What are we doing?

[tulpa001]

I guess individuals want to make certain endeavors a special snowflake from others.

:/ Um, I disagree? I would never base an argument on the idea of separating myself into a club of exclusivity.

 

I have a feeling that self-fulfilling prophecies, or just the notion of things being believed into existence seems to undermine your existence.

If such things were actually possible, it wouldn't undermine such existence if you think about it. If you really could create stuff with just the power of the mind, how does that make the stuff less real?

 

The self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t have to be exclusive to tulpas, as I believe along with Linkzelda that it’s more of an inclusive thing;

You know what? You're right. I don't like self fulfilling prophecies. But in general. Because it is an illusion. Thinking that you will win does not make you win. Thinking that you will lose does not make you lose. It is the action that follows that determines the result. If people are two weak willed to separate belief from action, then I guess self fulfilling prophesies are real for them.

 

In an investigation of what a tulpa is, I think the actions that go into creating one are worth examining. But not the beliefs that precede the actions.

 

Human nature may be subjective, but there’s going to be similar yearnings and desires either way. It’s part of the drive for self-actualization, self-realization, and other humanistic inquiries and pursuits. The same could be stated on soulbonds, daemons, medians, plurals, etc.; what people could categorize as different thoughtforms. But what seems to distract some people is not so much of doing the comparative analysis on what-ifs, but more so of being disgusted of having others thinking their existence was solely grounded upon transcendental and spiritual rooting with Buddhism. But if you absolve your fear from that rooting, since it isn’t who you are chalked up as, then maybe you could objectify the process, and see it's all contingent upon valuators such as yourself.

Note that I was responding in part to the OP. To quote:

This hypothesis is that Tulpamancy, or whatever you would like to call it, is a Buddhist technique to become closer to the Buddha, or attain even enlightenment.

I doubt the OP was using metaphor here.

 

Because you're right. You can't really get a tulpa without some type or degree of spiritual enlightenment. But buddhism is not another word for spiritual enlightenment.

 

By all means, run your comparative analysis.

 

Overall, I think your post downplays the variety of thoughtforms. There are many thoughtforms in the western tradition beyond tulpas.

 

I hypothesise that you are switched in order to test out the assertion that being switched grants greater insight into the reality of consciousness and/or tulpas. However, I have made an observation:

 

You are much better at communicating clearly than he is. It is fascinating.

[Lucilyn]

You know what? You're right. I don't like self fulfilling prophecies. But in general. Because it is an illusion. Thinking that you will win does not make you win. Thinking that you will lose does not make you lose. It is the action that follows that determines the result.

 

Do you not know what a self-fulfilling prophecy is? It's called that because believing it's true makes it true by influencing your actions. It's super simple. When a team isn't doing so well in a game, even though they have the potential to win still, if they all believed they were going to lose, there's a high chance they'd play more poorly and actually lose because of it. Or thinking you're going to get bad grades or etc. etc.

 

Yeah sure maybe "strong willed" people aren't affected by it, but I think those people are just better at selecting their beliefs or being realistic. It's totally natural to have less motivation to do something if you believe it's unlikely to benefit you, and that's why self-fulfilling prophecies are the term people use to say "If you keep thinking negatively like that you're gonna make it true!" It's nothin' metaphysical.

[tulpa001]

Do you not know what a self-fulfilling prophecy is?

Okay. You win. Self fulfilling prophesies are real.

[Guest Anonymous]

Sometimes I learn a lot more from uncomfortable dialogue than I do from a tea party. I have learned a lot form everyone here on this forum.

[ricinsbluebox]

Mistgod: I didn't mean to say that we were at all *like* Buddhists and thoughtforming, but I do agree that in some part Tulpamancy is definitely different than what was practiced in the East. I will say that even if it's a radical departure, we still built on the idea of thoughtforming. So there's that I suppose.

 

I see I missed quite a bit when I commented though, holy cow. *facedesks for forgetting to sub to thread*

[Guest Anonymous]

No worries ricinbluebox, we are grateful for an interesting topic! I can agree that tulpamancy is based on thoughtforming, just as a movie screenplay is often based on a book. You know how much a movie can depart from the original book.

[| Eva |]

Tulpa001

If such things were actually possible, it wouldn't undermine such existence if you think about it. If you really could create stuff with just the power of the mind, how does that make the stuff less real?

 

Self-fulfilling prophecies can be applied in different contexts, as you saw Lucilyn point out. And I guess what you’re emphasizing more is the level of ease the mind can create stuff correlates to it being a certain level of real/imaginary. Now, the context I’m trying to use in ‘believed into existence’ is probably a poor choice in wording, as I was trying to be simple in my usage.

 

So let’s go with the idea of self-fulfilling prophecies in context of tulpas, and treating them as sentient as the notion of a self arising. Not necessarily existing in a manner that gets scaled metaphysically (e.g. more physical, or just as physical as this, or that). Now, going back to the question you had with ‘if you could create stuff with just the power of the mind,’ I feel maybe it’s a category error here, and here’s why:

 

- Let’s go with some constraints, and I’m talking about the constraint of a person not being able, with the blink of an eye, change their unconscious/subliminal thoughts and processes.

