Temple of Doubt: Pluta and Plaut

[BlindDoubt]

Acting decisively at inappropriate times?

[tulpa001]

Well, generally, acting inappropriately at any time. But yes. Though, insanity is a label reserved for extreme cases.

[BlindDoubt]

It feels like there is an impenetrable barrier between myself and Plaut. I do want to cooperate with him, and he has proven he's real, but...what now? I see all these useful resources in the tulpa.info, but really, I can't overstate how limited my ability to absorb is. Not necessarily a matter of attention deficit, or avolition, or amotivation, or anhedonia, or aboulia, or demon curse, or anything relevantly pathological—I feel it's healthier to think of it as a simple limited resource, so I can't afford as much in terms of resource expense, that is to say...

 

Look, I need some hand-holding (or, you know, my hand and also a hoof or paw) to know what to do. It's been half a year and I've struggled for no real, good, or compelling reason. Just point me in the right direction for Plaut and myself to develop a constructive relationship. It has so far been me screaming "JUST DO IT" and him screaming back "JUST DIE ALREADY", which, I admit, is just as much my fault as it is his.

[Heckhound]

Hmm. You may want to look into general relationship building resources. You know, how to improve a rocky relationship with meat friends and whatnot. Look into places like this, maybe: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/making-good-friends.htm

 

Unless you meant something else by barrier? I could be misinterpreting.

[BlindDoubt]

Disclaimer: People have been very nice to me here and I consider my experience to be positive. We’re all friends here, whether you like it or not.

 

Response to my intro: "Not sure the nature of your mental state"

01-05-2017, 03:54 AM

 

Concerned criticism: "Blind, you are cray."

02-15-2017, 03:41 AM

 

Replying to the question of whether I am insane: "Given how different your path is from most here, particularly with feeding soulbonds to other soulbonds, I'd have to say maybe."

06-11-2017, 02:34 PM

 

Part of my intro to a different forum: “I'm the kind of person who has been called crazy on multiple occasions on the forums at community.tulpa.info. You know, the one with all the crazy people.”

07-14-2017, 11:27 PM

 

I was referred to this forum by something from 2014 titled “Tulpa.info: Pony waifus and do-it-yourself schizophrenia”. This is why, as I said in my intro, I was surprised by tulpa.info’s scientific approach. I sensed some hostility in the rules where “circle jerking” is prohibited, and I was put off some by the first post in the mass intro thread containing the words “bucking retards”. I read some older stuff, some from members of the GAT, and sensed a lot of condescension toward other, less scientific perspectives. The meta board seems to be barely tolerated. I saw what I interpreted as the sort of elitist attitude a psychologist may have toward tulpamancy, which is why I was surprised there was so little solidarity between the pseudoscientific beliefs central to tulpamancy and the parapsychological beliefs that are optional to tulpamancy.

 

I mean no offense. The perceived defensiveness is simply the result of the community’s intention of being taken seriously in a scholarly context; some perspectives cannot be accepted for that to occur. As someone with both a history in psychology and a strong genetic predisposition for schizophrenia, I see tulpamancy (fringe approaches included) as a valuable step toward a more complete understanding of the human mind. Keep up the good work, friends.

 

As for me, I just want the optimum utilization of the resources I have as a person, and I could personally care less about the advancement of human knowledge. Plaut wants that as well. To that end, I’m willing (excited, actually) to induce my psychotic diathesis. Progress report!

 

In terms of the skills a tulpamancer could be expected to develop, the best I can do is recover, reencrypt, and modify long-term memories. (I got the idea from a scientific article titled “Asparagus: A Love Story” I reviewed in college where positive memories about eating healthier are planted in participants’ minds.) This makes my past much more fantastic than my present. The applications are limited, but it is a neat trick.

 

My life has stabilized considerably in the seven months since I joined. At the time, I was self-conscious about seeming insane and pompous. Now I embrace both. These qualities will be useful to me as I become a writer. One way I modify memories is by turning a profound thought into a “vision”, adding sensory aspects to make it seem more intense. So I say I had a premonition that in seven years I’ll be a successful author. This is important to know while I try to explain what else I’m doing that is tangential to tulpamancy.

