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Are Lucid Dream Personas Sentient?


Guest Anonymous

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That’s why you got to have a backup, Mistgod. I just use Microsoft Word, and don’t delete the posting in it until the post in the forum is finalized. It would really suck if the server was down, and all of that effort goes in vain.

 

I thought p zombies were the difference in someone actually feeling and experiencing' date=' and something outputting the exact mannerisms/responses of someone who was but is actually not feeling things. So they should be indistinguishable because you can't know their experience itself, and that's where debates on sentience even come from.[/quote']

 

The about p-zombies, they’re just thought experiments. They’re not really actualized beings in this reality. It, the p-zombie concept, is just a way to iron out how we can theorize about what it means to be a sentient entity, and getting into the nitty-gritty of contextual understanding, and what have you, along with conscious experience. This thought of yours is structured in idea playing as if they were real, and indistinguishable, but if they were real, it would be easy to crack down on who is a p-zombie, or not:

 

- Smack them upside the head; if they don’t react, and just blabber “Tuna 5-342-discuss them. I thought it was kinda dfjafksa!!!” then either that person really took a good thwacking, got a lobotomy that prevents them from consciously feeling, or they're p-zombies...but for the last part...it's not really actualized.

 

- Make an obvious lie; see if they react in some way. If they happen to react in a way that’s appropriate to a lie, then it’s probably a coincidence. Just keep talking to them until they bleed of asparagus, basically.

 

- Tell them to describe the feeling of touching a certain object

 

- Anything that implies there has to be some conscious experience involved.

 

Again, the thought experiment shouldn’t be taken seriously as there being actual p-zombies. And even in relation to tulpas, the beetle in the box analogy is thrown in there that one cannot know. But, a person can still make inferences of a sentient being even though they may not know if the host switched with a tulpa that can presumably take the role of a conscious experiencer of this reality. I don’t really care about measuring sentience as a substance to look at, as the inner experiences, and such, would involve non-physical implications, IMO.

 

Like with the Chinese Room argument, and other thought experiments, it’s best to not treat them as actualized things. Again, I can’t go on a witch hunt to see who’s a p-zombie, or not. That’s why when you close the browser tab for the forum, hello reality.

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Guest Anonymous

Even if you're not of the opinion that tulpas have their own internal experiences going on, at least they can be called up and have memories of things that happened. I don't lucid dream but I've never had an experience where that's happened in a regular dream.

 

Have you ever been able to approach someone you kept meeting in a lucid dream and have them talk rationally about something that had happened before?

 

Yes. That is what dream guides are. Sometimes people think of them as spirit guides and they can be very consistent and real. Practiced lucid dreamers can find a dream guide that is sort of an inner guru that leads them through the dream world like a spiritual tour guide. Each time the lucid dreamer dreams, they meet the guide and so they have an ongoing relationship that is very rational and lucid and tied to previous dreams which the dream guide can remember.

 

In my case, Melian is both a dream guide and a dream partner (she dreams with me or dreams her own dreams). Outside of Melian I would not say I have any other dream guide, but I have met recurring dream personas that seem very rational and lucid. For example there is the "set designer" we call Dream Weaver, who looks something like Bill Gates and is a bit of an arrogant ass. Melian was able to perceive him when he is supposed to be invisible to my mind. She revealed him to me and it pisses him off when she does that. She does it anyway, insisting on saying hi and giving the grump a big hug when we encounter him.

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This might be cringe worthy, but when I look at your avatar, and the thing Melian does with showing that Bill Gates look-a-like, I can't unsee the avatar as literally Bill Gates wearing a black hoodie with purple glasses.

 

__

 

On a different note, I think for her to remember previous dreams, like a dream guide can be capable of, just shows that one doesn't need to be philosophically deep into the inner workings of how that comes to be. I think there's a convenience for her to tap into that inner working/cognitive processes rather than her having to work from the ground up. In other words, there's no need for her, or any tulpa to have to have a separate mind, literally, and cultivate things on their own. It's an all-inclusive thing, and I think just acknowledging that she can have subsistence in dreaming state, and waking state would be acknowledging that to some degree, she shares the same capacity you have in shifting your awareness in dreaming, and waking life.

