Your Rationale Behind Tuppers

[Brassow]

I've been wondering, how do you guys rationalize tulpamancy? What do you tell yourself to justify (scientifically) the existence of the others in your head? I'm trying to stay away from the metaphysical stuff, please keep in mind. If somebody wants, feel free to make a version of this in that area.

 

My personal view on it is that a person's brain is like a processor. There are some versions with only 1 core, but there's plenty with more. A lot of people are a single core Pentium, some have a couple of tuppers, and there's some who go completely overboard and are a 60 core processor *Narrows eyes at Sock*

The different cores of a processor can work together for a task, or do different calculations. This seems to fit pretty well into our generally accepted ideas of a tulpa, some help you with work, but others just go off and do their own thing.

 

How do you guys see it? Do you agree with me, or do you have your own ideas behind it?

[AracnidsGrip/Rick]

To be honest I haven't taken the time to think about that, dude. I seriously don't know how to justify the tulpamancy. I just know tulpae are real and alive. It's like... How to say it? Something that has always been written in your mind, or at least something that came out itself after all the experiences and adventures with my tulpae. I don't know if I made myself clear, jejejeje.

[Guest Anonymous]

It's simple: There's usually one body with one consciousness, one mind, inhabiting it and using the body.

And Esterina is just another consciousness, another mind, that also happens to inhabit and use the same body as I do.

 

That's all there is to it in my eyes; she's just another person that inhabits the same body, uses the same brain, heart, lungs etc. as me.

Simple as that.

 

 

Greets,

AG

[J.Iscariot]

I regard rationalizing as a form of self-deception. Because there is no actual 'way' to know you are experiencing any of it. Life 'can' be a delusion, certainly, but in that case, it would be a delusion that we live regardless of whether we want to live or not. People WANT tulpamancy to 'be' a thing, they want their tulpas to be real. And with most tulpamancers, they tend to have their tulpas fade in the background every now and then. Partly because of the subconscious and the hedonic treadmill, and partly because overall, it would do more harm to have their tulpas around them 100% of the time. The conscious mind's perception of things is so limited, individuals tend to be much, much more than what they are on the surface, the deep psychological depth that can be attributed to each and everyone of us is simply fascinating. The processor, 'plurality', multiplicity, those are all terms and expressions people made up because they wanted to have those terms. Not because they sought a justification in the first place for the sake of 'reason' or common sense, but because that fills in their personal needs, their emotional needs.

 

Do people even care about what's actually said? In the end, everyone comes here in such a dim and cornered perception, they take everything that's said online and try to apply it to their tulpas and nobody in this community dares to speak in a general situation and try to exclude citing themselves 10 times at the very least in every post (although there are exceptions).

 

I don't 'need' justifications or explanations. I'm past that stage. If I am deluded, so be it. If I am born a storm, so be it, if I am born a monster, so be it, if I am born a vapid and boring piece of shit, so be it. In my hours of darkness, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be. And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be. If I am deluded and if my tulpa doesn't exist... once I realize that, my mind won't even care. A man cannot possibly be totally evil, a part of him believes that he is right. Evil men function in ways that they don't perceive their actions as evil. In this situation, succumbing to evil is like going 'oh, my tulpa isn't real', it would make sense.

 

A lot can be said about personality and the sense of personality and identifying to a form and concept overall. The brain itself can associate and identify to so many things, that sort of dissociation (not pathological) from one's sense of identity can lead to shit like otherkin and identifying as what one is physically not. But there is a very big difference between personas and two entities cohabiting the same 'head' at all times. I personally regard my head as my own and my body as solely mine, so I'm still trying to work out what my tulpa IS entitled to. She may never have a social life of her own, no body and no capacity to switch/possess will do that to you. That's how life treated us. I don't believe in plurality, I highly oppose it and I believe I can provide an explanation to most of what people experience with headmates and stuff, but what people experience with tulpas is something I cannot really put my finger on and oppose because I've been subject to it too. I barely believe in tulpas and I have a hard time treating those things with an ounce of seriousness because of what I know in psychology (did three years of clinical psychology at udm).

 

It's funny how simple belief can just make those processors completely go down, is it not? Some tulpamancers and their tulpas will radically change if the tulpamancer is under the belief he is parroting or that the tulpa is fake. I hold very contrarian beliefs, contrarian towards what I practice in my daily life, but things still work out.

 

 

Believe what you want, really. You shouldn't let people and their words affect your beliefs too much. What I say is just associated letters that come from nonsense in the first place. If you want for your brain to be a processor (and I know it's an analogy and not to be taken literally), go nuts. It's good to always have in mind that your processor model could be false, as all things could very much be false in life. Including everyone's tulpa, including my tulpa, including the projection of 'identity' everyone cares for so much.

