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Treating Tulpas as Sentient - A Conviction-Based Ideology with Limits?


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Guest Anonymous

When a child decides to believe their teddy bear is a real person, by gum it is a real person. It's about learning to believe and see the world like a child again. My host remembers when, at age seven, he accidentally left his favorite plushie guy, Mickey Mouse, outside. When it was time for bed he was horrible distraught! How could he sleep without Mickey? It started to rain outside. He was hysterical. Mom and Dad went out to search for Mickey and couldn't find him. The rain became a downpour and the search and rescue operation for Mickey was called off for the night. Davie did not sleep that night, he was so worried bout how poor Mickey and how sad and lonely and scared he must be! Little Davie felt so guilty!

 

So, the next morning the search resumed. Mickey was not found! He was missing for many days. Finally, the remains of Mickey were found, or what was left of him. Apparently the neighbors dog had found the soggy Mickey first, and had feasted on him and torn him asunder. It was devastating to Davie. Davie's brothers and sister, seeing his terrible child's grief, arranged to have Mickey interred in a grave in the backyard with much somber ceremony. To this very day, at age 51, Davie still feels pangs of loss and guilt at the demise of Mickey Mouse plushie.

 

Such is the human mind. It is anthropomorphism, assigning human like emotions, qualities and significance to inanimate objects. This is a very adult trait and capacity as well and is linked to some aspects of mysticism and magic.

 

Think of the volley ball in the movie Castaway. The character played by Tom Hanks is marooned alone on an island for five years. His only companion was a volleyball he called Wilson. Wilson was real. Wilson was sentient. He could "hear" Wilson's comments when they talked to each other. At least part of the mind wanted desperately for Wilson to be alive and so he gained life.

 

[video=youtube]

 

There is no big mystery maybe to tulpas after all.

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The only difference here is tulpas are generally an exclusively internal phenomenon, so it's not an inanimate object you're seeing as sentient, but autonomous thought. The similarity is that in anthropomorphic objects, the "sentient/living" part is in your mind. And there, it becomes the equivalent of a tulpa, or any of the other many terms used to describe thoughtforms. The most common would be "imaginary friend", though. Any limitations based around the object itself from that point are self-induced to meet the expectations of what that anthropomorphized object is or is capable of. Same thing happens to most thoughtforms with their host's expectations.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Anonymous

Isn't it the anthropomorphism that gives the thought energy and life and animates the thought to eventually become autonomous? That is the idea behind assuming sentience form the start is it not?

 

In other words, doesn't the anthropomorphism come first and that fosters apparent autonomy?

 

P.S. It sure did with me. At first I was just an image.

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Sure. That's what I meant by "seeing autonomous thought as sentient". You don't exactly anthropomorphize thoughts to make a tulpa, since they're arguably human-like already.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Anonymous

But isn't Wilson also a thoughtform? There is a representation or visual image of Wilson in the mind of the castaway. That is what is animated, not the volleyball itself, but the mental image of the person of Wilson within the mind. The person in the mind was merely projected onto the ball like a focus or vessel.

 

If you watch carefully in the final scene of the movie Castaway, in the back seat of the main character's car, you will spot a new volleyball. The suggestion is that Wilson the person is not dead or gone within the mind. Wilson may be resurrected in a new ball.

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Yes, I don't know what you're questioning exactly. You're asking questions like I don't agree.

 

The only difference here is tulpas are generally an exclusively internal phenomenon, so it's not an inanimate object you're seeing as sentient, but autonomous thought. The similarity is that in anthropomorphic objects, the "sentient/living" part is in your mind. And there, it becomes the equivalent of a tulpa, or any of the other many terms used to describe thoughtforms.

 

I said the only difference is that "Wilson" and anthropomorphized objects are attached to, and seen as, an external object. If they weren't they would effectively be a tulpa/etc.

Hi, I'm Tewi, one of Luminesce's tulpas. I often switch to take care of things for the others.

All I want is a simple, peaceful life. With my family.

Our Ask thread: https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Guest Anonymous

Oh okay then. You had to get past the Mistgod-Melian auto-confusion filter. Yay! We agree.

