Can you switch with a character just like with a tulpa?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

Tulpas are only "puppets" if you yourself - INCLUDING AS A SINGLET - were a "puppet" of your own brain.

 

This is true and also a possible explanation that fits the data depending of where you draw the boundary lines of self.

[Luminesce]

(You should read and consider this whole post before replying to parts of it, as you always seem to misinterpret something near the start and then every single thing after that branches away)  

 

1 hour ago, TB said:

However, if we were using awareness to mean that definition, then it would be accurate to say you believe your tulpas have an awareness separate from your own, which I thought was something you didn't believe.

 

I believe our brain simulates their awareness, as it does my own, unconsciously. There's no other way to explain our experiences, since we don't consciously observe "awareness"... honestly, this entire concept applies to just a singlet, a non-tulpamancer with no headmates. The mechanisms behind conscious experience are all unconscious.. If humans were conscious of that much of what went on in their brains, that'd be pretty crazy. And thoroughly useless for most of humans' history. Nature didn't consider philosophy particularly important to survival.

 

Oh, and I think you're mixing up my definitions of consciousness and awareness. Being aware of something is being aware of something. Being conscious is a vastly more complex term. A character in an imagined scenario is aware of certain things, like the context you've imagined them in, but awareness of the entire mind and rest of reality we're living in is what I said differentiates a tulpa from a character, at least at the very start before they've developed past an imagined character as a tulpa.

 

1 hour ago, TB said:

The thing is, people here seem to consider themselves to not be the ability to perceive, but to be a certain grouping of what is being perceived. The personality they identify with does not have its own awareness, it doesn't feel anything. It is the thing that is perceived and causes feeling in the first place. You seem to be saying personalities do perceive something, and it is because tulpas have personalities that can perceive on their own, that they are different from a character (a personality that can't feel or perceive anything).

 

Again - YOU are not exempt from my model. YOU perceive just as a tulpa does, although having never switched (or done the mental modeling I did) that's less clear because you still associate yourself with a lot of what's just the rest of your brain. YOUR own awareness - but more specifically, YOUR perception of your awareness - are handled by your brain's consciousness just as tulpas' are. As I said: Tulpas are only "puppets" if YOU are a "puppet" as well, of your brain. Clearly, it's not particularly useful or relevant to think of it like that, my implication being that neither you nor tulpas are puppets.. you're multiple people, in one head.

 

1 hour ago, TB said:

As a result, tulpas are bestowed label of personhood, but as far as I could tell, it is more so because it feels good and allows for immersion.

 

Sure, your brain bestows YOUR personality and sense of self the label of personhood, but as far as I can tell, it's moreso because it feels good and allows for immersion. YOU are no different from a TULPA in this way. Going by my model, anyways.

 

1 hour ago, TB said:

At best, a tulpa's perspective can only be revealed when they are switched in

 

I think what's really revealed is the difference between what you thought was "you" and the rest of your brain. Like sure, you'll be in the tulpa-like state, but that specifically won't be particularly enlightening. It'll be the separation of your identity and sense of self from the overarching consciousness - the "driver's seat", primary fronting position, whatever have you - that teaches you.

 

You're basically a person who's lived their entire life in a car, who doesn't realize they aren't the car. If you ever figure out how to get out of the car (although normally this metaphor likens the tulpa state to simply being a passenger), you'll have one heck of a realization when you realize you weren't the tires, the horn, the gas tank - you were just the one driving it.

 

In switching, you remain a passenger of the car, but are disconnected from the driver's seat while your tulpa takes that position. And it blows a lot of people's minds to realize their tulpa can drive the car just like they could, if they manage to switch without adopting this model ahead of time.

Edited January 19, 2021 by Luminesce

[TB]

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

(You should read and consider this whole post before replying to parts of it, as you always seem to misinterpret something near the start and then every single thing after that branches away)  

 

So far I have read your whole posts multiple times before beginning my typing, and during my typing even more rereading and referencing different paragraphs, to make sure I understand as accurately I can what you are possibly saying. If you have been thinking that I am misunderstanding you, I am not sure what I can do about it. (And now if it makes you feel any better, I have to start my post over again anyway, so even more re-reading)

 

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

The mechanisms behind conscious experience are all unconscious.. If humans were conscious of that much of what went on in their brains, that'd be pretty crazy. And thoroughly useless for most of humans' history. Nature didn't consider philosophy particularly important to survival.

 

I agree. It seems you just place a different importance to unconscious processes. As far as I can tell, there is no free will or agency in unconscious processes, they just happen, and it does not have awareness itself on its own (though it takes information from the awareness you experience consciously to do stuff). The unconscious is important insofar it is like 99% of what your brain is doing at anytime, but it seems to not be something that can be interacted with directly. It just machinates and then spits stuff up into conscious awareness. I also do not know what you mean by you don't observe awareness in previous sentence, it seems to me that is all anyone does.