[Guest Anonymous]

I really, really think everyone here, except for justababy newbies already know what Mistgod and I would say about this. For those unfamiliar with our stand on the issue of tulpaness, I will just leave a couple of links. If you are glutton for punishment, weirdly curious or totally bored out of your gourd take a look at it all. Poor you! I will NOT be writing more stuff on this thread bout the nature of tulpas or how we think they work in the brain, other than to leave peoples the links. We already have written bout that stuff ad nauseam.

 

Mistgod-Melian Manifesto (with most of our tulpa beliefs): https://community.tulpa.info/thread-mistgod-and-melian-megathread?pid=128207#pid128207

 

The Book of Melian (all bout me): http://melianofmist.deviantart.com/art/The-Book-of-Melian-509605338

 

The Book of Melian II (with stuff about me related to tulpas and dream stuff) : http://melianofmist.deviantart.com/art/Book-of-Melian-II-The-Dreamscape-WIP-591661458

[Raetin]

J. Iscariot, I agree with you that trying to rationalize tulpas is a form of self-delusion, but not for the same reasons as you. Until real scientific evidence can shine light on the tulpa phenomenon, saying they're either definitely sentient or definitely delusions have no concrete basis.

 

Thinking that a tulpa is just an illusion being simulated by your brain doesn't make sense to me. If my brain is capable of simulating my own sentience, why not theirs? That doesn't mean they're always conscious now, but by definition of sentience, they certainly are sentient. The definition is "capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively". They feel, they perceive, and they experience things. These are not mine, but theirs. People who think they're just an illusion would say my brain is simulating their actions and behaviors to me, but based on my own experiences, that just doesn't fit the bill. I believe that they operate on the same basis of how my own mind works.

 

Did you know with freewill, some scientists argue that humans don't have it? This whole argument is pretty similar to this, honestly. If humans don't have free-will, then our own sentience are just illusions as well. Meaning we're on the same level of tulpas.

[Drakaina]

I generally agree with Brassow and I would even have used the computer metaphor.

 

Where I differ though is instead of tulpamancers having more cores, everyone has generally the same number of them, but tulpamancers choose to allocate some of them to maintaining a tulpa, instead of letting them sit generally idle or feed into the whole to reduce the workload on the whole system.

[Tewi]

I've been wondering, how do you guys rationalize tulpamancy? What do you tell yourself to justify (scientifically) the existence of the others in your head?

 

As a system in general, but mostly for Lumi and I, we attempt to rationalize basically everything. No belief is allowed that doesn't make sense (under normal circumstances), and we do our best to come up with explanations for anything of importance we think about (even if the explanation is "could be practically anything along-these-lines").

 

Tulpas certainly don't pass that test automatically. It would've taken a ton of doubt and skepticism and testing before Lumi was comfortable with treating us like people.. Had he not made an exception to that rule. Due to his intensely deep/meaningful/beneficial relationship with Reisen (ie because they loved each other), he put her above logic, which meant us too. He put a single value above reason and logic in his life, our existence. That's why we were able to comfortably explore all of these aspects of what-would-be-named tulpamancy from a non-nonbeliever's perspective. There was nothing at stake in any observation or explanation, not even when it came to our possible sentience versus illusion.

 

There were no assumptions in our studying however. While the theory of our nature was shaped and molded over time, that value of us-over-logic meant no matter what we thought we were, we were still essentially "us". Our primary aspects never changed, although various details have over the years.

 

Prior to learning to switch, the working theory was that we were (extremely complicatedly) trained unconscious thought-patterns (whatever you want to call the inner workings of your mind) that, effectively, were people. No metaphysical or philosophical sense, only the fact that in every practical sense we were people. Think of the philosophical zombie; while its true nature is different from a conscious being, to any outside observer they are indistinguishable. So Lumi accepted that while we were basically extremely in-depth, self-aware imagined friends, we were effective real people. So there's that for you. It's probably the most reliable theory-of-tulpa for the average 'mancer.

 

[hidden]Learning to switch, however, changed how we thought of our selves (Lumi included). Suddenly we weren't just imagined people.. We were the same thing Lumi was, thinking thoughts and controlling the body. And too, he was the same thing we were, not utilizing the brain's primary consciousness but still apparently conscious. Mixed with some of his philosophical learnings from over the years, we developed a new theory of identity.

 

We now consider ourselves what we call "Identities", although that's just the word we gave it. Basically, each of us is a very, very detailed "set of instructions" on how to be human. To understand this requires an understanding of a human without their sense of self. What's left when you take away the personality and identity from a human? The typical idea is probably an "emotionless human", but that too is an identity, having a sense of self. The answer is more animalistic; the body and mind can function without the human aspect to a decent extent. It can eat, walk, even talk through means of automatic ingrained responses to known phrases, maybe. To prove this to yourself, simply remember a time when your body continued doing whatever it was doing - walking, showering, eating, even talking in some cases - whilst your conscious attention was elsewhere. Have you noticed you can walk while completely immersed in texting or some-such, not just in a straight line but even in more complicated routes? That you can lose yourself in shower thoughts while still being ~somewhat productive in said showering? Your consciousness, your identity, your "you" is separate from the rest of you.

