Reply All Podcast Discussion

[Guest Anonymous]

Mine are all fickle relationships and a little shallow.

[tulpa001]

Well, it is always possible to end up in a different type of relationship than what you signed up for, but in a modern world, you can select the types you are looking for.

 

Heh, I like being cute, glittery one.

[jean-luc]

I thought the podcast was fantastic, very well put together. I highly reccomend people listen to it if they haven't yet.

 

Her situation was interesting, and I can understand the want to tell someone, especially someone as close as a husband, about your tulpas. The part I did find very interesting was that of her hoping to have multiple relationships like that. It sounded like the husband was okay with her having tulpas, but wasn't okay with her tulpas having separate relationships. That seems very reasonable to me.

 

Overall I think the makers of Reply All did a good job of conveying the idea of tulpas in general.

[tulpa001]

Going to a therapist is not going to get you diagnosed with DDNOS. First, I don't think therapists are even licensed to diagnose you with anything.

 

Second, yeah, that would have been an open marriage. One body. So, if your husband went into your marriage without knowledge, you can't then relabel your body as a time share without breaching your marriage contract.

[Solune]

I'm perfectly content to never be in another serious meatbag relationship ever again.

I want kids, but so what? Money is the only obstacle in that case.

There are always women who can be payed to bear my children, or I can adopt if I decide genetics doesn't matter.

 

That being said, I would prefer to do it the normal way. And in that case, I would only choose somebody I trusted completely.

And if I trust somebody that much, they're gonna know about the voices in my head.

And if I tell them and they don't like it, then I won't pursue the relationship further.

Pretty simple stuff as far as I'm concerned.

As long as you're honest with yourself and others there's no problem.

[Linkzelda]

I didn’t really listen to the podcast, and just read the comments from the link. I think that’s the bigger issue here. As for keeping these kinds of experience private from others, I’m all for that for several reasons:

 

Beetle in the Box

 

[hidden]The beetle in the box analogy coined by Wittgenstein clearly emphasizes on the futility in the accessibility of other minds. In other words, we all enjoy the privacy of our own minds (e.g. anything that may be going on; qualia, and what have you), and no one can access them, but we use societal rules of context to try and share these experiences anyway. It’s like a double-edged sword where it can foster some positivity and correlations over what people may cognitively share, and what have you, but at the same time, it has them using their imagination for better, or for worse.

 

Kind of like how others detach themselves from the burden of proof, and assume the activity of creating and interacting with a tulpa is crazy, far-fetched, or delusional. Like one of those comments that said, paraphrasing here, ‘come on, there’s no proof to consider otherwise,’ it allows them to initiate a conscious curb stomping of the endeavor altogether. But people act as if they can access another person’s qualia, or other people’s ‘beetle.’[/hidden]

 

Lucid Dreaming

[hidden]There are some people that acknowledge apprehension, and the infantile knowledge with psychology in assessing these things, but there’s still people gauging certain levels of crazy; like, figuring out who’s the most sane out of the crazies, and vice versa. It makes me wonder how these people would react with a person who admits they’re a lucid dreamer, and engaged in intimate, and personal interactions with dream characters and thought-forms.

 

The culprit in this case would be how they would chalk up these dream characters as demons, occult entities, or the CIA someone accessing other people’s minds. Do you see it’s just their imagination at play? Unlike the tulpa phenomenon, the lucid dreaming phenomenon is scientifically proven, and although it’s merely the process of what the mind goes through that’s proven, it clearly shows that whatever goes on in our nightly sleep is a natural thing for our minds to be doing. I could talk about cognitive processes all day, but I think people get the point here.

 

To think that each and every one of us has dreams, and at some point, were lucid in them, would be reveling in our cognition and imagination on a nightly basis. It’s all part of how the brain has cognitive processes in categorizing, and treating other people as sentient in waking life, and it’s no surprise that it would be emulating this echoing of waking life in our dreams, but just at a representational level. And with tulpas, it’s like that, but applied in waking life as well; the same processes that instantiates whatever impression of sentience is still there, but people place a ‘ban’ on said practice. And there’s even going to be people that want to ‘ban’ others from doing that in their dreams as well. But, beetle in the box—no one can delegate or control how a person revels in the privacy of their minds either way.[/hidden]

 

Relationships in Waking Life Vs. Inner Relationships

 