 

1 hour ago, Luminesce said:

Again - YOU are not exempt from my model. YOU perceive just as a tulpa does, although having never switched (or done the mental modeling I did) that's less clear because you still associate yourself with a lot of what's just the rest of your brain.

 

I and others thought I had a switching experience, though. Do you say that what I experienced was not switching?

 

https://community.tulpa.info/topic/15066-rena-notes/?do=findComment&comment=256759

 

I have experienced a different personality in place of mine, but as such, my personality didn't have its own view point continue when it left, the only awareness I can determine that exists is static, and essentially just has things moving through it. If your switching experience is different, I did not know that.

 

I just associate "I" with my ongoing experience of reality (which isn't the same as my body, and not necessarily needs to be trying to take ownership of the whole brain, either), and while I am aware others have decided to change what they choose to label "I", I hesitate to myself, even if I believe I have experienced what others have when they end up making this decision. Though I am still exploring my relationship to these things and tulpas, but like I said, the awareness is singular and has never had the appearance of moving or duplicating or anything else as far as I can tell.

 

2 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Tulpas are only "puppets" if YOU are a "puppet" as well, of your brain.

 

I guess this is a difference we've developed. I agree that based on the information I have, the statement that we are both puppets of the brain, is correct, using the relevant definitions for these things. I just don't like this conclusion, but it is difficult to see as false.

 

2 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Clearly, it's not particularly useful or relevant to think of it like that, my implication being that neither you nor tulpas are puppets.. you're multiple people, in one head.

 

It seems not useful, at least to me, because it is painful, and not because it is inaccurate. To get passed it, redefining things seems to occur, to lead to your conclusion, and you find it satisfying to have the redefinitions, but I am just kind of horrified by it (so I hesitate to myself), and there seems to be various perceptual differences between us that cause that to be the case.

 

2 hours ago, Luminesce said:

Sure, your brain bestows YOUR personality and sense of self the label of personhood, but as far as I can tell, it's moreso because it feels good and allows for immersion. YOU are no different from a TULPA in this way. Going by my model, anyways.

 

This is incredibly accurate, yes. I am not saying anything otherwise, except that I wish it wasn't the case and wish that there was more to it.

 

2 hours ago, Luminesce said:

I think what's really revealed is the difference between what you thought was "you" and the rest of your brain. Like sure, you'll be in the tulpa-like state, but that specifically won't be particularly enlightening. It'll be the separation of your identity and sense of self from the overarching consciousness - the "driver's seat", primary fronting position, whatever have you - that teaches you.

 

After several re-readings, I realize you might have misunderstood what I was saying. "Me" (my personality) going into the tulpa-like state wasn't intended to be what I meant when saying the tulpa's perspective would be revealed, which after some confusion, I think is what you were thinking I said. What is revealed, is that the tulpa's perspective (not a position, the personality that is designated the tulpa of the system) has a perspective (stream of experience) to identify with only when they switch in, and I know that there is no experience existing in tulpa position.

 

2 hours ago, Luminesce said:

You're basically a person who's lived their entire life in a car, who doesn't realize they aren't the car. If you ever figure out how to get out of the car (although normally this metaphor likens the tulpa state to simply being a passenger), you'll have one heck of a realization when you realize you weren't the tires, the horn, the gas tank - you were just the one driving it.

 

I find this analogy to not work at all with what the experience is. I do not associate myself with the car. I associate myself with whoever is sitting inside the car looking out of the window (or not out of a window), and I do not care what seat I am in. If this analogy was how it worked, going into the passenger seat, or even the back, or the trunk for that matter, would yield some sort of continuous experience of being in those different seats. I could be aware of my thoughts or whatever, and occasionally look out and see where we are going, while the tulpa keeps their awareness on driving, and vise versa.

 

This analogy is much more accurate if the form of switching you say is BS were true. Getting out of the driver seat means you can focus on doing things other than driving, like going into the wonderland. People keep mistaking my identification with my stream of experience, as identification with my flesh and bones, I think. This analogy can very easily trick someone into thinking that something can be done when you sit in the passenger or trunk of the car, me having once been one of those people.

 

 

I have thoroughly tried my best to represent everything as best I could, so if you think I still misunderstood you in some way, I am sorry. I feel I may also be being misunderstood a bit, and when trying to look past it all, I think we are agreeing on almost everything, but have some value differences, and also that you might have a slightly different idea on what awareness is, or maybe not, I am not sure. The awareness thing is where there might actually be a disagreement, and I do not know if it is a real disagreement or a semantic one.