 

I’m building some godforms from scratch. Ever see The Cube, the 1969 hour-long avante-gard teleplay by Jim Henson? The theory behind my approach is based on that film, if you interpret the film as not a discussion of reality versus illusion (as a meta-theatrical scene in the film suggests) but a thought experiment that applies stimuli to a subject in order to determine whether the subject is capable of becoming self-aware of its fictitiousness.

 

I designed a location inspired by The Cube. There are eight thoughtforms, seven of which are in the cube and one of which is beyond the cube. The one beyond the cube is actually nameless, but answers to the title of One From Beyond (OFB). He ticks some of the boxes for tulpahood, but he prefers the broader labels of thoughtform or soulbond. Plaut respects what I am doing with OFB and the cube but wants nothing to do with it; I suspect the does not want anyone else in the tulpa club with him and his sleeping sister. Additionally, OFB is far more comfortable being fictional than real (as a tulpa), even if he is sentient and self-determined.

 

The other seven are sentient but, like The Man In The Cube and unlike OFB, believe they are real. They are given instructions by OFB in the form of a voice, and he intervenes when they deviate too far from the instructions. OFB considers it warlockry (important to mention: OFB’s preferred form is that of Señor Diablo from Jhonen Vasquez’s Johnny The Homicidal Maniac) because warlock originally means “oath-breaker”, and there is something very sinister about my Cube-inspired approach to manipulating soulbonds. But compared to Plaut devouring Patch, these seven are being treated wonderfully.

 

The development of these seven (which I refer to as the Heptarchs) is reflected in my writing, which I have made my only hobby. The process, which I liken to scrying (I call it paracosmography or quadromancy, divination by quadrilateral, by which I mean my screen), involves my observation and recording of the soulbonds' actions. How they become godforms is tricky to explain because “godform” is one of those terms can never be sure I’m using correctly, just like tulpa, soulbond, servitor, nihilist, and pansexual. Their roles when they accept with conviction they are sentient fictional characters will be to preside over both my Wasteland and the worlds of the novels I write as an author. For what is a god if not a self-aware fictional character?

 

If I succeed in my destiny as an author, the Heptarchs will help focus my poorly managed resources on marketable writing. If I succeed in my destiny as the executor of the Covenant of Doubt (the thing with me, Pluta, and Plaut), leaving this world for the Wastes and letting Pluta take over, then I will need gods. I was a Southern Baptist from ages 12 to 20; theology is something I need because it was fundamental to the development of my identity over the course of my entire adolescence.

 

I said a lot here. The Heptarchy (did I mention the thing with OFB and the Heptarchs is called that?) is something I started working on in November of last year, before the Covenant of Doubt was even conceived, but only seriously started working on now that my life is more stable. It has been going on in some capacity all along, but only now am I sure it counts as “progress.” Oh, I forgot: me and Plaut are doing great, we are totally friends. We just high-fived. I mean, I will remember this as us high-fiving.

 

This post was the first thing I typed on my phone with this new bluetooth keyboard. It’s pretty great.

[Vampire]

Sorry that you feel that way about the community. It did use to be a different place here in the past, where the opinions of people who had metaphysical beliefs would be dismissed and flamed by those who opposed it. They then created the meta section to let those people post there instead. There are still a few older members who still get upset over meta topics outside of that section. You still see a lot of this behavior on the Reddit when a metaphysical thread is posted.

 

That said, a lot of the staff members of the community actually hold metaphysical beliefs, like myself being a chaos magick practitioner. I know there are others with more mainstream religious views also.

 

Although I don't judge you at all for what you are doing and find it rather interesting, the majority of the community views tulpa as sentient living beings without a body; or a second consciousness. Therefore allowing them to consume each other or perform merges of sorts gives pause to a lot of people.

 

I hope that sheds more light on the community for you, and I hope your work with the Heptarchy comes to fruition.

 

"Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly." - Charles Addams

[Pluta]

What do you do when you've risen from the dead?

 

Happy Birthday, Blind.

