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If you do not believe tulpas are people, still treat them as if they are


Abvieon

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While the majority of people in this community believe that tulpas are conscious and sentient in the same way that any person is and that tulpamancy is the practice of forming a second, separate consciousness in their brain, not everyone holds these beliefs. Some believe that tulpas are more akin to artificial intelligence or dream characters, imitating sentience to an undistinguishable point but not actually possessing it. One of these two beliefs is actually objective fact - we just do not know which one it is yet. Tulpas either are or are not sentient. There is no gray area or in-between, and it is most likely not different for every person who has a tulpa. In this sense, tulpamancy is not subjective. We just do not know the answer to the question "are tulpas truly people?", and thus we tend to treat tulpamancy as subjective simply because there are some things about it that we cannot currently know or prove. In order to prove whether or not tulpas are sentient, we first must know much more about the brain than we currently do. Our understanding of the inner workings of consciousness is especially poor - we do not know how or why it forms in singlets, let alone whether or not more than one consciousness in a brain is possible. We will not understand the "truth" behind tulpamancy and plurality until we know these things, which we most likely will not for a very long time.

 

This brings me to my main point - if one is to treat tulpamancy as completely subjective, problems can arise. One of these problems is the idea that one can treat a tulpa any way they want to simply because one subjectively interprets tulpas as not being people. One may think that if a tulpa has no subjective experience, it is ok to do things to them that they would never do to another person. However, this completely ignores the possibility that tulpas could be sentient - even if you fully believe that there is not even the smallest possibility that tulpas are sentient, that possibility still exists. The objective yet unknown reality of what tulpas are exists entirely independently of your personal beliefs and interpretations.

 

Because of the possibility of tulpas being sentient, it is best to treat them as if they are - don't do something to a tulpa that you would not do to another physical person. Even if tulpas are one day proven to not possess subjective experience, no harm would have been done in treating them as if they did. However, if you treat tulpas based on the idea that they might not be sentient, and they are one day scientifically proven to be sentient, you will realize that you have hurt someone simply because you didn't know the truth of what they were. Which is the better option?

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well there is subjectivity 'cus you're forgetting something, that "tulpa" isn't a single objective thing and is probably pretty different for every single person experiencing them, y'know? we say that about guides all the time, that there is no one right way, but the second part of that is that there is no one correct "tulpa"-ness, like, all paths do not lead to the same place either. but we get along pretty well so maybe there's an illusion of all tulpas being exactly the same, maybe that's a good thing!

 

not related to your actual point though!

 

so I guess this is Lumi's logic or philosophy or w/e, but it makes sense to me: the most objective reason you should treat your tulpas well is that reinforcing the act of doing bad things to people or at least not treating them well makes you more likely to do that sort of thing or at least get closer to it elsewhere in life, and that's dangerous to society! that's why torturing small animals is still disturbing to people, it's the principle that matters, 'cus someone who'd hurt small animals or someone who'd hurt people in their imagination are both way more likely to be dangerous to other real people than someone who doesn't, y'know?

 

it's a safer philosophy than relying on tulpas (or whatever thoughtforms or not thoughtforms yet people have, since this sort of thing is way more common in RPers who don't know about tulpas anyway) being sentient or not, because if someone decides they aren't sentient then bam both reasons have lost right?

 

that's just about your own mental goings-on too obviously, when it comes to OTHER people's tulpas it's the same reason we say not to go around accusing people of RPing (used to be a thing), you just don't know and so it's nicer to just err on the side of not hurting feelings

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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I'd say that if tulpas were proven to be not sentient, then it would be ok to treat them in whatever way you want. The issue is not the morality of the host's actions, but rather the impact that their actions could have on the tulpa. If a tulpa is not conscious, no harm is being done. One should have free reign over what happens in their mind so long as no sentient beings are involved. I don't agree with the idea that what one thinks about  or does in a fantasy setting pushes them to do those things in real life - that is to say that violent video games compel people to be violent in real life. 

 

Assuming that tulpas are sentient, I find it unlikely that there is a significant mix of tulpas that are sentient or not sentient. Sure, there are different degrees of sentience, and very young tulpas are most likely a bit less conscious than more developed ones, but sentience itself is a binary property. You either have some, even if it is a very small amount, or you don't. There are also many trends and consistencies covering the broad majority of tulpa experiences, including the way in which tulpas are formed - all tulpa creation guides boil down to "imagine a thing and give this thing attention and eventually it will start acting on its own." When following the same core method, I find it hard to believe that different people will end up with wildly differing results, such as one person with an actually sentient tulpa and another person with a tulpa that displays sentience but is not. Under this theory, it is difficult to see how this almost universally used creation method could not result in the forming of a consciousness.

