), to a cloud, energy or some other undetermined or abstract form. It isn’t necessary to have only one form – your tulpa can use more than that or they could just change form whenever they desire, like a shapeshifter. There are two general ways you can see your tulpa: in your mind’s eye, or as a real entity in real life. We will talk about how to see your tulpa in real life, but now we will concentrate on seeing them in your mind’s eye. There are many ways to see things in your mind’s eye, but here we will show you how you already do it. Imagine a brown wooden chair. If you have done it correctly, you have just seen a brown wooden chair in your mind’s eye and in the same way you can see your tulpa. Don’t become frustrated if your ability to see with the mind’s eye is bad – it doesn’t have to be good to see your tulpa and it will get better with practice. Don’t forget that the forming of your tulpa’s personality, form or anything else doesn’t have to be done only by the creator. You can (and probably should) give some freedom to your tulpa to change them, or you can even decide to give them absolute freedom and choose whatever they will. There are many guides that are here to accomplish something e.g. imposition (the term explained will be later) or just to help you along the way. You can decide to use them to help you or you can get to the goal your own way. There is no single correct way to get to the destination; instead there are multiple correct ways, so just because you are doing something differently doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong. It’s also possible to use multiple guides at once without it affecting you negatively. It’s important to remember that creation of a tulpa is very subjective, that you don’t have to get the reactions or results that others do, and you can get them faster or slower than others. Further Development You don’t have to see your tulpa only in your mind’s eye. If you want to, you can see them in reality like any other living being. You won’t be able to just see them, but you will be able to perceive them with your other senses as well. They won’t have a physical body; this is only an illusion of them being in reality. Even then it’s possible to make an illusion that allows you to physically feel your tulpa’s form, though your body will pass through your tulpa’s form when you apply too much force onto the illusion. Working on being able to perceive your tulpa in real life is called imposition and a tulpa that can be perceived by its creator in real life is said to be imposed. When your tulpa is fully imposed, you can reportedly sense their relative location to you. You don’t have to feel this “sense”, so don’t get frustrated if you don’t. A tulpa exists in your mind, but it’s possible to learn to let them interact with the reality by controlling the body with your permission. This can only be done with the host’s consent (implied or explicit), so don’t worry about your tulpa starting to control the body out of nowhere. It’s also possible to easily grab control back if your tulpa is controlling the body and doing something you don’t want them to do, but it’s better to first ask them to stop doing it. The act of the tulpa controlling the body is called possession. Possession can be also used for the tulpa to use vocal chords to talk (which usually makes it sounds different from the host) and it’s possible to develop the technique to a point where you and your tulpa can quickly change who is talking. It is also possible to learn how to “switch places” with a tulpa, making them become the host and you the tulpa until you switch again. It’s a technique that requires effort from both parties, so your tulpa won’t randomly switch with you. This technique is simply called switching. After successfully switching, you will be able to see and feel the mindscape and other tulpae (if you have more than one) with all your senses much more clearly, and you will be able to ignore the physical body’s needs and senses while being in this state. Meanwhile the tulpa will be able to control the body as well as you could, because it will be using your muscle memory. It will feel the body in same way the host does and interact with the world directly. There are also other things that you can do with your tulpa and it’s hard to cover all of them here as we are discovering more and more of them every few weeks. It’s a good idea to do more research by looking around the website for other things you could do. An Imaginary World Not everyone is completely comfortable visualizing their tulpa in a void. Many people have a mental realm (or an imaginary world if you prefer), where they and their tulpae can go to and interact with the world. The world can be anything from an expansive fantasy landscape, a modest grassy knoll, the room you’re in, a flat plane marked by grid lines, to a painting. The rules and laws of physics of the wonderland are also completely up to you and your tulpae. The world continues to exist there even if you aren’t paying attention and so your tulpae can use it as a place to live when the host is occupied. It can be used for other things as well, e.g. as a place where you play with your tulpae, as a place where you visualize your tulpae, as a place where you can create many things that would be impossible in reality (like a tesseract - the 4D cube). This concept is often referred to as mindscape, dreamscape or wonderland. It isn’t necessary to have one, but it very often helps. Closing note Once you’ve created a tulpa, there are other amazing things you can do with your mind. All throughout the Tulpa.info forums there are experiments, experiences and the like that push the boundaries of what we know about tulpae and their relationship with our minds to new frontiers. The community at Tulpa.info is all about research into creation of tulpae, what they can do and how they help us accomplish amazing things. And every week that goes by, we have learned more and more. The community is constantly growing and changing based on that research. If developing a tulpa is something you want to do, then this is the community you’re looking for, and we’re glad to have you. We wish you luck with the commitment you’re about to begin. Enjoy the experience, and if you have questions, search the forums, ask in the IRC, or send an email.