Who is talking? A hypothesis of thought and speech in a system.

[Guest]

The mind/body also known as BodyOS is a remarkable instrument. It's an intricate semi-autonomous automaton with the capability to do almost anything you can instruct it to. It's also a learning machine and will repeat complex actions once trained.

 

This includes speech.

 

I believe deep sleep is equivalent to dormancy, and being an occasional sleep walker and sleep talker I've been told that I can converse in that state but what I say is almost completely affirming or dismissive small talk. And if anything more complex is attempted no response will be given.

This is clearly not me and there is no memory of the occurrences. I believe it is purely the BodyOS.

 

It has been experienced in my system that there are times when none of us said anything yet something was said. Anything from intrusive to innocuous speech that doesn't belong to anyone. I believe this is BodyOS, and is purly reflexive. 

 

Many times in the last 4 years, very often in the beginning, what a headmate says is repeated or reworded as if it needed further reflection; in their tone, as if they're saying it, but it's clearly not them. In my system anything that is said can be watched as if you're in the same room. As always they sit on a couch watching and listening. When they speak, I see them do so with facial expressions and body language, either in situ or imposed outside the headspace. It's unmistakable and consistent since month 3 of our attachment. This superfluous speech is then without expression and sometimes without context other than a reflexive one loosely associated with what we were already talking about.

 

When I think about this, I remember I used to take ownership of imagining them and trying desperately to see them in full 3D. There was a time when they were faceless and a time when they were just a static face as if a photograph was pasted on a mannequin.

 

Now I also believe this has become automatic and it's perfectly synced and I could forget I ever had any part in it. I have resolved that what I speak to is an avatar of them, a projection of their true selves, but it is arbitrary in all other respects.

 

So given all that, it seems reasonable now that all thought streams that come from any of the members of this system originate in tulpish or pure thought and it is a function of BodyOS to automatically translate this into appropriate but arbitrary speech, just as the visual components are automated, just as stray thoughts may be verbalized, and just as sleep talking is coming from no one. I believe thos could also be a source of confusion in "front stuck" hosts, where the reflexive BodyOS may be unintentionally waking the host. 

 

So I ask, who is speaking and I have to answer "no one". What was conveyed, even by me, was pure thought originally and passed the subconscious-preconsious barrier then was later translated either subliminally or consciously; not by me, by the BodyOS. 

 

This hypothesis answers a lot of questions for us and has held firm for many years so we thought we'd share.

 

Please tell me what you think or if this makes sense to you. 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, Bear said:

It has been experienced in my system that there are times when none of us said anything yet something was said. Anything from intrusive to innocuous speech that doesn't belong to anyone. I believe this is BodyOS, and is purly reflexive.

We've experiences this many times too. It feels like BodyOS is just the brain without any identity attached to it.

 

21 minutes ago, Bear said:

So given all that, it seems reasonable now that all thought streams that come from any of the members of this system originate in tulpish or pure thought and it is a function of BodyOS to automatically translate this into appropriate but arbitrary speech

They do originate in what we call ''concepts'' I believe and then, without any input and automatically, they get translated into words.

 

Sometimes it feels like one of us is acting out of character or saying things that don't hold up, changing their mind constantly or saying nonsense. 'I like cats more, no wait, I prefer dogs, no cats, no, dogs, uuuughh' and then realize that it wasn't us. But it wasn't a third identity either. We're often left with 'I don't know why I said that'. So to speak, it feels like we're being ''parroted by something''.

 

33 minutes ago, Bear said:

I believe thos could also be a source of confusion in "front stuck" hosts, where the reflexive BodyOS may be unintentionally waking the host.

Could you elaborate on this?

[TurboSimmie]

Phil and I have had very similar thoughts to this. We even came up with our own terminology with the word "Graymind" rather than BodyOS, though I will use the term BodyOS here because the last thing this community needs is more confusing jargon! 😄 We talked about it in this progress report entry back in March, where we determined that rather than being totally reflexive BodyOS actually has a very rudimentary and basic will of its own, at least for us.

 

I do agree that words often bubble up through BodyOS unattached to any headmate, sometimes even being spoken out loud without much connection to anything. In our case it's usually because the brain is busy churning through something, most often a social interaction from the past or an expected/possible interaction in the future, though sometimes it's the brain churning through other kinds of questions/problems. Sometimes BodyOS will bubble up with a word or phrase that is negative, like "I suck" or "I'm worthless", and in the past Phil might have believed they were genuine thoughts. But today we both understand that they are not true thoughts of ours and I in particular am always on alert for stupid, derogatory thoughts like that so I can disarm and destroy them before they can cause any harm.

 

We have a concept of "ownership" over thoughts and words that are expressed. Generally, unless something is said (out loud or in mindvoice) clearly and with intent, it is not considered to be owned by either of us and deemed a verbal belch from BodyOS. Phil and I both consider his dissociation from the random crap that BodyOS bubbles up to be one of the greatest benefits tulpamancy has given him. It's not that the negative words don't still come, but rather they've been robbed of all their power.

 

1 hour ago, Bear said:

So given all that, it seems reasonable now that all thought streams that come from any of the members of this system originate in tulpish or pure thought and it is a function of BodyOS to automatically translate this into appropriate but arbitrary speech

 

I agree with this, and also BodyOS will sometimes throw extra words into the speech machine as you've said.

 

I think one of the great benefits of plurality is not even one another--it's the fact that you can see and identify the space between.

[Luminesce]

I've said before that our understanding of not just tulpas but of personal identities entirely, is that they're just extremely complex sets of instructions on "How to be someone" your brain follows, composed of countless associations (with memories, preferences, experiences, etc.), habits, general details "about yourself". By default someone thinks as there only being one, and literally everything being under that umbrella of "them", though practicing tulpamancy can shed some light on how naive that is. In my case, I realized this before finding tulpamancy, while reading a lot of western-buddhism philosophy and similar content. What you think of as "You" is just a (very big) box of associations and beliefs that your brain uses as instructions to run the conscious part of the mind.

