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"When God Talks Back" is the most important tulpa-related thing I've ever read.


Mdnthrvst

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This book is the account of Stanford anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann's two-year inquiry into a local Pentecostal community with a particular focus on these Christians' experience of "hearing" God. She visited, interviewed, and came to know this community with the aim of understanding their experience in an academic context, and the result, when read by a tulpa host, is downright disorienting.

 

If I did a full text replacement of the word "God" with the word "tulpas", about 80% of this book would still be completely applicable to us. It talks at length about doubt, forcing (in the form of ritualized, effort-focused prayer aimed at 'hearing the voice of God' that is nearly indistinguishable from our techniques), distinguishing the presence and actions of God from one's own thoughts, and much much more that I've still yet to discover. The only parts of the book that wouldn't be applicable to tulpas are the sections that consider religion in particular. It's uncanny. Here are some choice quotes from Chapter Two, subtitled Is That You, God?

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Sarah didn't know how to pray at first. She did a lot of Bible reading and didn't consider it praying. She was trying to listen for God, but she didn't really know what that meant. "It was often unclear to me what were my own thoughts, what were thoughts that God was putting into my head, and what were distractions." Now, looking back, she can see that God was speaking to her long before she recognized his voice. (53)

 

...

 

She had asked God, she told me, and he had said no. "What does that mean?" I asked her, puzzled. She looked at me as if I were a little slow and said, "God puts the words into your mind. He just says no." It was as if the word just appeared in her mind, and she knew - she just knew - that it wasn't her own but came from God. (68)

 

...

 

These days Kate experiences prayer as a conversation. She talks; God listens and responds. (69)

 

...

 

For all the practice, hearing God's voice remains a complicated discrimination task for these congregants. Many of them clearly experience themselves as getting better at picking out God's voice from the everyday flow of inner speech, but they also clearly experience the process as inherently ambiguous, and they hesitate to assume that their interpretations are accurate. (70)

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Chapter Eight, But Are They Crazy?, is a long and involved examination of this phenomenon's relationship to psychiatry. Chapter Seven, The Skill of Prayer, includes on pages 190-191 a detailed set of instructions for 'prayer' that is a dead ringer for building a wonderland and going on a journey with one's tulpa.

 

I'm positively certain that Tanya Luhrmann has written the definitive psychological guide to tulpas without even realizing it.

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I read somewhere else about possibility that God, or any deity for that matter, is just a glorified tulpa. People read the holy books and force their interpretation of God in a similar manner to developing a personality. The tulpa knows everything you know, every sin, stress, and pain. The tulpa believes it is God because the tulpamancer believes it is God. They have no other explanation. And therein lies the danger. We know what we are creating when WE make tulpa, the religious do not. And so we get people who believe God is speaking to them, which can lead to things like cults, crazies, or false prophets.

 

It may be possible that tulpae are a natural human phenomenon that are more common than we could have ever imagined. Maybe they're even responsible for the creation of some religions.

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I wonder how a tulpa feels about being god? [you should not need the idea of someone looking over your shoulder to do good in this world and be happy, but I do look over his shoulder from time to time ;)]

 

I wonder if T.M. Luhrman(book author) found out about tulpas during his research into writing this book? Also I wonder if he did, what would his thoughts be on how similar the things he is describing are to tulpa. I might actually get this book to read through.

I don't like calling her 'my' tulpa, I don't own her. She is the tulpa that lives with me in our body.

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There definitely is a lot of similarity between the two. I spent a little time long before being introduced to the concept of tulpae messing around with this phenomenon and I found it is surprisingly easy to do. You can get a "God voice" without even realizing that it is more psychological than divine simply by giving life to what you imagine God would be like. You automatically provide the attention through various religious practices, all it takes is a little expectation and imagination. I think it tends to be easier (people often don't even know they are doing it) because you limit what will be said to what you expect to be said, rather than allow personality development. Not to say a "God voice" couldn't deviate, but who knows given enough time and practice.

Unless you believe, you shall not understand.

 

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I had been thinking about comparisons between tulpas and the Judah-Christan god recently, I just never talk about it cause I was scared to offend someone.

 

Because the more you think about how religion works, especially when it comes to the relationship between the god and the worshiper, it looks more and more like a tulpa. It helps that almost everybody has their own interpretation of the god that they 100% believe is true. If they think god is a certain way, then that's how they'll see the god acting, even if someone says they see the god acting differently. It all depends on what a person wants to see and what they think they will see. Angry god, kind god, fate controlled by a god, god that loves them, god that is upset with them. Also opinions they believe the god has. Like how some followers of the Bible seem to cherry pick (talk their way around awful biblical rules) and others seem to take it literal, and say the god agrees with THEIR opinion while everyone else claims the same.

 

The thing with a god though, is that everyone has an expectation of what the god is like because it has a reputation. Making it feel more like a single entity than something personalized in the mind. The thing that is true about the god, even if interpretation and opinion varies, is that it is indeed a god, and that it created everything and controls everything.

 

I guess my point is to say that there are so many different opinions of who god is as a character even though folk are reading the entirely same book (regardless of version) is because people will tend to personify the god as they want to see it. Like. . . well, a tulpa. God is what they want it to be. They hear what they want to hear, what they think they should hear, or what they imagine the god would say based on the tulpa's differing personality.

 

And, the longer a person is in the religion- prays, goes to church, sings to the god, sits alone and talks to the god, the stronger they'll feel the presence of the god. I used to be pretty religious, and now that I think about my actions they feel a lot like how I'm working with my tulpa now.

[align=center]“From my rotting body,

flowers shall grow

and I am in them

and that is eternity.”[/align]

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Sorry about that, this phone is always weird when copying URLs, thanks.

 

If I'm not mistaken, this person is still interviewing people with tulpas.

Spoiler

An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

image.png.4b4fd4a211261c307de1fb4de85312d6.png

 

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Organised religion makes more sense to me when adding a tulpa into the mix. A semi-separate entity forced into existence while an adherent is young and impressionable would act as pretty rock solid personal evidence for quite a while. It'd even bypass rational inquiry during adulthood if it was sufficiently well formed.

 

An adult with an imaginary friend (no offence) would be considered insane by mainstream society, but an adult feeling the presence of their respective deity pretty much *is* mainstream society, despite the two being extremely similar if not exactly the same. I suppose the only real difference here is that tulpae are defined entities with whom an individual can directly interact, whereas 'god' tends to be an abstract concept associated more with vague sensations and guesswork.

 

A belief that fuels itself -that's actually pretty scary.

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