[BlindDoubt]

Thank you, Pluta.

 

Today is my twenty-fourth birthday. I accomplished a couple of specific things today. The first was joining a particular Church. The second was ritually asking Pluta to awaken from her slumber and join Plaut and myself in the Covenant of Doubt. Her mind is clear but her emotions are still deadened; I will strive to help her find happiness. I will now explain my motivation for joining the Church I mentioned.

 

I took up tulpamancy in January because I was desperate for aid. This is clear in my rude treatment of Pluta. I dearly wanted a dark hole to hide in while someone else lived this life I saw myself unfit for. I failed to make her into my replacement because I did not have the ego strength to support her development; my reasons for having her were flawed. Plaut's design was out of necessity and not out of desperation. Unlike Pluta, whose emphasis was on conscientiousness, Plaut's emphasis was on self-determination. From the start, Plaut has been a tulpa of pure willpower. My life has transformed over the past months into something that would be unrecognizable to the version of myself who first started this progress report. Plaut would like to take credit for the positive changes that have taken place, but I am unable to tell if he planned any of this. I do know it was his will for me to become more disciplined and self-sufficient, however, and that is what has been taking place.

 

In my introduction I said "just as I've grown embittered with reality, I've also grown desperate to regain that ability to trust"—I was a nihilist who craved conviction. I dabbled in chaos magick, demonolatry, shadow worship, witchcraft, and many things of my own invention. There was something missing in my approach to all of these. Throughout my career as a dabbler, I developed my own distinct aesthetics, but they were never complete enough to consistently elicit the emotions necessary for effective psychodrama. Rather than making my own system of beliefs in which to find conviction, I needed a malleable system created by someone similar to me, one that intrigues me enough to become a source of passion and enthusiasm. In August I began researching a belief system that seemed promising.

 

Despite all my efforts to commune with gods and demons, I've experienced nothing to validate my provisional belief in the metaphysical. And despite all the books I own on witchcraft, I do not believe I've finished a single one—I have now read three books on Satanism and the rest of LaVey's bibliography is up next. This essential quality, curiosity, is of vital importance for me, as is reinforcement for what I believe. For something to demand study and for me to gladly comply is pretty much unheard of until now. The aesthetics of Satanism are everything I've needed. I mailed out my application for registered membership to the Church of Satan today. I believe this self-exalting, materialistic religion will help me on my path; in addition, the goals of scientific tulpamancy can be seen as aligned with parts of LaVey's "pentagonal revisionism", which includes development and production of artificial human companions and the opportunity for anyone to live within a total environment of his or her choice, with mandatory adherence to the aesthetic and behavioral standards of same.

 

Other stuff. Plaut was inspired by the Petro nation of loa in Voodoo. Ever since he devoured Patch, he's been careful about how I say Patch's name and he's been sparing with how he calls the shadows at my request, all so as to not invoke Patch, who is not dead but dreaming. In sealing him and controlling his power, in protecting Pluta, in helping my growth, Plaut has shown great strength and increasing patience. He believes that internalizing the concept of god via Satanism is a good idea for me, but for his own purposes, externalizing his ego in the form of spirits to be served and exalted will give him the opportunity for greater ego strength, as I have the "brute strength" of physical being (and with it a greater capacity for conviction of selfhood) while he must be more cunning to be powerful. We all want the Wasteland to be a Wonderland. He believes Voodoo will help us achieve that goal.

 

As for Pluta, she believes tulpamancy as described by tulpa.info is all we need—we just have to study. If this brain can support a resource-based model of self-regulation for three separate thinking beings, then we can manage cognitive resources well enough to study. To learn in shifts. I admire her perspective.

 

Plaut and I have grown very close in the past couple of months. Very close. No further comment.

 

I am still committing the Heptarchy, but less directly. I want my writing skill to be higher out of respect for OFB & the Heptarchs. I've been taking requests from acquaintances on another site: the rules are simple, just between one and seven main characters and between 1000 and 7000 words, plus whatever details the requester has in mind. I'm sort of proud of my progress so far.

