Procrastination, fluff and intellectual masturbation

[dreampunk]

Hello, I'm new poster, etc...

 

I read the guides in the front page and most of the guides available in the forums section. I also did some reading on the other sections of the forum and I stumbled on same thing most of occult forums are riddled with.

Basically the problem is this:

1)Guides are at best general and do-whatever-you-like-trust-yourself type of shit. Good thing is the metaphysical aspects are almost completely non-existent and are not generally encouraged.

2)Having persistent willingly self-induced hallucinatory experience is not normal. (Feel free to argue about this). Telling people it's possible to attain such thing (with complete alternate personality) in matter of hours or short time span is just ridiculous. I find the faq_man's hour count more realistic and reasonable than do whatever you like whenever you feel like and you too can conjure up a person just like that. It takes discipline, time and real effort to do so, for it's more malfunction than normal coping mechanism for the brains to have a fully imposed hallucinatory experience.

3)These things leads to intellectual masturbation and just making up shit and fluffing around the forums. I would rather be prepared mentally to give up an hour a day for a year and succeed earlier than to expect to succeed in few months and be to disappointed with inevitable failure.

4)The guides tell about personality and visualisation and stuff, but what about the most important thing.

What do you do when you begin? Sit around and think stuff? Do you repeat same thing over in your head over and over for the entire session?

 

So in conclusion: this may sound like a big fuck you, but it really isn't. I genuinely want to improve this community and want everyone to succeed in their self-induced hallucinatory experience, but sometimes harsh words are needed to be kind. I am also very interested to having my own self-induced hallucinatory experience and I believe it is possible to attain.

 

My super power is spotting mistakes others do and being totally blind to my own mistakes.

[waffles]

1) The guides are general for a few reasons. One is that no-one knows what exactly is best. Another is that different things work for different people.

 

2) Wanting to may perhaps not be 'normal', but you can't count it as particularly abnormal in itself when it's self-imposed. That one succeeds at hallucination after trying isn't unusual.

Attaining sentience can happen quite quickly, and likewise vocality. Neither of these involve hallucination. Imposition does typically take longer.

Hour counts are just what FAQ_man did. They were only ever meant to be a guideline. Moreover I don't think there are any hour counts pertaining to imposition.

 

3) Methodology has little to do with intellectual masturbation. Intellectual masturbation has little to do with temporal expectation.

How long you expect the process to take can affect how long it actually takes, too. Being optimistic about the time it takes to make a tulpa can speed the process.

 

4) Phi wrote a guide on beginning, entitled "Treating as Sentient Before Sentience". That's a good starter session.

 

Also, you seem to think that making a tulpa revolves around hallucination. It doesn't. The main focus is to get your tulpa to be sentient, and able to talk to you. This does not involve hallucination.

 

Having new members is always good, and having new members who genuinely want to help is even better, but perhaps you should re-think what you mean by 'helping'. These 'mistakes' you have pointed out have been left uncorrected; far better to suggest a way around what you see as a problem than just arrogantly pointing them out.

[Kiahdaj]

 

1)Guides are at best general and do-whatever-you-like-trust-yourself type of shit.

Yes.

 

Good thing is the metaphysical aspects are almost completely non-existent and are not generally encouraged.

It can't be helped. This community as a majority believes in the "scientific" aspect of tulpae, and that's their decision. Therefor, most guides and so forth will be scientifically based, and not metaphysically. Which is partially a good thing, as scientific things are surely easier to test than metaphysical.

 

2)Having persistent willingly self-induced hallucinatory experience is not normal. (Feel free to argue about this).

No, of course it's not normal, but that of course doesn't make it any worse.

 

Telling people it's possible to attain such thing (with complete alternate personality) in matter of hours or short time span is just ridiculous.

Some people claim to have had sentient, and vocal tulpae within a couple days. While I don't personally believe any of their claims, and think that a large portion of this community is lying through their teeth, others think it's a matter of state of mind, and other things, allowing some to do it exponentially faster than others.

But as a general rule, until it becomes a universal thing, it is stupid to tell people that they can have vocal tulpae in a matter of days, yes.

 

I find the faq_man's hour count more realistic and reasonable than do whatever you like whenever you feel like and you too can conjure up a person just like that.

faq_man's "hour count" is just the idea of counting the hours of forcing you've done. Which, in itself, is not harmful at all. The harmful part is that some people believe that it's not possible to attain sentience before 10 hours (example), so they discredit anything their tulpa does, before that point. If you don't count hours, then you still do the exact same steps as you would if you were counting hours. You simply can't answer the question "How many hours have you forced?".

