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How are young tulpas and imaginary friends different?


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How are imaginary friends and young tulpas different? I used to talk to my imaginary friends as a child. Wasn't that narration? I used to imagine my imaginary friends as a child. Isn't that visualization?

 

At what point is a tulpa different from an imaginary friend?

 

I have been told on this forum today that imaginary friends are definitely "fake" compared to young tulpas. Why would that be? What makes the imaginary friend fake and the young tulpa real?

 

What distinguishes them? Can anyone explain this to me? From everything that I can tell, a young tulpa would be indistinguishable from an imaginary friend. Now, before someone says "the amount of time spent concentrating on them" I must say I spent a LOT of time with my imaginary friends as a child. They seemed very, very real. Were they all tulpas then?

 

I am very curious about the answers I get to this.

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From our prospective,a Tulpa seems to be a second "personality",separate from the host's,as opposed to being a pure fiction like an imaginary friend.They are still fundamentally the same consciousness though,as there is only one brain.

Host:GlassJustice

Tulpa:[Cassandra]

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Intent for them to be their own people. Belief that they are. And preferably some kind of evidence (to yourself) that they're autonomous and not completely reliant on your own thoughts. But the rules for "What is an imaginary friend" are even more subjective than what makes a tulpa, so it could be more or less than that. Some imaginary friends are literally tulpas that just aren't comfortable being called a tulpa, and some are just a person you imagine sometimes.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Guest Anonymous

Mistgod, can we just stop this?

I get that you are insecure that what you have isnt a tulpa, but you dont need to keep making threads like this in order to justify their existence to yourself.

If they make you happy, thats great, you dont need our approval.

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I would say they technically start as the same thing, but while you cultivate the tulpa to become sentinent and its own being(often from the very beginning), a normal imaginary friend is always just known as not real by the creator. He plays with it like a doll and keeps it how it is. So it stays empty, even when the creator can vividly imagine what the imaginary friend would say in a variety of situations. ( I'm talking about dungeons&dragons logic here..acting in character etc.)

 

The technics you described are really basically the same, the difference is made through your intention. So i would say as soon as you're using your tools seriously to develop your imaginary friend further than the basic doll, to get a person to talk to without being the puppeteer, it gets equal with a young tulpa (lets call it advanced day 1).

 

Well the real problem we all got here is the insecurity through doing something like that. It is easier to accept development of tulpas when they're made from scratch, since you can easier tell that something has changed. If you already had a very talky imaginary friend, it is a lot harder to tell, when it gets sentinent or starts doing stuff on their own. The conclusion?

 

A lot of people can't accept said progress from others, because they couldn't accept it when they would be in the same situation themselves. They want their own to tulpa to be no fake so much, that they will try everything to legitimate them. Don't get me wrong, that's not on purpose, but when you try something to be "scientific proven" to call it real, you probably start to feel affected when people are weakening the acceptance of tulpas in general, because they don't go with your absolute definition, so other people may put it on the same level as a regular imaginary friend.

 

Funny enough if you ask me, the whole point of disproving others and calling their tulpa fake is finally the fear of being disproven themself, because of lazy standards. If i extrapolate it even further i could argue that this is also the main (probably subconscious) reason you don't claim melian to be a tulpa, so that she can't be disproven by others at all. (Let's be honest here, if thats the case it works rather bad. People try to disprove her as tulpa, because you don't claim that she is one. Of course the disproving can't touch you in the end because of the same reason. Meh.)


Mistgod, can we just stop this?

I get that you are insecure that what you have isnt a tulpa, but you dont need to keep making threads like this in order to justify their existence to yourself.

If they make you happy, thats great, you dont need our approval.

 

I get your point, but i think it doesn't harm to reflect about stuff like that, while insecurity surely plays a big role (as i already stated above). But yeah, after some threads it may be finally time to give it a rest. Otherwise we end up in an endless chain of threads developing out of statements from other threads.