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The issue of who counts as a sentient thoughtform or not is an issue I struggle with a lot. The main reason is I have a bunch of other thoughtforms aside from Ranger. I struggled with "Are they Tulpas?", "Are they just me?" , "Are they actually sentient?" , "What about Ranger? Why is he different?" on and on and on...

 

It's a huge headache. My conclusion boils down to this: I don't want 17+ Tulpas, it's not fair to have more than five, I don't want to pick favorites, and I wanted Ranger to be my one and only Tulpa. Thus, 17+ Tulpas I do not have. (One of the more complicated reasons would be explaining to the characters the really weird relationship I had with them when I was younger).

 

The other characters seemed to have their own feelings and emotions. They expressed sympathy and when talking to them felt like they were their own people. The big thing that surprised me was they deviated. The scary thoughtforms didn't want to be scary anymore, some of the characters changed their interests sometimes to be more social and a couple expressed interest in becoming Tulpas.

 

Were they at all sentient? I have no idea. I never wanted to get rid of them or kill them off, and I always wanted to treat them with respect, I still do now. I don't care if they are sentient or not, I only care about their well being. I don't talk to them as much because I want to focus on Ranger, maybe for the better? It could just all boil down to an unnecessary mind game, but I just couldn't go with the idea of killing them or treating them like they are toys and not deserving of my respect. I see them as an extension of myself, but not Tulpas.

 

In a general sense, I think it's unhealthy to think every thoughtform you come up with is suddenly sentient and must be treated like a separate person. On the other hand, I would discourage any intentional abuse to any thought form that resembled something that could be its own independent person. If you spend time with your imaginary friend, then it would be nice to show some empathy. If it's a story character though, ehhh it's just a story character. The context is extremely important, and that's why this question is hard to answer. It's not as easy as "oh they're not sentient! Who cares?"

 

I would also like to point out that Ranger was born a story character, developed into a thought form similar to the 17+ I mentioned earlier, and then developed into a Tulpa, completing the accidental development process. He told me he was real sometime in January and after learning about Tulpas he developed even more ever since. Intention and desire both play a big role, and I honestly believe if I ignored Ranger at the time he may not have developed into a stronger Tulpa (Although I would have lived in fear that I would hallucinate (impose) him and he would no longer be bounded by my mind, so maybe not...).

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

Our system account

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I have encountered the following idea, but don't know who first presented it: "The brain can not distinguish between a real or an imagined event." When I consider that, juxtaposed with a dialogue Carl Jung held with Philemon, a being Jung believed to be very real, not just a mental construct, I am led towards a conclusion there are more sentient thought forms in our minds than we dare speculate. I mean, Cat_Shadowgriffan hints at the complexity that ensues when we start sorting who's what, what's real, am I a bad if I favor one over the other, and in dream/fantasy sequences, am I accountable for the scenes that played out... Heck, most the time people find it hard to stand up and be accountable for their very real daily thoughts behaviors, how dare someone hint at regulating an interior mental life. I am not suggesting regulation, but it is something we are skirting around just by discussing sentience, because we hold expectations about how sentient beings should respond to other sentient beings. When I consider all the day dreams, fantasies, dreams, flights of fancy, acts of revenge, lusts, thoughts of harm, or spite, etc, I have held over a life time, well... I have not always been a nice person. I think I am marginally better due to all of those past 'thought-event-realties' because they shaped who I am now, and who I want to evolve into... All of these agents, real, imagined, sentient or not, have an immeasurable significance, just like all the past ages of me have had, and I don't have any illusions that I am the six year old me, any more than I am the twenty something year old me. They existed. They may still be in there...

 

I find Shakespeare comforting here. All the world's a stage, and we are but actors.... the things in my head don't have to stay permanent. they can be rewritten, modified, outcomes change, two dimensional characters can be permitted to not be static... seriously, my one recurring nightmare of being chased by a monster, when I chose to no longer flee, it was no longer monster... it was friend. every player in my mind is integral to my being, even if they are support characters, or support characters for support characters that I never meet, and so, sentient or not, they are relevant, necessary, important...

 

but the deeper thing seems to be this other unaddressed consequence of sorting who is sentient and not... if tulpa is not, if dream characters are not, that increases the likelihood of the primary host being not sentient. the body is real. the mind, it is real. the subconscious mind is real... but personality is just as fluid as the memories we think are real, and science has demonstrated even our memories are not reliable. imagine being born in the same body but a different culture... many things about you change, and so you would not be the 'you' you know yourself as, so the you, the personality, the host, that is but a mask that a truer deeper being wear, and that being may be sentient, but the personalities? Just dream characters we use to navigate the now... or, every thought is also sentient characters in this thing called life that we stumble through blindly, as if we actually see the real world as it is... we don't. We don't even experience a tenth of what's real.

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