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I think I found another potential limit behind ‘Treating a Tulpa As Sentient’

 

It’s Potentially a True-Apt Statement

 

A statement that has true-aptness to it implies it has the capacity of being true, or false depending on the context in which it is uttered without the overall meaning being altered, or lost. And because of this, statements such as ‘treat a tulpa as sentient’ get set up as propositions that can be true and false depending on the virtue and context the person is going for.

 

But the thing that’s missing from the treat a tulpa as sentient ‘ought’ statement is context. One ‘ought’ to treat a tulpa as sentient because it allows the mind to accept a potential ‘other.’ One ‘ought to treat a tulpa as sentient because allows the host to prescribe meaning for betterment of self. And one ought to do this because one ought to try to self-actualize in any shape or form. And one ought to do that because….because.

 

It ends up with the same existential questioning, which means ‘treat a tulpa as sentient’ implies some kind of existential factor into it. Because we can’t say to someone, completely out of the blue with no context of tulpas with ‘treat a tulpa as sentient,' and expect them to not contemplate over it.

 

Imagine:

 

Person A: Treat a tulpa as sentient.

Person B: “Alright! Cool! I completely get it now! Can’t wait to get a lot of progress in this!”

 

Realistically:

 

Person A: treat a tulpa as sentient.

Person B: Because…….??????????

 

 

Because of this, one cannot simply accept ‘treat a tulpa as sentient’ at face value, and avoid the regress that goes on, e.g., a person contemplating what it means to treat someone as sentient. It’s not a simple proposition that you can instill into a person’s mind, pack your bags, and call it a day. Some may think that existential questioning is the same old boring dread to worry about, and that we don’t really need to foam in our mouths over it (like the OP in the misinterpreting the assume sentience from the start thread was mentioning).

 

It seems that ‘treating a tulpa as sentient’ is a proposition that’s treated as an instrumental ‘ought’ because collectively, more people seem to approve of it as true. The same can be applied for other true-apt statements, like assuming sentience from the start. People will create their own because…because, because they’ve chosen to approve of it as true. It just seems that ‘treat a tulpa as sentient’ is a long-standing true-apt statement, which is why indirectly, it becomes an ‘ought’ that can be universal, or rather, true regardless of a person’s needs or desires because it’s a statement that can coincide with those needs and desires; a supplement.

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From my tulpa norms thread:

As far as I'm concerned, the line is whether they consider their thoughtform a tulpa or not. Mistgod barely considers Melian a tulpa, but she's way more tulpa-like than some thoughtforms whose hosts call them tulpas. You know? I don't really draw my own line, other than it has to be a thoughtform the host believes is autonomous or pseudo-autonomous*, or intends for it to be. Some tulpas might be more akin to servitors like my Sylvia, but I would have no problem with people claiming their tulpa was akin to an emotionless AI. What happens when someone has an actual AI tulpa from like Star Trek or something? I let them decide.

 

 

*If somebody believes their tulpa is purely unconscious puppetting and has no consciousness/sentience of its own, yet is still able to treat them as a separate person, I count it. I don't really care how you explain your tulpa, just that it is a tulpa to you.

 

I'm totally willing to accept people with differently styled belief systems with this stuff, like a skeptical-non-sentient view or just not deciding either way, as opposed to the general 'assume sentience' philosophy. Problem is, no one like that has shown up. I'm the closest person I know to being a skeptic not believing in true sentience and still having tulpas, although that's not quite right because of my weird-o subjective reality views, what I consider true sentience gets mixed up with apparent sentience being valid anyways.

 

I dunno. I guess it works for them. I don't have a problem with it, though it would be interesting to see someone deviate from the norm and still stick around. Mistgod I guess, if he didn't fight the idea of tulpas constantly. I'm looking for a skeptic that is still comfortable calling their thoughtform a tulpa.

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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I don't know if anyone has already said things similar to what I'm about to, so I apologize, there was a lot of reading and I don't have that time. In my believe system there's a higher self, and there are multiple dimensional levels in a descending order of energetic density. There's a fragment of that top monad for each level. So I see a tulpa as a fragment of your inner dimension as the monad fragments down through dimensions. To deny a tulpa a sentience if you feel it has true sentience, is to deny yourself sentience. If you absorb/kill a tulpa, it revers to its higher self, You. When you die, you will revert to your higher self on the next level. And so on.

 

I'm not crazy, crazy is only for those who don't share the same "delusions"

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