 

3 hours ago, BearBeaBeau said:

This is true and also a possible explanation that fits the data depending of where you draw the boundary lines of self.

 

I kind of envy others' ability to know this and be free and happy about it. My feelings for it seem to kind of cycle and I have good days and bad days. I still have a while to go to process everything, and continue to investigate further for whatever can be seen, and to accept whatever it is and make best of it

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, TB said:

I kind of envy others' ability to know this and be free and happy about it. My feelings for it seem to kind of cycle and I have good days and bad days. I still have a while to go to process everything, and continue to investigate further for whatever can be seen, and to accept whatever it is and make best of it.

 

In the context of your original question regarding switching and characters, it's also possible we're all characters, that's ego, and a unique set of attributes define the character based on conditioning and ego which is based on experience and expectations of how that character would act.

 

For example, Ren was new, we didn't know much about her more than we'd know much about a coal miner, but she could switch because we already knew about switching, but if I 'switched' with an NPC coal miner, the differences would be hard to say aren't all superficial because I can pretend to be a coal miner from what I know about coal miners, from the outside you couldn't know the inside. The inside with us is deep into the subconscious. Though some say we are playing with fire to have so many merges and lock merges here and there, and also three dozen other characters and walk-ins that have visited, they can't be headmates in the sense of ego and conditioning without the time to build these. A character has a fragment of these things but is otherwise held up be expectations i m o.

 

The difference appears trivial, but it's the spontaneity of a mature headmate and all their facets, which some may appear out of character, that a character lacks.

 

Like when I ask a serious question about Marxism, it's out of character. A character isn't expected to do that and won't.

[Luminesce]

4 hours ago, TB said:

It seems you just place a different importance to unconscious processes. As far as I can tell, there is no free will or agency in unconscious processes, they just happen,

 

Sure, in a lot of ways, but first of all, you can clearly affect and direct some of your unconscious thoughts in many ways, and second, this is simply our experience of non-fronters' "thoughts" or lack thereof, and there's no other explanation. (Literally, even if I was just making up what my tulpas were saying it still wouldn't make sense for what they said to have no preceding conscious OR unconscious thought)

 

4 hours ago, TB said:

I and others thought I had a switching experience, though. Do you say that what I experienced was not switching?

 

https://community.tulpa.info/topic/15066-rena-notes/?do=findComment&comment=256759

  

In that post, you literally described many different aspects of the switching experience as we know it, to the point that it practically feels like a joke that you're denying it to this day. But, I'll of course take you seriously.

 

If you reflect back on your own switching-like experience (it might as well just be considered switching, but the first few times especially if on accident can have quirks compared to later), and on literally anything I've said about our model of identity/consciousness, you'll see they fully line up. You're just - as I've said a thousand times, to you or elsewhere on the forum - stuck in the singlet perspective that you ARE your consciousness. If you follow the model I just proposed before this, you'll understand that you go while your brain's consciousness never goes anywhere, and your tulpa takes the driver's seat/fronting position in the mind, which includes directing the brain's consciousness - driving the car.

 

And now, more on that:

  

4 hours ago, TB said:

I find this analogy to not work at all with what the experience is. I do not associate myself with the car. I associate myself with whoever is sitting inside the car looking out of the window (or not out of a window)

 

Unfortunately, in this metaphor, consciousness is the car's, not the person driving its. Again, this makes sense with my model saying you are not your consciousness, you are being "run" by your brain like a program. Also, you shouldn't feel bad about that, it does not mean that your brain has some overarching superior "person" above you - you, or whoever else in your mind, are an integral part of the whole system; the body is literally a car with no driver otherwise. A driver who thought they were the car may feel powerless when they step out of the driver's seat and realize they "have no power", but then, what power does that now-empty car have either?

 

Anyways, my point is, your conscious perception does not follow "you" around because it is not yours, you're simply personalizing it by being in the brain's driver's seat. It would still exist without you there, driverless and without direction, but either you or someone else need to be there for anything to get done.

 

And again, this is my model of how all this works. For those 2012 tulpamancers who claimed some seemingly impossible fantasy of being fully conscious and lucid in their wonderland while their tulpa went about normal life - if that's even close to what was happening, this model doesn't explain it. Unfortunately for them, that experience is literally a superpower and is as fantastical as claiming you can fly using your mind - not something to be believed until proven at least in theory as at all likely. Unfortunately for the person claiming they could fly, the only reasonable thing for us to do is assume they imagined it or had some other strange experience.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Luminesce

[Ranger]

Given the length of this thread, you guys did a good job staying on-topic. However, the conversation is starting to drift towards general switching discussion.

 

Please create a new thread or revive an old thread if you want to talk more about or ask questions about switching models in the general sense. Otherwise, please do not post here unless you can contribute to the question in the OP.