The ideomotor effect, tulpas, and possession.

[Guest Anonymous]

I was thinking about spiritualism, spirit channeling and shamanism and how a lot of it seems so similar to tulpamancy.  That got me musing about ouija boards.  Ordinary people play this game and seem to be in contact with autonomous entities.  If you don't believe in spirits then it is a really trippy thing to try.  This is especially true if you are confident that all the players are being honest in not cheating (no one is deliberately moving the pointer).  Where are the responses from the imaginary spirit coming from?  

 

It all seems very close to my concept of deliberate self delusion by tapping into your own unconscious mind.  The players are not consciously aware that they are forming the answers that the "spirits" are giving them.  Yet, they may recognize that it is not real.

 

Psychologists have tried to explain this process and call it the ideomotor effect.

 

"The movements of the ouija board cup are really caused by a phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect, wherein the subject makes motions unconsciously. These small, unconscious motions can cause movement that seems to come from a supernatural source — this is also true for other mystical practices, such as dowsing."

 

So a spirit, that is no more than an imaginary creation, communicates with the player of a ouija board using an unconscious process of the brain.  That sounds a lot like how I am explain off my own thoughtform Melian doesn't it?  I have been told, by someone on this forum, that one cannot delude oneself while knowing he is the source of the delusion.  I disagreed with that. Ouija boards are a great example of voluntary self delusion.  I have played ouija boards.  I do not believe in spirits speaking to me  through a spirit board.  I recognize it as a game.  Yet, the ouija board works quite well for me.  

 

I was wondering something about this:

 

Could the ideomotor effect explain some of the elements of the tulpa phenomenon, such as possession?  Melian has sometimes seemed to control my body for very brief periods, such as picking up a glass or flailing my arms.  Could this explain that feeling?

 

Is the ideomotor effect evidence in support of "voluntary self delusion" by tapping into processes of the unconscious mind?

 

Also see our thread Can you voluntarily delude yourself while being aware that you are the agent of the delusion?

[Temar]

I want to say that the ideomotor effect seems both more simple and more subconscious than possession. We've played around with the ideomotor effect as well, and we also possess/switch. The two feel very different to us.

 

The ideometer effect is completely subconscious. Like, even when you're aware it's happening, you have little control over what it does except maybe stopping it from happening at all. That's all the control you can really get of that effect. It also seems to involve small, specific motions of the body, like spinning a pendant, twitching a dowser, or moving the window across a oujia board.  

 

Switching and possession, at least for us, is way more intentional than that. When I take control of the body, I actively make the motions I want to make, just like my host would. I would also assume that the ideometer effect would also apply to me when I'm tapped into the body... that our subconscious would move the window across the oujia board regardless of who was in control of the body at the time, because that's just how subconscious that effect is. Haven't tested it to be sure, but I'm pretty confident that would be the case, just because other normal body-to-subconscious processes apply, like knowing how to drive or habits like locking the door when leaving the house without thinking about it.

 

So while I'm not saying there might not be a connection (because the subconscious is a weird, wonderful thing), my gut instinct is that they're two pretty different things.

[Guest Anonymous]

Okay. That's kinda what I thought too actually. I was thinking that those just learning possession, or trying to learn it, might get confused between a ideomotor effect and actually possession. I do find it interesting that those using a ouija board start with a ideomotor effect and somehow turn it into an apparently sentient spiritual entity answering questions. It is a strong indicator of how open the human mind is to suggestion and how easy it is to fool ourselves or create the illusion of an external sentient entity.

[Tewi]

You could say possession was the ideomotor effect, though that seems to lean towards skepticism of tulpa independence in general. I figure possession is the host basically channeling exactly what their tulpa would be doing, with the tulpa taking credit and the host giving it to them. Not imagining or guessing what their tulpa would be doing - you're in the same brain and you have access to their share of the mind as much as they yours. I guess that's why learning possession can be hard.

 

Switching is certainly not the same, though. Especially since it deals with consciousness.

[Linkzelda]

And for it to still be applicable to switching, well, the p-zombie argument, i.e., entities that exhibit sentience, but cannot consciously experience things, comes to question. In other words, if these motions are done unconsciously, and yet a tulpa is presumably taking dominion of the body, then to some degree, switching becomes invalidated because the shift in awareness isn't complete, I guess; it, the experiences, get reduced to full-body possession, at best.

 

However, this isn't talking about involuntary actions that can't be controlled at a conscious level.

[Solune]

It seems as plausible an explanation as any. I remember playing with a Ouija board as a child and thinking much the same.

 

I would argue that logic and delusion only have value from a subjective, survival oriented frame of mind.

Does this belief, or knowledge of a fact, help me to achieve my goals? Does it make me stronger?

If not, then I will discard it whether or not it is "true".

 

Another interesting point to bring up is the "free will" debate.

As someone who doesn't believe in free will, I see the idea of delusions in a different light.

From that perspective... you are no more able to move the Ouija board pointer than a ghost.

I would say that people who believe a ghost is moving it are closer to the truth than the people who think they are moving it.