You should always work on a certain step until you feel you are ready to move on; faq (and others) just gave a reasonable estimate of how long that may take. Which I think is a good thing, (as long as you don't disbelieve that you can make faster progress) because many people are impatient, and will surely rush through the steps because they think they're ready, when they're not.

 

3)These things leads to intellectual masturbation and just making up shit and fluffing around the forums.

You're preaching to the choir.

I suspect a large amount of this goes on, but not only is it not my business, it doesn't matter. If they want to delude themselves, then go for it. If they want to seem cool on these forums by pretending to achieve goals in unreasonable amounts of time, then I simply pity them, as they clearly have nothing better to do with their lives.

 

4)The guides tell about personality and visualisation and stuff, but what about the most important thing.

What do you do when you begin? Sit around and think stuff? Do you repeat same thing over in your head over and over for the entire session?

Besides the initially planning things out, which I'm sure most people do, you'd pretty much just jump right into it, and start whichever step you want, first. Some people start with personality, some people don't do personality. Some people start with narration, and other start with visualization. People will say that one way is better than another, but it's never true. What's best is what you're most comfortable with, and what you feel will achieve you the best results.

[dreampunk]

Yes I do realize that the guides are what they are, because it's not certain how they work. But it's the birthplace for superstition and odd rituals. That is why I think writing more guides is mostly pointless, because lot of them revolve around the order of same things done. For example:

Guide 1. Do personality first then visualization.

Guide 2. Do visualization first then personality.

Then there's the superstition and inane oddities like:

Guide 3. Do personality first and then add chili powder (Breaking Bad anyone?) and focus on personality.

The reason I'm pointing that out is, if no new relevant information is available, old guides are quite sufficent.

 

It is most abnormal for human brain to perceive things that originate from internal stimulus when fully awake. And there's a good reason too, people just sitting around imagining things are going to get eaten by tigers, snakes and what not. And the point: the brain is going against the current when trying to reverse this. This is good time to take into consideration about the safety of the whole practice. This is hugely underplayed here and somewhat even encouraged to people with pre-existing mental problems to induce more. It should be taken into consideration that if you so to speak break the barriers of reality checking in your brain, it might get problematic. Notice I'm not saying it will, only that it's quite possible (remember, not anyone's certain what they are really doing).

 

Also the sentient and vocal tulpa thing. Isn't the definiton of tulpa something alike fully imposed on the senses bearing it's own personality?

This is at least what I'm trying to achieve here, so it becomes more than just thinking about stuff. Thus tulpa is a self-induced multisensory hallucination primarily and secondarily an alternate personality.

If you hear your tulpa speak, that is a perception based on internal stimulus, a hallucination.

 

Finally I think it's far more helpful just to point out errors, mistakes, etc. than to point them out and suggest some inane blabbering about subject nobody is quite sure yet. And it should be talked about.

 

 

I don't know if I made the point unclear, but I am happy about the non-occultism thing going on here (altough in practice it seems to not differ that much). This should be considered psychological experimentation.

 

The reason I added the procrastination (but forgot to elaborate) is that people generally tend to fall into some sort of deluded fantasy about their (often failed) achievements. Same thing happens over occultism related forums over and over again when people begin doubting, but not enough to abandon it.

 

 

Then there's one presupposition I have not seen here discussed at all (not claiming I have read every post, just not in those I read). Can everybody make a tulpa? Altough I believe most people differ only marginally (deal with it, you're not unique) there also exist extreme variations in people.

 

In conclusion, sorry for being a rude dickhead, but I believe it's far more important to discover the sort of "skeleton" of the process behind tulpa making than just adding inane fluff or armchair theorizing. That's why I don't offer solutions to these problems. I do not know, if I did then I'd post them, not make questions.

 

Also I just started my own tulpa project and if I discover (or even succeed) I'm sure to post any insights gained from such process. I'm not trying be offensive, I just don't believe in circling about the problem, I just say them aloud. That also reduces the chance of misunderstanding as in text format, most of our communication is reduced, because lot of information is transferred via body language, tone, etc.

[waffles]

I don't think that what you're saying can be applied to the majority of guides here. I think that, for the most part, guides added in the guides section of the forum do tend to contain new information or techniques. Besides that, I don't think you can really take issue with there being to many guides: there are relatively few in the guides section of the site. Possibly unbeknownst to you, FAQ_man's and I think Irish's guides were rewritten somewhat recently, so what you see isn't representative of old guides.

 

Yes, it would be abnormal if naturally occurring. But tulpas are not naturally occurring, and for that reason it's not useful to say that it's abnormal. Besides that, why are you even saying this?