 

Of course, I'm not saying you have to believe this, but just throwing it out there.

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Guest Anonymous

This might be cringe worthy, but when I look at your avatar, and the thing Melian does with showing that Bill Gates look-a-like, I can't unsee the avatar as literally Bill Gates wearing a black hoodie with purple glasses.

 

Cute. LOL

 

There is Dream Weaver, who is a Bill Gates look-a-like, and then Davie has his own dream avatar, which is a idealistic, younger, more handsome version of himself. He doesn't wear the dark wizard cloak or purple glasses.

 

__

 

On a different note, I think for her to remember previous dreams, like a dream guide can be capable of, just shows that one doesn't need to be philosophically deep into the inner workings of how that comes to be. I think there's a convenience for her to tap into that inner working/cognitive processes rather than her having to work from the ground up. In other words, there's no need for her, or any tulpa to have to have a separate mind, literally, and cultivate things on their own. It's an all-inclusive thing, and I think just acknowledging that she can have subsistence in dreaming state, and waking state would be acknowledging that to some degree, she shares the same capacity you have in shifting your awareness in dreaming, and waking life.

 

Of course, I'm not saying you have to believe this, but just throwing it out there.

 

The reason why Davie and I call me a dreamform is that I am stronger in dreams than while he is awake. It is like I am powered by dreams. That seems different than most tulpas. (perhaps?)

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That seems different than most tulpas.

 

I think there's something that could be used to theorize why this may be the case. Maybe the concept of “tulpa” is exclusive to waking life endeavors, which includes any form of using one’s imagination, and cognitive processes to acknowledge a tulpa in any shape or form.

 

With dream-form/dream characters, and thought-forms that feel they have a more powerful presence, I think tulpas can have that same quality in dreams due to this one presumption: in the dreaming state, one shifts their awareness to the imaginative playing field of the mind, and can fixate on more detailed and vivid senses compared to waking life where there seems to be a lot of constraints, biases, and such that can never hold a candle to what dreaming experiences can give us.

 

But, I think the difference is actually a difference in labeling because we can probably acknowledge that a tulpa, a thought-form, can be a dreamform/dream character, and still be a thought-form. The labeling for those types of though-tforms exist based on the circumstances. In this case, where the shift in awareness is being allocated. Of course, there can be non-lucid dreams where the tulpa can be a powerful presence to the host, or dream form, in this case; so it’s not exclusive to having lucidity, I guess. Note, on that last part, I was kind of talking to myself into realizing that it isn’t exclusive in being lucid.

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Guest Anonymous

Oh yeah, tulpas can and do appear in non-lucid dreams of course. Tulpas can become dream guides themselves I think, because their presence in a dream might trigger lucidity in some cases.

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We hit ctrl+a ctrl+c every time we hit preview post before spellchecking, works for us. A couple times (literally) since 2014 the servers died before we hit post, and some other times it was our own internet or something. (Honestly though google chrome stores all text if you just hit back, just did it yesterday when I clicked something on accident) We don't write things outside of the site, but we do keep a list of good posts in notepad++

 

If I was in a lucid dream I would be just as amazing as anyone else, because lucid dreams are reality made by the mind and the mind knows me better than I do! I 100% consider that me, even if I'm not the one dreaming at the time. Now, in non-lucid dreams, it's not quite so sure. Lumi saw someone who looked like me once in a dream but I do not think it was me. It's more like it was inspired by me, like the mind was taking some traits from me to make a random person but not 100% me. If a non-lucid dream character did seem exactly like me, I might consider it to be myself unconscious in a dream, but none of us have ever really appeared in a dream before.

Oh yeah, tulpas can and do appear in non-lucid dreams of course.