Because at least the person who believes in ghosts is willing to accept forces beyond their control.

 

If you take it that far, then take it even further.

If we have no free will, how are we any different from servitors? Let alone tulpas!

We are just incredibly complex servitors. As are tulpas for that matter...

Shaped by the forces of nature, a thought-form with a universe instead of a mind.

I could go on but I'll resist the urge.

[Temar]

 I was thinking that those just learning possession, or  trying to learn it, might get confused between a ideomotor effect and actually possession.

 

That one, I'd say you're right about. "My finger started twitching. It's my tulpa!" seems to be pretty common in early possession, especially when the tulpa isn't well-developed. Those, I'd be more inclined to attribute to ideometer effect, and that's probably more due to a misunderstanding of what possession is than the two things being related.

 

I do find it interesting that those using a ouija board start with a ideomotor effect and somehow turn it into an apparently sentient spiritual entity answering questions.  It is a strong indicator of how open the human mind is to suggestion and how easy it is to fool ourselves or create the illusion of an external sentient entity.

 

Heh. Don't get my headmates started on that one. XD

 

I think one important word here is "external." It's pretty easy to go from "The pointer on the oujia board seems to be moving on its own!" to "Something I can't sense must be moving it!" Not a hard leap in logic for most folks, especially those who already believe in the supernatural. After all, ghosts are a lot better known (and more interesting ;) ) than the ideometer effect.

 

With a tulpa, though, as Tewi pointed out, you share a brain with the entity doing the action. That removes part of the subconscious aspect, because usually, the host is conscious of what the tulpa is doing and why. Possession is a lot like proxying, but by removing the middleman of the host.

 

Not saying you're off about the self-suggestion thing (though you may get more nibbles on that theory if you stopped using a provocative word like "delusion" ;) ), just that they seem to be two things that create a possible illusion in two different ways.

[Linkzelda]

If you take it that far, then take it even further.

If we have no free will, how are we any different from servitors? Let alone tulpas!

We are just incredibly complex servitors. As are tulpas for that matter...

Shaped by the forces of nature, a thought-form with a universe instead of a mind.

I could go on but I'll resist the urge.

 

 

Servitor

A tulpa-like entity with seemingly no willpower, volition or sentience of its own; a mental puppet that may seem to act independently but acts only as a servant to its creator.

 

 

If we’re incredibly complex servitors, then we’re just incredibly complex individuals with barely any capacity of having genuine willpower, volition, or sentience of our own, i.e., p-zombies. It would mean that we cannot even know our own mind, and that we can never come to terms if we really are sentient ourselves; you wouldn’t even come to the inference to make an evaluation as you’ve done so now if you were incapable of having the capacity for sentience. Treating a tulpa as sentient would become an ethic devoid of value.

 

So, the difference from servitors is probably due to us not really being conceived as p-zombies. As for tulpas, I think trying to create a distinction seems to create a false dilemma, as, IMO, there would be interdependence within the mind. If something like, having experiential context over time to sustain a continuity of self can define us in some way, and we treat a tulpa as sentient in this same regard of being a likely event within our experiences, it seems the game changer is how much we want to take advantage of those narratives of them having a determined existence in our perspectives.

[Tewi]

As someone who doesn't believe in free will,

 

Assuming you mean the extremely realistic sense in that, from a higher perspective, nothing can ever go differently and what we experience as free will was already going to happen no matter what we did, due to biology or however deep down you want to go. If that's the case, keep in mind you do not live or think from that perspective, and believing that it's relevant at all will only limit you, because anything that's possible is possible for you too. Instilling any sort of limit on that generally serves only to limit potential that would otherwise have been there. But for philosophy's sake it can be interesting to think about, from that higher perspective, the absolute lack of free will of anything in the entire universe (that we know of). All just happens as it was destined to from the dawn of time. Incredibly irrelevant to the human life, though.

 

If you weren't talking explicitly about that then I have no comment.

[Guest Anonymous]

Not saying you're off about the self-suggestion thing (though you may get more nibbles on that theory if you stopped using a provocative word like "delusion" ;) ), just that they seem to be two things that create a possible illusion in two different ways.

 

And I think it is ridiculous everyone is afraid of something absolutely intrinsic to tulpamancy, imagination and creating a believable mental illusion.  If someone could invent or find for me another set of words other than "delusion," "self deception," "figment" and "imagination" to describe what I mean, I would love to use them.  I did come up with pseudo-real, but few seem to really understand it.  

 

Melian has suggested "fabulous" before and wants me to say that tulpas are "fabulous beings."

 

fab·u·lous

ˈfabyələs/Submit

adjective

extraordinary, especially extraordinarily large.

"fabulous riches"

synonyms: tremendous, stupendous, prodigious, phenomenal, remarkable, exceptional; More

informal

amazingly good; wonderful.

"a fabulous two-week vacation"

having no basis in reality; mythical.

"fabulous creatures"

synonyms: mythical, legendary, mythic, mythological, fabled, folkloric, fairy-tale;