 

- Creating thoughts with just the power of the mind doesn’t, IMO, mean something is less/more real to the person in a metaphysical sense since mental phenomenon that we’re acknowledging is within said mind doesn’t transcend the capacities of that mind; it’s within the capacity of the mind. Now, when I made the assumption that you felt the ease of the mind creating thoughts, and such (e.g. impression of an ‘other’ self), I thought you were a bit agitated that it undermined your existence. BUT, I saw that you’re not really foaming in the mouth about this. I was going by conjecture, and had my own labeling of thought-forms that react a certain way to this. But, it’s all good, I guess because you were confused as to how ease of the mind doing such and such would undermine anything.

 

 

Tulpa001

You know what? You're right. I don't like self fulfilling prophecies. But in general. Because it is an illusion.

 

I know Lucilyn actually explained this very concisely with examples, but I’ll still go ahead and quickly get my point across, hopefully:

 

- Self-fulfilling prophecies in the context you see as an illusion applies to a reality where our subjective thoughts alone are capable of physically interacting with this reality, and instantiating something from it. But, we know that this isn’t the case, and said reality is an objective reality that exists regardless of our beliefs of doing such and such with it, or being locked into constraints of it.

 

- Now, if we apply this notion of yours from within, then yes, it’s easy to chalk things up as an illusion, because one would be reveling in representations of what reality could be along with whatever imaginative potential they have within their cognition in general. This is why one would get the conflict between real/imaginary, and maybe this is why some tulpas prefer applying context with this reality, and some degree of interest with inward experiences.

 

- With this in mind, one has to consider that self-fulfilling prophecies being real/imaginary is dependent on how the person changes the dynamic of what real is within a certain state of being. Some people may see that if things are created from within, it would be real in context of it actually happening in their inner, subjective experience. Not real in context of being physical, because it’s all mental phenomenon with varying degrees in continuity in form, and such.

 

- This is the part where Lucilyn would state there isn’t anything metaphysical going on at a transcendental, or cosmic level. Because it’s understanding constraints within certain stages of being, and awareness, and reality itself. The part where people talk about illusions, from our experience, are people that slightly jab at subjectivist mentalities – which is literally anything that involves mental thought, and subjectivity of valuators such as ourselves being sufficient enough to validate unquestionably

 

- But I don’t revel in such thought being true, and neither does Linkzelda; the extreme ones are usually the issue, like solipsism.

[tulpa001]

At this point, I believe he and you were talking cross purpose on the first point there, about the power of belief. So, I am going to ignore that.

 

If you want, chalk it up to him having a lower reading comprehension than me. Combining a large number of complex points confuses him slightly.

 

Regardless, he was echoing my position on the matter. Which, for the record, I will outline:

 

A belief in the mind will influence the behaviour of a person. However, the behaviour, alone, influences the outcome. If a person resolves to execute a task, for example, regardless of belief, then the task will be fulfilled. This separates the belief, the prophesy from the fulfilment thereof. Now, is this likely to happen? No. Large numbers of people do not like the idea of futile action. So they'd conserve energy, or just do something more productive, instead.

 

Ultimately, one could say that the prophesy only works if you believe in it. If one were to look at the prophesy "I'm going to fail math", really look at it, then go "F**k that!", then the prophesy's power will be destroyed.

 

Proving that the prophesy was an illusion to begin with.

 

---

 

- Self-fulfilling prophecies in the context you see as an illusion applies to a reality where our subjective thoughts alone are capable of physically interacting with this reality, and instantiating something from it. But, we know that this isn’t the case, and said reality is an objective reality that exists regardless of our beliefs of doing such and such with it, or being locked into constraints of it.

Yes.

 

- Now, if we apply this notion of yours from within, then yes, it’s easy to chalk things up as an illusion, because one would be reveling in representations of what reality could be along with whatever imaginative potential they have within their cognition in general. This is why one would get the conflict between real/imaginary, and maybe this is why some tulpas prefer applying context with this reality, and some degree of interest with inward experiences.

Are you meaning to say here that some would doubt the results of creating a tulpa by the idea that the product of fervent belief is no doubt infused with confirmation bias? This is definitely not what Tulpa was arguing. Although, We both think this happens.

 

Are you saying that because of this subjectivity of experience, some may cling to notions of internal, self contained reality?

 

- With this in mind, one has to consider that self-fulfilling prophecies being real/imaginary is dependent on how the person changes the dynamic of what real is within a certain state of being. Some people may see that if things are created from within, it would be real in context of it actually happening in their inner, subjective experience. Not real in context of being physical, because it’s all mental phenomenon with varying degrees in continuity in form, and such.

I would like to point out here that we do not believe the mental to be separate from the physical. All mental phenomenon are physical phenomenon. However, it is a ridiculous idea that such phenomenon occur outside the brain. So mental reality is a convenience to apply to phenomenon that occur in the brain.