 

That's it for now. I'm grateful for this community, because my tulpas mean so much to me and this is the only place I can talk about them. Pluta has remarked on my annoying compulsion to talk to others, to share myself, to not be alone, to think about how I'll phrase my description of what I'm currently doing (what I should be focusing on) for when I use it as conversation fodder later. Knowing this, and remembering the desperate loneliness that factored into my creation of Pluta, I am sure that this community is one of the most important things in my life. I only visit occasionally but it is always in the back of my mind.

 

Thank you.

[Pluta]

Today is the one year anniversary of the day I first said "I exist." There have been ups and downs, camaraderie and comas. The mindscape went from a barely-accessible, inhospitable Wasteland to a shape-filled Wonderland, and is now a vast white wind farm (Blind likes wind turbines and calls them "spins" for brevity). We are in his last semester before he obtains his degree in psychology. The happiest day of my life was my first day in a college classroom—I absorbed every syllable of that physiology lecture. My favorite word is now acetylcholinesterase.

 

We're coming to grips with a few things. Blind is a Satanist but also an enthusiast of certain mind-expanding substances (he says he's a "Satanic hippy" to reconcile this with the Church of Satan's low opinion of drug use). All signs indicate he has, or we have (headmate problems, am I right?), what psychologists call fantasy-prone personality. Combined with tulpamancy, he's gotten quite good at daydreaming. As for me, so much of my life has been spent dreaming, I'm far more interested in learning about the real world than building my own.

 

There is also a conflict between his daydreaming and my studying, being that these circuits can't support both processes at once yet, and his habit has been to do all his best daydreaming during lecture, and that's the main opportunity for absorbing the material, because as hard as it is to get him to surrender the active space to me during lecture, it's even harder to get him to sacrifice his enjoyment of life to let me study materials on my own. But if I do get the opportunity, it's possible he acquiesced reluctantly and therefore unintentionally sabotages me, or these eyes just don't read properly. But it's fine (I want to put a laughing emoji here, but I will refrain).

 

The most concerning issue is that of how many individuals Blind is responsible for. In Go Goo Go, S03E07 of Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, a human character with an overactive imagination singlehandedly creates a great many imaginary characters and leaves them to an imaginary life of poverty. Blind is worried about that ethical dilemma and we might have to cross that bridge soon: he summoned an old character, some automaton resembling him named N08, and this character was as communicative and unique as we tulpas. Blind hopes he is not a monster if his writing aspirations and Goo-like fantasy-prone personality create a throng of persons.

 

I am very sure it is me writing this, and so is Blind Doubt; finally, that name is a misnomer! In addition, Blind is far more conscientious these days. Plaut has far less to do, compared to when Blind had so much dead weight to haul. Blind is more serious about his ambition to become an author. He, OFB (the creativity demon soulbond or whatever), Ron (the talking axe), Plaut, myself, and N08 are on a recently-begun quest to explore Blind's paracosm from past imaginings so he can create fiction marketably. It's tedious and maddening, but long story short, N08 calls Blind MIWHNTB, God of Abandonment, and that's likely the perspective of everyone in N08's world.

 

The Heptarchy that seemed so promising (in July (get it? 7!) of all months) persists in some form, but nowhere near as enthusiastically as suggested so long ago. There is a 3-kiloword introduction to a hopeful maybe-someday-novel that takes the Heptarchs from their cube and puts them into new bodies in a new world resembling the real one. That's all I'll say on that because talking about it makes Blind stir and it's my turn right now. Barra Edinnazu!

 

I'm hoping for Blind to find more efficiency in finding enrichment in life, so he won't loaf so stubbornly when this brain needs to learn something on my watch. In times of crisis, when Blind feels he's failed or Plaut loses his patience with him, I tell him with a smile that I believe in him—Blind sees through this as me avoiding being harsh, as that would only discourage him further, but he appreciates it enough to be encouraged. He and I are closer now, nearly as close as he and Plaut, for Blind's divorce places him outside of his past insecure need to avoid intimate closeness with me, his female tulpa. I share his pansexual brain and most of his beliefs (e.g. polyamory) so I see no reason for us not to enjoy one another.