[hidden]We have certain relationship types to label others in waking life, and these archetypes are catered just for that. Or rather, we’re used to it being solely chalked up as such, and when others see a person sublimating this labeling and assessment with thought-forms of various types, that ‘cringe’ initiates. That ‘cringe’ seems to be rooted in seeing this same archetypical labeling being applied inwardly. But ironically, to ‘cringe’ at the same labeling is to ‘cringe’ at the fact that the brain is the one creating models over these same archetypes, and that’s what they are. So again, another double standard is created to curb stomp the cognitive processes of the brain because it’s being applied inwardly with tulpas, and what have you, but yet it’s perfectly okay to apply psychological standpoints with relationships with others, and be content that the same brain is applying the same processes in relation to waking life endeavors.

 

This dead-end people create for themselves just shows there’s a standstill over the capabilities of the mind, and the inaccessibility of other people’s mind being a major obstacle as well. So it ends up with a he-said, she-said, and people feeling others have more authority over what goes on in a person’s box; even though all will be left with agnosticism over in figuring out if a person really has a beetle in a box, i.e., qualia within their mind and inner experiences.

 

And going back to that ‘cringe’ factor, I remember threads where people seem to regret having intimate, and even sexual affinities with their tulpas in question. But I think the issue with this is these archetypes we use to describe the apprehension, the ‘disgust,’ depression (the general one, for those that think the clinical one is the only one that exists in language) is not sufficient enough. The reason probably being is that people aren’t used to applying those archetypes inwardly. They feel it’s solely contingent on waking life endeavors, and maybe there are some archetypes that are ideal for waking life altogether.

 

And even with archetypes with dreaming, e.g., anima/animus, dream guide, higher self, and what have you, it would be ‘cringeworthy’ to apply these archetypes in waking life. It would be weird seeing someone’s mother as their anima, or their father as a higher self simply because it’s limited to metaphorical representation. When the representation gets taken too seriously, this is how the ‘cringe’ initiates. So it’s really just people not getting over that cringe, and detaching themselves from that to see the bigger picture here. And I mention this because I saw one of the comments in the link that talks about reporting, and how people wondered why the reporter didn’t tout madness, craziness, and other negative connotations towards the person in question in the podcast.[/hidden]

 

I was shocked to hear that tulpamancers are moving across the country in some cases to find each other and even live with each other.  I was shocked at how serious the relationships between tulpas in different systems are.  The hosts are really pandering to the tulpas needs to a level I cannot even fathom.

____

Mistgod, I don’t think you even need to be shocked about this. I feel you’ve bathed in enough blood to easily cope with something like this. You could even chalk up these yearnings of others as tulpa and host collectively trying to become ordinary people, and searching for love, camaraderie, and such with others. It’s no surprise that the more people treat a tulpa as sentient, that somewhere along the line, said tulpa in question would coincide in wanting to treat others as sentient as well because that’s what the mind ultimately does in relation to interpersonal interactions.

 

And of course the relationship you have with others comes first. But this self-proclaimed honesty you mentioned that you would shut down Melian for her (your wife and others) is probably rooted to stabilizing the relationship in waking life. And that’s perfectly fine, but again, like what I mentioned with double standards, I think the solution to this is that perhaps enjoying the privacy of your own mind, and not vocalizing it to others as much in waking life would’ve served a long-term good for you and Melian in the end.

 

But the moment you let your privacy out, it’s too late. I even made a series of articles that went into relationships and tulpas, and discussed about solitude vs. social closure, and what have you, but I deleted it. It just goes to show that even if enjoying the experiences in solitude, and by that, I don’t mean shutting others out of the equation. I mean that by in relation to inner experiences, just enjoy the privacy of your mind to yourself, and also appreciate being able to coexist with others in waking life, and not worrying too much of their beetle in the box, and more so of your own instead.

 

But we’re gregarious creatures, and there’s going to be yearnings to just want to spread these experiences with others for many reasons. And others can chalk up the human race as a bunch of inherent fuck-monkeys too, which is probably why comments in that link chalk up tulpamancy as a masturbatory fantasy. Funny thing, dreaming in general can be chalked up as the ultimate masturbatory fantasy, but that’s assuming all our dreams are useful for vs. other things.