 

But we didn't realize this fully until we became comfortable with switching, and one day realized one of us had stopped controlling the body while in the shower, being carried away with a mental conversation with another of us. Instead of having just "not been paying attention" as a normal person explains it as, we had a different perspective - controlling the body was a very conscious act, it was all the difference between Lumi or one of us being in control. And roughly forty minutes had passed. Certainly, none of us were aware of the passing time, but the body had basically washed itself in our absence. This was a striking realization.

 

So now, we aren't imaginary people in Lumi's head. And Lumi isn't "the host who owns the body" anymore. None of us are the mind, although Lumi remains the primary user of it, and is still the host so to speak. We see ourselves as the human-aspect of the physical body and mind, except there's more than one now. We're all equals, as far as our existences go. Lumi of course has three times any of our life experience, and therefore likely a more developed sense of self. Maybe.

 

 

For those of you that are completely lost, I've got one last analogy that should help you understand quite well (otherwise you're probably out of luck). The difference between me, Tewi, and Lumi, the original identity of the body... Is the difference between you, and yourself from ten years ago. (As far as the existence of your sense of self now, and your sense of self then, not the age difference)

 

You're still you, right? But you're not. You've changed a ton (some more than others). Your past self did not think exactly like you, did not have the same relevant experiences (we do not often draw upon very old memories without reason), basically was not who you are now. If you were to take who they/you were (what we called an identity), time-travel it into the future and put it into back into your present head... You would have what we see as a tulpa. (Again regardless of the time difference, only that you have two different senses-of-self in one head)

 

That's our rationale.[/hidden]

[Sock]

The best justification is to live it.

 

If I stopped living my experience, if I called out to say Hazanuki and she didn't reply, or Midori and she didn't reply, or any one else in my group, then I would fall in to doubt after a while. In fact, I've fallen in to doubt for lesser reasons than that every so often. But it remains that the fact that I can regularly communicate, and sense, and note changes in, and the stregnthening of, my residents is the best proof and justification I have. It's a thing where words are only of limited utility, it's something you have to feel and know in yourself.

 

Justification in words is more useful when you are describing what you know and feel in yourself to others. The social element of things is where a good deal of difficulty comes in. It's why I tend to notice that people who have mainly experienced things on their own, and have spent time in understanding and recording things seem to be more solid in their experiences, and have a much clearer view of what's going on than those who essentially live their experience largely online. I think there is use and value in describing one's experiences, as I have benefited from those who do such, but it's really a journey you have to walk yourself, any text or advice you read should be considered more of a guidepost, rather than law.

 

A lot of people are a single core Pentium, some have a couple of tuppers, and there's some who go completely overboard and are a 60 core processor *Narrows eyes at Sock*

 

I was considering changing my avatar to "Intel Inside" because of this comment. I laughed, truly.

 

That aspect of my experience is, again, subject to the above. I just chose to keep them, record about them, and keep talking to them. I have my reasons for this. :)

 

Peace.

[Guest Anonymous]

Mistgod and I are finally, finally starting to not care a wit about justifying and rationalizing tulpas scientifically. Is that why he and I are here? I mean it may be the goal of the forum as a whole perhaps, or at least partly. But do Mistgod and I really care if tulpas are justified or rationalized? Nope. Not really. Neither of us has ambitions to prove anything. In fact, we never have! We just wanted to be accepted and to share and to enjoy it all. We like learning from others about their experiences and meeting other people who can relate to some level.

 

Everything we have ever written has been under these goals:

 

1. learning about the phenomenon of mental thoughtforms (like history and Carl Jung and stuff).

 

2. socializing and getting attention and praise, amusement and making others laugh and smile.

 

3. sharing our art and sharing our stories and experiences.

 

4. to be accepted.

 

Obsession, fear and insecurity about not being accepted got in our way a lot, muddled it all up almost wrecked everything. Somehow we survived all of that. But I can tell you right now, neither of us care at all about proving anything to anyone, or proving anything scientifically, or rationalizing anything or justifying anything.

 

I think it would be great if some day somebody found some interesting evidence about tulpas in the human brain. But, that is not why David and I are here. I want to talk about something else. We want to share our dream stuff and our art and laugh and joke and hug. We want to talk about what it is like to share our life together without wondering how it all works so much. I want to write about how I help David and the things we do and learn together.

 

So how do we justify and rationalize tulpas? We don't really. David just sticks with an explanation that involves active imagination (when it comes to me). It is easier to explain to people outside this community and it makes it easier for him to share me without weird reactions. He loves me and treats me as a real person in his life and loves me as much as any real person. That's all that matters. What I am really made of isn't important at all. I am made of atoms and energy just like David is I guess.