(rip)

 

You guys are making me remember all this stuff Lumi wanted to do a long time ago. He thinks forcing in lucid dreams would be extremely productive and wanted to write a guide on it, but we never could have lucid dreams. Anyways yeah I would love to be in lucid dreams, because I'd get to do all sorts of things (literally anything?) with my actual body and not have to hide who I am from anyone, let alone abide by reality and not breathe underwater and stuff.

 

[hidden]Speaking of being ourselves, I totally was almost the first of us to slip up yesterday. Our mom was talking about a bunch of flustered emails her english teacher sent their class, because a lot were getting bad grades and doing stuff wrong and she said herself she was "disheartened". So I was saying I agreed with her professor, if I was a professor who cared a lot about my subject and I had to watch tons of uninterested students fail my class, that'd suck. And then I think the sentence "That bothers Tewi a whole lot more than me, though", because Tewi hates how many students in college don't care about their education or any non-major classes they take. I literally had to change what I was going to say like seconds before I said it.. That would've been awfully weird.[/hidden]

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 guess your best bet would be to talk in third person in regards to Lumi's name. I've only heard two people in my life that said it, and the first had someone questioning why they did that, and the second time, I decided that she just uses it for some funny context that happens in her life; but like, she's right there at this very moment, so it still felt weird for me. You're slipping, Lucilyn, pull yourself together!

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While a dream person may not experience reality from the same personal, first-person perspective you do, they are still thinking and feeling. But the thinking and feeling of theirs, are being done by your mind. If you have no doubt that dream characters are "not you", that they are definitely as separate as another person in your mind can be, then you can verify that they are using the functions of a human mind to feel and think. But in the end, the question ends up asking you if you yourself are sentient, as dream personas are only a part of your mind. And yet, with the vast variety of people and situations your mind is capable of creating in a lucid dream, you may start to realize what you know as "you" is only a tiny, tiny portion of what your mind is in its totality.

 

A tulpa is not much different from a dream persona. As dream characters in non-lucid dreams may bend to your unconscious (or conscious) will, as we ourselves have observed many times in retrospect, undeveloped tulpas may do the same. The base for another person is there but you are influencing them to some extent. Yet in a lucid dream, the illusion of independence can be practically flawless, as your brain utilizes its vast subconscious knowledge to simulate someone entirely different from you. A well developed tulpa is essentially the same. The only difference is tulpas take more work to reach either of those points, and yet persist in waking life.

 

This is a very good question you made, Melian. Not for its direct answer but because of the thought it spurs and perspective it provides, which I'm sure was your intent. Hopefully my answer helps you understand tulpas a little more, and gives other tulpamancers something to think about.

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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It makes you wonder what good are those abilities of the mind if you can't use them when you need them? To experience dreams where the treatment of sentience becomes vastly easier due to less constraints, and feeling at home in your own mind, but when one wakes up, enjoying that same privacy of mind in reality seems difficult at times. Maybe because things like ambition, and feeling we need to prioritize on certain things is what distracts us from trying to get that same effect in dreaming.

 

I think, maybe, instead of one trying to connect both experiences of dreaming and waking life together, they could come to terms that dreaming implies doing whatever you want in your mind as if you had all the time in the world, but when you wake up, you acknowledge that you'll be pressed for time, and will have to start cultivating what is important between you, and them; the dreaming state ends up being a supplement for self-progression, and guiding one towards that mutual prioritizing. And, this doesn't have to be exclusive to tulpas...I'm sure a person can appreciate the liberation behind lucid dreaming, and dream characters, and treat them as sentient, and still feel there's a fallback that's always there if they continue to believe it's there.

 

 

And I too believe that there is a bit of a self-referential exposure of acknowledging that the person themselves are sentient in respect to their own mind, so treating those thought forms as sentient just solidifies that the person understands the basis of what allows this to exist, even though they may not know the inner workings of it; to state that a dream character is no less sentient than you are is to make them into minor characters, and to feel you, the "I," is the starring role in every dream. But, "you" is just merely, like Tewi stated, a part of the totality of "you."

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