 

But, it’s just like any other circle-jerk we see with the link above, except instead of jerking with their private parts, they’re jerking with their collective cringe that resonates with them. Combine that with how people are left with agnosticism over these things happening, but still assuming they have knowledge of all psychological standpoints, and understanding with theories of mind, one can see this mirroring of agnosticism that creates a stigma for scapegoating. They don’t know who to really blame for having these cognitive processes of treating others as sentient; waking life, mental phenomenon during waking life, and dreaming experiences, so anyone that rustles their jimmies will do.

 

In the process, people that accept themselves as the scapegoat start breaking down, and suffer at the convenience for others. All due to how it's hard for others to collectively see the bigger picture when all they can be bothered about is creating their own canvas in their own lives with others.

[Tobber]

-snip-

 

I absolutely disagree with this - "It's best for you and your tulpa in the end if you don't tell anyone"

 

As a person, I believe in other people, and that has both gotten me far and sometimes used. In this case, however, I think people really should consider talking about what's going on in their minds.

In the podcast, they mention people encouraging tulpamancers not to tell others about their tulpas. I have noticed that on the forum before too. 

To be completely honest, that sounds like something a cult would say. And Reply All's host also comments, that it sounds scary. It is!

 

It is important you remember, that family and friends typically want the best for you. Possibly not your tulpa - But YOU. I discovered tulpas back in the start of 2015, and probably after a week or so, I seriously told me dear friends, "I've heard about something called tulpas and I want to create one". I'm not going to lie to you, they loved teasing me about it for a period of time. Fairly so, it's pretty crazy. But you know what all of them did? They viewed me as the exact same person and respected my goal. As friends should. One friend, who in particular teased me a lot about it actually frequently asked me about my process and how things were going. That's a really nice feeling you know.

I also talked to my dad about it, who works as a teacher for handicapped students (Both mentally and physically). He was a lot more sceptic about it and said I should reconsider it. You know what, that's still fair. My dad cares a lot about me. He doesn't want me to hurt myself and that's important, he atleast got the chance to warn me as well.

 

THE LESSON here is if you're proud or happy about something in your life, you shouldn't hide it from others. That's like saying people shouldn't live out their sexuality with other people. Even if there's something you're not proud of doing, suffering from or anything else, you should probably still talk to someone you trust about it. It's rarely healthy to hide, who you are. Now that's something that could cause a mental illness!

[tulpa001]

The beetle in the box experiment does not actually say that. The analogy breaks down when used to describe things other than qualia.

 

Consciousness has aspects of expression that have objective criteria of measurement. In fact, just about the only aspect of consciousness that is qualia is the experience of consciousness. As a tulpa is far more than the experience of consciousness, the beetle in the box experiment lacks applicability to this aspect of the mind, other than when investigating the question: do they feel real?

 

Regardless, I think because a doctor cannot know your experience of pain is no reason to not tell your doctor about a pain you are experiencing.

 

To be really clear, I do not consider the existence of a sea of idiots in the world reason to not brave the waters and seek an island of intelligent companions. Not to mention, both of us would consider someone refusing the idea of tulpas to be a sign of an unfit lover.

 

Um, why do you keep calling tulpas not part of waking life?

 

Also, what is it with cringe culture these days? That's why you don't read comments sections.

[Linkzelda]

The beetle in the box experiment does not actually say that. The analogy breaks down when used to describe things other than qualia.

 

This is assuming that the analogy in the previous post broke down if I was mentioning something other than qualia. But qualia can extend into many things, especially in relation to cognition. And in the previous post of mine, I was really emphasizing on how people assume they know what goes on in a person’s cognition, which allows them to use their imagination to sustain that idea, but they’re still left with agnosticism over what’s really going on in the first place.

 

Also, the analogy extends on language as well, but that language doesn’t have to be contingent on qualia itself. It just so happens that people use the analogy with the beetle as such because it’s ‘analogous’ to qualia. This creates the implication the language is exclusive from qualia, but, in order for language to be created, valuators such as yourself, and I, need to exist in the first place to even exchange discourse. So there’s still, IMO, a little more room to shift the analogy into other places before it starts to break apart. It probably will truly break apart in areas where language isn’t used, but I can’t fathom a state of affairs among others that doesn’t require language in the first place; and this is including indirect language as well (e.g. body language, etc.).

 

Um, why do you keep calling tulpas not part of waking life?