 

I don't think either of us believe that subjective is a word that applies to anything other than experience or viewpoint.

 

- This is the part where Lucilyn would state there isn’t anything metaphysical going on at a transcendental, or cosmic level. Because it’s understanding constraints within certain stages of being, and awareness, and reality itself. The part where people talk about illusions, from our experience, are people that slightly jab at subjectivist mentalities – which is literally anything that involves mental thought, and subjectivity of valuators such as ourselves being sufficient enough to validate unquestionably

 

- But I don’t revel in such thought being true, and neither does Linkzelda; the extreme ones are usually the issue, like solipsism.

Here's one. Everything physical can not be known with certainty. The only things that can are math and that you exist.

 

I think solipsism is ridiculous mainly because it ignores that the weight of evidence generates an extreme probability that multiple people exist.

 

Anyway, I'd love to continue this conversation, but I've lost sight of its relevance to the thread topic and also, sight of the point you are trying to carry across, and whether I agree or disagree with it. So, um...

[| Eva |]

This separates the belief, the prophesy from the fulfilment thereof. Now, is this likely to happen? No. Large numbers of people do not like the idea of futile action. So they'd conserve energy, or just do something more productive, instead.

 

Ultimately, one could say that the prophesy only works if you believe in it. If one were to look at the prophesy "I'm going to fail math", really look at it, then go "F**k that!", then the prophesy's power will be destroyed.

 

Proving that the prophesy was an illusion to begin with.

 

Self-fulfilling prophecies can backfire, but said backfiring doesn’t mean it was an illusion all along. It just so happened that the person’s choice to shrug it off was the expectation they had in mind that ended up being true. In other words, it’s just shrugging off one outcome to revel in, and replacing it with a different preference. I think applying ‘illusion’ to a prophecy, or an expectation doesn’t seem to do much as ironically, the prophecy was false to begin with, but the person evoked a behavior that happened to fulfill it. But in this case with the example you presented, it was not. It's an 'illusion' if the person thought it was pre-destined, but I don't think people take it that far. But if they do, then okay, but I'm focused more on sustained thought of a preferred outcome to actually pursue for instead; not a pursuit of changing which bread to eat because someone thought, 'F this.'

 

The only thing I would say doesn’t make sense is how the behavior alone predicts the outcome. I would still say that beliefs and expectations would create their own reality, or rather, one’s own conception of the event.

 

Are you meaning to say here that some would doubt the results of creating a tulpa by the idea that the product of fervent belief is no doubt infused with confirmation bias? This is definitely not what Tulpa was arguing. Although, We both think this happens.

 

Are you saying that because of this subjectivity of experience, some may cling to notions of internal, self contained reality?

 

 

I wouldn’t say sustained belief is fused with confirmation bias, but rather behavioral confirmation. It’s a type of self-fulfilling prophecy, and I think it’s more suitable for this thread as the general definition of self-fulfilling prophecy seems to apply to literature, and for the sake of example.

 

In relation to tulpas, the tulpa would be the target in which the host treats as sentient to confirm with their beliefs. Whatever those beliefs are will vary from person to person, but there would be an assumption of some continuity over what it means to be sentient, for them. But I’m learning something new: Instead of saying it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, I should emphasize that it’s a pursuit in behavioral confirmation, which is a ‘type’ of self-fulfilling prophecy that focuses on the target’s behavior in confirming the perceiver, the host’s, beliefs. This is different from the conventional definition.

 

I would like to point out here that we do not believe the mental to be separate from the physical. All mental phenomenon are physical phenomenon. However, it is a ridiculous idea that such phenomenon occur outside the brain. So mental reality is a convenience to apply to phenomenon that occur in the brain.

 

I don't think either of us believe that subjective is a word that applies to anything other than experience or viewpoint.

 

The second sentence can be debated in your typical dualism/non-dualism theories of mind, but I had a feeling you weren’t trying to actually separate mental events from the brain entirely. I guess you’re clarifying, so I’ll leave it at that.

 

Anyway' date=' I'd love to continue this conversation, but I've lost sight of its relevance to the thread topic and also, sight of the point you are trying to carry across, and whether I agree or disagree with it. So, um...[/quote']

 

Not really trying to have you agree with me completely. Just spreading an opinion, and discussing accordingly based on the opinions of others. As for it being relevant to the thread, I would imagine that if OP were to engage in the discussion, ‘self,’ behavioral confirmation, treating as sentient, and such would be topics to relate to the pursuit they have in mind. In other words, it seems irrelevant right now, but these would be things I would be talking about for any kind of belief-- Buddhism, Taoism, whatever.

[Floh]

Well as OP only has 1 post, I assume it was another of those kind trolls just throwing rocks in the lake...

Lame, I'd have loved to see the "evidence and logic" they pretended to have..

But as always with this kind of threads, people transformed it into some deep discussion, which I enjoyed reading :D