 

Tulpas, then, are the exact same thing as "You" - smaller boxes, that will grow over time as they gain interactions, experiences, preferences, etc. until they're more or less equivalent in complexity to the host (though most tulpas will only get to this point via switching or possessing to interact with the world, as it takes immense imagination and time to gain the same experience purely in-mind). Not that a tulpa needs to be as complex as the host to really be another separate person in the brain or anything, I think a tulpa becomes tulpa-like fairly early on in the development process and once apparently-autonomous they will just grow naturally from there.

 

So they're just another extremely complex set of instructions for your brain on "How to be someone", just like "You" are. Part of mapping out this model of identities involves realizing just how much that goes on in your brain and body is not related to "You" at all, though. While you or whoever is fronting may exert conscious control over countless aspects of the mind... Most of the time, you're not. And the box of instructions will only have so much unconscious influence (though there should be plenty of unconsciously-acted differences between any two well-developed systemmates), with countless aspects of your body and brain still working more or less on their own.

 

I'm not going to call that "BodyOS", I just call it "the rest of the brain", because I think naming it is giving the impression that it's not immensely bigger than you and your tulpas' identities. But it gets the point across.

 

Also, holding this model of how identities work as how you really work makes switching a lot easier, lol. Thinking like this before even finding Tulpa.info is probably why we were able to learn switching very easily just by hearing that it was possible once we got here. Not to mention I'm 100% convinced this is actually how brains work, with countless other sub-identities (often called "masks", like "the mask you put on at work/at school/etc.")

 

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention a huge aspect of tulpamancy is that you learn how to have two (or more) of these "identities" active/run by the brain at the same time. That's just its own individual skill to develop, and then this model's "boxes" are plugged in from there.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Luminesce

[Guest]

 

@Luminesce

 

(though most tulpas will only get to this point via switching or possessing to interact with the world, as it takes immense imagination and time to gain the same experience purely in-mind)

 

It was obvious at least in my case that they (especially Ashley) did not need personal experience to have a rich and full understanding and "box" as big as mine within the first year, without ever switching. You could either attribute this to expectations, winging it, borrowing templates from me, our always-on co-fronting which is usually just them paying attention and commenting, or simply the hidden complexity of the subconscious mind and its ability to coordinate different individuals given a pool of shared information.

 

I totally agree with your assertions that basically each person is just a complex set of parameters; however I also believe there is something in the personality that is unique, call it a catalyst or kernel to flavor the expression outside of well defined root attributes. Because there's no way to know, this hypothesis helps to keep that warm fuzzy feeling of independent entities for me. Otherwise we're just filtered expressions of the same 'thing'.

 

Also, the parameters can be changed and reworked, rewritten, removed etc. We called that 'personality surgery' and it was significant and remarkable in my case from our perspective at least.

 

What you call masks we call facets and aspects. Facets would be individual expressions of aspects which are grouped by social situations (like school, church, police station, with your friends, etc.) Which are then subsets of a personality as a whole. I avoided the term masks because of the negative connotations pointed out by a prior active user who always posted in green. 

...

 

@Miri

 

Could you elaborate on this?

 

Thoughts that occur that are then associated to a headmate can sometimes be equivalent to the headmate being there even if they're dormant. 

 

There are two examples in our case. One, early on, when Ashley put me into dormancy, she was unable to wake me up because there was no procedure to do that and a funny kind of potential puppeting occured where she wanted permission from me to stay switched in to experience going to sleep and she thought she woke me up but my voice and presence were off, we later concluded it wasn't me but if not for that weirdness, for all intents and purposes, it was me. This could compound confusion.

 

Two, when Ashley, Gwen and Misha were playing, specifically with the purpose of keeping me out of the game, the "bear feeling" was ever present as that feeling is part of the body most heavily associated to me and in fact no one else wants to associate to that feeling as it is so associated to me. So it would often feel like I was there even when I wasn't. They would also notice that BodyOS would sometimes take over and it too felt like I was intruding and very much awake, but in many cases I wasn't. If they would have continued to think it was me, those memories would imprint on me upon my return as if I was. It's a subtle difference that becomes very difficult to parse honestly after the fact from memory alone.

 

The point is that if the fronter considers BodyOS reflexes as the host, then the host will forever be front stuck, but if they instead consider them as reflexive and ignore them then their frequency and strength can diminish over time, especially if the fronter learns to associate them to their own reflexes when possible.

...

 

@TurboSimmie

 

Intrusive thoughts bothered me a lot when I was depressed. 

 

My headmates attached in the midst of this turmoil triggered by the depths of this depression. Who we call SheShe now was my "guardian angel" throughout my life and there are dozens of instances at low points in my life where she talked to me. Though not in a "hello, I exist..." sort of way like she finally did in 2018.

 

Self-blame, internalizing external no fault events, self-deprecation, self punishment, and dwelling on things I couldn't change were the main culprits that fed and prolonged the depression. 

 

Having headmates outside of the sphere of influence of blame, not depressed themselves, and who were desperate to convince me that these were fase thoughts, eventually taught me that these were intrusive thoughts and could be ignored or otherwise dealt with. Later setting up rules to auto-handle these thoughts completely removed any power they had and they eventually faded away. Without the help of my headmates, I would have been stuck in that myre. Aside from some profound catharsis, bad times were ahead.

 

Headmates solved problems that couldn't otherwise be solved and helped in innumerable ways.

 

...

 

Thus this way of thinking that no one is talking clears up a lot of mud and otherwise confusing interactions.