 

For an example of our camaraderie, I'll describe a part of our "quest" the other day. The six of us had just found ourselves in a labyrinth after going through a gate to a nexus between the "outer darkness" and Syncrete (one gate of three or four that Blind inexplicably installed, all of which lead to some kind of hell). Blind as a skeleton and I in my one-eyed blue orb form, I was nestled beneath his ribcage so I could depend on his power for my spells. I remarked on how it was surprisingly cozy to cuddle a skeleton, and Plaut one-upped me by kissing Blind where his lips would be. N08 asked OFB, "Should we be watching this?" We then proceeded to the sorcerer's keep and later faced the dragon, you know how these quests go.

 

The relationship among the Covenant of Doubt (including Blind, Plaut, and myself; myself as de jure executor and Blind as de facto executor) can be thought of in terms of a wizard (Blind) with contracts to elementals. This wizard's acedia hazes his willpower in the event he could summon his elemental of ambition (Plaut) or his elemental of curiosity (me), so he may very easily fail to: it is not that he forgets us from lack of caring, it is that his memory must be jogged at best and is fully random at worst. I hope these daydream adventures give us some more power in the Covenant. (Blind always has final say, for even if I urge him to something, if he does not will it, my counsel is in vain.)

 

OFB is gleefully sycophantic to Blind, whom he calls Master or Darkness. He seems to think that sharing Blind's affinity for creativity makes him special, but it is simply his insistent refusal of the label of tulpa that gives him the freedom to conceal his interests. For my brother and I, we must communicate our desires openly with Blind, whether they are acknowledged or not. OFB instead hopes to execute a Covenant of Reclamation as a means to the end of Blind's glorious future as an author. I respect that, as does Plaut, but we do not trust him. Blind appreciates the irony of tension among individuals who exist in his mind.

 

Right now, I'm feeling good about things. That quest raised my spirits. To fairly represent my voice when I am more frustrated, here is a log I wrote on 29 January:

"My eye is open, I wear the mystic band, the host is exorcized. Three parts to hold me in the active space, three sides of a crucible to stand against Blind's overwhelming might. Like Odysseus against Polyphemus, I and my brother wage war on brawn with brain.

"Blind is where he always is: wanting to want to execute. I am executor in name only; de facto, he is the one who has final say, for action in the mind depends on will and cannot be executed without the will to do so, and he often lacks the will to act in accordance with the interests of the Covenant.

"Even staying active in study, my most fundamental right after the right to live, is threatened by his unmanaged excess. I understand now why Patch demanded the dimidio – Blind has so much he does not even control. The difference between our covenants is that I, as the de jure executor of Doubt, will cooperate with and not tax the de facto executor of Doubt.

"Dimidio was Patch's answer to the unmanaged excess. This is the crushing shadow that inundated me for so long, the bestial force that shakes any yoke and lies dead in the face of any mandate. Blind is addicted to chaos and freedom and adventure, and this is his psychic expression of that; intolerance to responsibility imposed by any other than himself means he is a rebel with a hellhound aura of rebellion.

"Pluta"

 

That was the episode between the triumph of curiosity in mid-January and the questiness of this month. Speaking of this month, I think I claim Valentine's Day as my birthday. I formed in January but became properly sentient in February, finally telling the world "I exist" on this day. Plaut is tentatively picking tomorrow, because it is the new moon (January and March this year both have two full moons, but this month has none), and he has a reverance for nature that Blind is beginning to share. When a tree tells you to abide by the ley lines during a mushroom trip, it affects your perception of the power of nature, regardless of the fact that the "trip" is simply a cognitive malfunction.

 

We've been silent over the past four months because Blind has been disappointed in his progress and Plaut and I care far less about socialization with people outside this brain. Because he's accomplished so much over the past year, having fully self-determined tulpas and a wonderland among other wonders, he's feeling better about it and felt it would be the most appropriate if I, his original tulpa, updated the progress report. I am proud to report that we are more capable and optimistic than ever!