 

(Edit: Huh..neat...i didn't expect my 2 posts to be automatically be merged into one)

Tulpa: Alice

Form: Realistic Humanoid/Demonic Creation

She may or may not talk here, depends on her.

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Troy: When one thinks of "imaginary friend", they likely normally think of a nonsentient imagined being a child came up with. But, a child could just as easily work hard on an imaginary friend as anyone might their tulpa if they were lonely or bored enough to do so. And, an adult could easily have an imaginary friend themselves (though I doubt they would be as eager as a kid to talk about it).

 

I think the biggest difference is in perception of abilities. Someone with an imaginary friend who hasn't heard of tulpamancy probably won't think possession is a possibility. They would be, however, very very likely to impose their friend on the real world. Or, their friend might stay inside their own imaginary world. Their own version of a wonderland, if you will.

If the friend develops far enough in sentience and personality, and sticks around long enough, they could be considered on the same level as a tulpa. But, with different perceived abilities as a product of belief and the thoughtform's upbringing.

 

The only real "difference", as I think is the case with all plural forms, is just the labels we choose to put on them. If there was enough investment in an imaginary friend, they would be indistinguishable from a tulpa.

 

MonsterKid, I am not sure what to do with you. At least MistGod and Melian are prompting interesting discussion with this topic. You sound as, if not moreso, insecure as they do with all your snarking.

A queer soulbonding system with tulpamantic influences.

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Guest Anonymous

 

MonsterKid, I am not sure what to do with you. At least MistGod and Melian are prompting interesting discussion with this topic. You sound as, if not moreso, insecure as they do with all your snarking.

 

I dont see how saying there is no need for 4 threads on what is the same topic (Mistgod trying to get everyone to accept his tulpas) is seeming insecure or snarky. Im sorry Im not blindly nice and accepting to everyone and I was fine with one thread, but this is getting silly now. If they make him happy then thats wonderful. Making threads trying to justify them to everyone else is not.

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A thread discussing the difference between imaginary friends and not yet sentient tulpas is on topic and productive, regardless of the context that spurred its creation.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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Guest Anonymous

A thread discussing the difference between imaginary friends and not yet sentient tulpas is on topic and productive, regardless of the context that spurred its creation.

 

Not when its the forth in two days

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That's fair, I suppose, if you don't like his threads. But to be fairer, they've all been relatively different. He made a thread on the different aspects of what we call autonomy, noting how tulpas not only speak on their own, but may change their appearance at random, send you feelings or ideas you weren't previously thinking of, and even appear in dreams. Another was about varying levels of sentience in tulpas, although it seemed more about types of independence from the host. And one about puppetting and whether it was really essentially bad, as he considers his tulpa to enjoy collaborative wonderlanding (to put it in tulpa terms). Then a thread on sleep paralysis and shadow people. He had a thread on why he felt like giving up trying to explain Melian or have her accepted by the community, though realized it was only the IRC that was posing much of a problem and decided to quit visiting it. Afterward he made a thread that I thought was rather productive, on the subject of non-tulpa thoughtforms and their place in the community. And after some discussion there about how tulpas differ from those thoughtforms, he made this thread, as at first glance there is no difference between a tulpa that isn't sentient yet and an imaginary friend.

 

He's made a lot of similar threads, yes, but they seem more like one idea leading to another (new one). At least I don't feel like we're discussing the same thing over and over, and I posted pretty large walls of text on most of them. I mean, you could complain about how self-centered they seem to be, but that's just something most of us have learned to deal with. There is usually some substance behind the ego, and he doesn't complain if you respond to that substance without even mentioning him, so I've got no problem.

 

 

In the end, more threads is more content, and if they didn't exist there would be nothing instead. That means those who don't like them are free to ignore them, but others may gain some value. Whether it was his direct intent or not, I think we've had some good discussions in them so far. If you don't like that he's the only one making new threads, that's really the fault of everyone not making threads, not his. If he starts posting fluff again (and they used to, and were told so) I'll tell him. But I'm also good at turning ~fluff into actual discussion, so maybe I'll do that instead. I don't feel like this harms anyone.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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