Kudo's Aphantasic Dive into Tulpamancy

[Kudo]

Hello all, Kudo here.

I'm new to the forums, having tried before to make tulpas on and off over the past couple of years, but this time I'm putting my foot down and giving it an honest go.

As the keen eyed of you might have read in the title, I have aphantasia. And not in a "I have trouble visualizing" way, as in I cannot mental image at all. This, understandably, puts me at a bit of a disadvantage when trying to create a tulpa, especially when most guides rely heavily on visualization techniques. So, along with creating a tulpa, I want to eventually create techniques and methods that require no visualization at all. In that vein, I have already made a bit of progress. Here are my revelations thus far:

Firstly, as a result of not being able to physically "look" at my tulpa in my mind's eye, I have started to experiment with workarounds. So far, I have come up with two, which I continue to trial and error:

 

The "out of sight" method relies on directing mental attention, and instantiating your tulpa right outside your "range of sight" (i.e. put it to the side or behind you, such that you would not be able to see it with your eyes open). This method depends on 'tricking' yourself into the tulpa being there -- right behind you. This removes the necessity of having an actual subject on which to focus your attention, as you can send your mentality to a predetermined spot outside of your perception, and not run into the conflict of nothing being there. After all, there is something there, it's right behind you!

 

This next one is a little more abstract, but relies on the same core principle. The "subconscious space" method is much simpler, but perhaps less effective: simply designating a "place in the void" that the tulpa resides in, and forcing in that general direction. This has a lot more in common with more traditional techniques in my opinion, but is not without it's flaws. Mainly, it seems to restrict the range of motion for both yourself and the developing tulpa. By defining a discrete location as "where the tulpa is," and not being able to visually affirm its location, you leave yourself open to miscommunication. To my knowledge, developing tulpas regularly change form, voice, and position in your mindscape. By only letting a set "path" be the communication channels between you and your tulpa, it's possible you can miss when your tulpa talks to you.

 

I'm sure I'm not the first person who has thought of these, so if anyone knows of other tulpamancers that have cracked the aphantasia code, lmk. Anyone with thoughts or advice, please make them known. I'm kinda treading through uncharted territory here, and any perspective helps. As of now, I've been mixing these techniques, adding the basics like parroting, and have had some minor success, but I need more time to see if the development of my tulpa is as stable as one created via visualization techniques. The lack of being able to see my tulpa's form is, imo, crippling to its development. Until I can find a reliable forcing method that does not require visualization, I will be forced to use stunted methods, which is not ideal.

 

[KayKay]

Welcome, and good luck!

 

We don't have aphantasia, so the idea of not having a form is completely alien to me, but it's also kind of what we do sometimes? Our system sometimes just uses mindvoice and doesn't bother with visualization if we're just talking. (I usually make myself "seen" if it's practical because it feels more natural. Alex? Hit or miss.) But, yeah. Forms are made up, and visualization doesn't matter.

 

I'm really curious how your tulpa will end up experiencing their form, since aphantasia is (I think) a brain problem.

 

It sounds like you've got it figured out, though!

[Araragi]

There are several known methods of curing aphantasia although they are not guaranteed to work.
imo that's the best known guide on that is from ap4. You can also find subreddit cureaphantasia and discord, there are also plenty of info on that.
But you don't really need visualization for tulpamancy. Obviously hyperphantasia and imposition enrich experience a lot, but you don't need them to enjoy your relationship with tulpa.

AP4 phantasia.pdf

Edited June 9 by Araragi

[Kudo]

12 hours ago, KayKay said:

Welcome, and good luck!

 

We don't have aphantasia, so the idea of not having a form is completely alien to me, but it's also kind of what we do sometimes? Our system sometimes just uses mindvoice and doesn't bother with visualization if we're just talking. (I usually make myself "seen" if it's practical because it feels more natural. Alex? Hit or miss.) But, yeah. Forms are made up, and visualization doesn't matter.