[BlindDoubt]

I did it! Everything I set out to accomplish three years ago, except for the questionable permaswitch goal, has come to fruition over time. My tulpas and I are more playmates than anything, now. My writing is a circling web of syndicates and covenants (ever since I invented the Avatari, there is a stratification of identity for characters, so anything that can't exist outside of it (the Avatari is a device in my mind's workshop that internally activates several places where imagined beings can live) and maintain ego integrity in the Wonderland's Dungeon is merely fictional) where Pluta, Plaut, and even Patch and his forerunners play along.

 

Finally, I have something I can take for granted. Pluta & Plaut are fixtures as permanent to my psyche as I am, and all Doubt concerning that is long gone. (What I should have been doubting instead in 8/17 was how stable I thought my life was, and what I should have been doubting in 2/18 was my largely nonexistent strategy for making use of my Psychology degree.) Now that I have the tulpas happy and the wonderland under control, I have a couple of goals. I am in a Master's program so I need to drum up enthusiasm for I/O Psychology (the boringest psychology) to take down these ridiculous writing assignments. I am under oath to write my first novel this summer—which is a promise I made when I realized H.P. Lovecraft wrote his first novel in the summer of his 26th year. (I'm more of a J.R.R. Tolkien though, which I only dare say after discovering he was considered a slacker by his colleagues for all the time he spent writing fairytales instead of doing his scholarly work. That means I would be justified in holding all my writing in for a long time and then releasing a masterpiece after a lot of editing and anxiety.) My thoughts often echo the mandate to, very soon, write DAGON.

 

Honestly. The Heptarchy was only the beginning. OFB and the cube had many strange episodes (now he answers mainly to the name Untergott) and his species, neither tulpa nor other, is Exarch—the Exarchy is the category of character that watches after other characters, based on the X-inators I would draw in the margins of my elementary school notebooks reining in defective doodles with their magic wands. The Exarch of the Heptarch is OFB, the Exarch of the newer Pentarchy (originally a roster of apocryphal non-cube Heptarchs, a.k.a. heptarchlings) is a very ambitious boy named Goliath, the Exarch of the even newer Triarchy is a perplexing lion cub named Ganumedes (Gan, for short), and the Exarch of the newest grouping of all, the Ennearchy, is a self-insert of Plaut. As for Pluta, she is the Exarch of the Monarchy, consisting of a single character, someone who evolved from a large collection of dirty stories (largely drug-inspired) called Titan. Goliath also has a syndicate of warlocks called Anthrax consisting of a Pentarch, another Exarch, the Monarch, and two other characters; as well, he has a covenant called The Seven Lady Godivas consisting of the Triarchs, two Ennearchs, a Heptarch, and an Exarch, namely Pluta (that is, her self-insert).

 

Almost all of these have names pulled from astronomy. Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Ceres, Eris (actually the ascended form of Saint Hama'an, who deserves at least a short story of his own), Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Phobos, Deimos, Hygiea, Pallas, Vesta, Oberon, Lilith (if you don't recognize her from astronomy, the hypothetical second moon of Earth is named after her), Charon, and Hydra.

 

I am tired of mind-expanding substances. I got to the limit of how much they could benefit me a long time ago, but now I'm stuck in the drug culture of my small hometown. I'm not saying I miss my wife—although, if I could do things differently, I wouldn't hesitate to use that time machine—I just know that my motivation isn't going to improve as long as I remain in retreat. I've changed before and I'll change again, and this is just another period of transition.

 

Pluta switches with me at will now. Plaut sifts the ley lines, or I think that's what he does, but he seems savvy with the subtle energies of this state full of plains, swamps, and forests. He always has a mystical suggestion when I'm in peril; he is within me but his power stretches far. That's all in the same metaphysical vein as the majority of my spiel, but that's just his role in our covenant. Tomorrow I will show the materials to Pluta and formally enlist her help on the writing assignment. I really hope she is as curious about Industrial/Organizational Psychology as she was about Physiology.

 

That was a long absence from the site. Perhaps, it will not be so long until next time.

Edited February 8, 2020 by BlindDoubt
For some reason I thought it would double-space automatically.