 

Where did I explicitly state this? And just to point out something from what I said before:

 

They don’t know who to really blame for having these cognitive processes of treating others as sentient; waking life' date=' mental phenomenon during waking life, and dreaming experiences, so anyone that rustles their jimmies will do.[/quote']

 

‘Mental phenomenon during waking life’ is kind of the middle-ground that I mentioned. Maybe me trying to sum these experiences a person shifts themselves into concisely wasn’t enough. But nowhere did I state that tulpas aren’t part of a person’s inner experiences in waking life.

 

Also' date=' what is it with cringe culture these days? That's why you don't read comments sections.[/quote']

 

Imagine for a moment about the purpose of this thread. It is, in some form, a comment section over the podcast, is it not? It’s just discussed through a different means of communication, is all. The podcast, IMO, is just another form of any anecdote where a person acknowledges they believe some implication of an ‘other’ within their own mind. That’s not an issue for me, because we all see these in the form of threads in the forums all the time. The issue, IMO, are the people that react to it, because I assume that with a forum like this, in an attempt to educate people about the tulpa phenomenon, those same people that react in a cringing manner have just as much potential in being curious about it when the cringe circle jerking has ended. Kind of like the person that conforms to the crowd on the outside, but when all alone, they may actually be interested in it.

 

Of course, this is only one impression of one type of audience the forum tries to inform about.

 

 

It is important you remember' date=' that family and friends typically want the best for you. Possibly not your tulpa - But YOU.[/quote']

 

You have the luxury of others accepting you for all that goes on in your mind because they were an audience that felt convinced that said experiences with the tulpa endeavor didn’t affect with your functioning. But you cannot have your experiential cases assumed as being applicable for all other cases in how people react. You just happened to have gotten lucky with open-minded people, but, human nature is subjective, and it would be wishful thinking to assume one lucky case scenario is going to have everyone else reacting to the phenomenon in a bigger picture vs. the tunnel vision that’s typical.

 

It’s also important to remember from your statement that family and friends typically want the best for ‘YOU,’ the actual criterion is going to be subjective. The actual ethical call will be different because people have different normative ethics over what’s deemed in the best interest for others, and themselves. Some may see taking the person to see a therapist, or taking medication, or even going to a rehabilitation facility as a call towards having the best interest in mind for that person. Would you still think people suggesting others to refrain from admitting they have tulpas as a ‘cult’ thing? Is keeping things to yourself exclusive to what a cult does?

 

So suddenly, a person has to express everything that goes on in their mind, otherwise, they’re considered being part of a cult? This reminds me of the discussion of how clinical depression only exist, and others ignoring the ‘general depression’ definition that exists as well, and touting me as ignorant, and egotistical. Well, this whole thing about it being analogous to a cult activity is just ego on one’s end as well. Because ignoring the sheer intensity in not knowing how people will truly react to this is what has others regretting the decision to be vocal about it in the first place.

 

THE LESSON here is if you're proud or happy about something in your life, you shouldn't hide it from others. That's like saying people shouldn't live out their sexuality with other people. Even if there's something you're not proud of doing, suffering from or anything else, you should probably still talk to someone you trust about it. It's rarely healthy to hide, who you are. Now that's something that could cause a mental illness!

 

Some people may take what you said, and enjoy the morale learned here in an asylum instead. Some may actually be lucky, and have others that are open-minded. The morale that I’m picking up from this is that the reactivity levels of others will be subjective, and imagining a picture-perfect world where everyone has deep empathy, and don’t get into knee-jerk responses of crazy and other negative labels of a person is merely ego on one’s part.

 

One can work out all the scenarios, and try to gauge the dispositions of the people they care about, and assume they, the people, know the best interest of the person gauging them, but that assessment, or rather, that inference created is not always a pragmatic indicator to get a greenlight to reveal this to others, and not expect backlash in some way (e.g. ostracism).

 

You don't have to deal with that tragedy, so of course you can brush off those what-ifs. If it doesn't apply to you, then you don't need to drain your energy needlessly, but that doesn't mean those what-ifs can be thrown out of the window for others.

[Stevie]

THE LESSON here is if you're proud or happy about something in your life, you shouldn't hide it from others. That's like saying people shouldn't live out their sexuality with other people. Even if there's something you're not proud of doing, suffering from or anything else, you should probably still talk to someone you trust about it. It's rarely healthy to hide, who you are. Now that's something that could cause a mental illness!

 

Frankly I'd rather keep what goes on in my mind private rather than alienate all of my friends and family. Sure, in a perfect world everyone would be able to tell everyone about their tulpas but I think this is incredibly unrealistic for most people.