 

I'm well aware that forms are not necessary for tulpas, but using it for tulpa creation is so ubiquitous in online guides it's kinda hard to not use it altogether... But I do agree that my end result will probably be a tulpa without a concrete form.

 

12 hours ago, KayKay said:

I'm really curious how your tulpa will end up experiencing their form, since aphantasia is (I think) a brain problem.

 

I'm fairly curious, as well. Aphantasia itself is a relatively unstudied topic, but current scientific understanding (to my knowledge) is that it may be cause by different connections of strength in different parts of the brain -- for example, a case study involving an aphantasic twin and an imagery twin showed the aphantasic had a bilateral brain dominance compared to the imager who was much more left-sided, as well as lower connection between brain lobes pertaining to sight and conscious recall. Here's a link to the study if you want to read it. There are like less than 50 actual scientific studies on the the topic ever (I'm exaggerating, but not by much), so from an academic standpoint it's basically an unknown.

 

1 hour ago, Araragi said:

There are several known methods of curing aphantasia although they are not guaranteed to work.

 

I've looked around online, and most of these "cures" are case by case per individual, rather than actual methods to cultivate visual imagery from nothing. Most of them have little to no actual research behind them, it's all very "this worked for me you should try it out." 

Besides, I want to work within the confines of non visualization, as it is kinda how I've lived my entire life. Furthermore, I want to experiment with how thoughtforms like tulpas can influence mental imagery in people unable of conjuring in the mind's eye themselves.

 

1 hour ago, Araragi said:

But you don't really need visualization for tulpamancy. Obviously hyperphantasia and imposition enrich experience a lot, but you don't need them to enjoy your relationship with tulpa.

 

Again, I don't visual form is a necessity for a tulpa; just that the community at large relied on the ability to visualize as one of the cornerstones of tulpa creation, and thus visualization techniques are a cornerstone of the current understanding of formation. The population of aphantasics in the entire world is less than 5 percent, and the population of aphantasics with tulpas is, to my knowledge, very small.

Edited June 9 by Kudo

[Kudo]

Ok, so I have made a bit of progress, and have a few more insights.

 

I realized that the methods I described earlier (my out-of-sight and subconscious space techniques) are flawed. In figuring this out, I have made steps in what I hope is the right direction. Mainly, I have used a mix of these techniques, both declaring a point in space for my tulpa to reside, and forcing outside my range of sight. Contrary to my predictions, pure subconscious space forcing seemed to get more out of my parroting and narrating that the out of sight method.

 

I should mention that unfortunately, due to my living conditions, I almost always have to wait late until the night to get the peace and quiet I need to meditate and force. In the future, I will get better at this, but for now I need to have no distractions during my sessions or my brain won't shut up.

 

Anyway, while experimenting more with the subconscious space method, I started to do some philosophizing and brainstorming, trying to perfect the method. 

 

To start, what makes my tulpamancy different from the average tulpamancer? The obvious answer is my aphantasia, because duh, look at the title of my progress report. But how do we differ pragmatically? Well, normal people are able to remember data through visual images, while ahpants remember through abstract conceptualizations. So, why not bring this difference into my forcing? Rather than focus my tulpa around a form, I will focus it around a concept; ideally one I can imagine easily. The first thought that came to mind was the darkness, specifically the darkness of closed eyes. So, I tried to "transform" my tulpa's predetermined location to the entirety of my closed eye vision. 

 

And it seemed to work! Immediately, the somewhat vague responses I got from my tulpa ceased originating from the previous spot in subconscious space, and instead filled the entirety of that space. However, the "majority" of the reply still came from that one spot, and the vision-wide responses were much more flimsy. Perhaps this method is out of my current skill set, or my tulpa is not yet "large" enough to effectively fill my entire subconscious space. I will have to continue forcing to figure it out.

 

Anyway, just thought I'd drop this small update, before I forgot to write it out.