 

There are almost certainly risks associated with making a tulpa. However, the systems that obscure being naturally occurring does not mean that it is necessarily bad to violate these systems. Given that we are more intelligent and self-controlled than these systems take into account - being developed in evolution some time ago - and that we are no longer likely to be eaten by tigers, it is safe to say that at least a large amount of the threat is no longer present.

Besides that, it would be a stretch to classify tulpas as a mental disorder along the lines of those which you mention being possessed by posers of questions here. The differences are several: that the host is in control - apparently - and that it does not negatively affect the host's function are the main ones. I think it has yet to be seen that a community member here be severely negatively affected by their tulpa, though I may be wrong. Certainly, it is not a major problem as long as one exercises caution and control.

 

It is typically said that a fully-developed tulpa is imposed, but that view is no longer universally held. The tulpa being sentient, and by extension vocal, is important in the definition, but imposition need not feature.

 

And hallucination does not usually apply to internal experience - it is certainly not when used here, where the distinction matters. The idea of a hallucination is that you sense things that aren't there; the conditions for this would be that it involves sensory input along the lines of that which is received from the outside world, and that what you are percieving does not exist where it appears to. By both of these measures, a tulpa speaking with the so-called 'mindvoice' would not be hallucination.

The point is that the hallucination of the tulpa does not define it. In theory it should be able to exist outside of the host's perception completely - were it developed enough - and at the very least the host can easily perceive the tulpa without hallucination.

 

For people falling into a deluded fantasy: I wouldn't call it a common tendency. Perhaps it happens, but not commonly to the extent which you imply. Yes, people can lose hope and struggle, but they are not deluded because they really aren't achieving much, and the parallel to occultism is not really applicable as success is something much easier to grasp.

 

As far as I know, anyone could make a tulpa. Chances are you might not succeed if you are severely autistic, or severely impaired in some other way, but even then we can't rule it out completely. I don't think that there is a non-impairing trait which would prevent making a tulpa, anyway.

 

The skeleton of the process is plain for anyone to see: set what your tulpa's going to be and talk to it until it talks back. The 'inane fluff' would be the details which may work for some.

 

If you're not circling around the problem, then why haven't you made it clear what the problem is? As far as I can see, you're listing vague criticism against some practice which is not necessarily accurate anyway.

[Xantan]

Dreampunk, have you checked out fede's methods? Many here find them controversial but his guides lean more towards the conditioning and behavioural modification sides of things. You may find things wherein that resonate with your views.

 

It is most abnormal for human brain to perceive things that originate from internal stimulus when fully awake. And there's a good reason too, people just sitting around imagining things are going to get eaten by tigers, snakes and what not.

 

One could also argue that it is not a matter of abnormal v.s normal, but rather, whether or not it is socially acceptable to have a seperate personality live within your mind. Many cultures in the past, and even today, practice religions focused on "spirits" or "guides". In these cultures it is considered acceptable, or encouraged, for individuals to cultivate another personality in their minds. This is often explained as a guiding spirit or an ancestor. It is possible that these are forms of tulpa. As it is a natural ability of the brain, i do not feel "abnormal" is a good label, "deviant" may be better, though i prefer "socially unacceptable".

 

And the getting eaten thing? true if you spend all your time daydreaming you'll end up dead, but the most common advice you'll hear is "narration". Some will even tell you that, with time, narration alone will net you a tulpa. If we continue the hunter/gatherer example it can be considered a survival mechanism. imagine, You're part of a tribe. one day you become seperated from the others wihout a way to get back to them. It is likely you will die, but first you will try to survive. Step 1 is tending to your basic needs, and humans are social creatures. perhaps to keep yourself "sane" you begin talking to someone about what you're doing and why. perhaps you imagine them to be a leader, or your chief. It would certainly help your physical survival to have someone tell you what to collect, when to hunt, and keep you organized.

 

 

This is good time to take into consideration about the safety of the whole practice. This is hugely underplayed here and somewhat even encouraged to people with pre-existing mental problems to induce more.

 

I won't argue against this. I can't speak of others encouraging those with mental illnesses to pursue tulpa though. I know of friends who would benefit from a tulpa but will not tell them of it until i have finished my own creation and varified my continued sanity with a colleague of mine. You're right in that there are unknown repruscussions with creating a seperate consciousness in your mind, and i am troubled with some of the relationships other form with their tulpa.

 

Finally I think it's far more helpful just to point out errors, mistakes, etc. than to point them out and suggest some inane blabbering about subject nobody is quite sure yet. And it should be talked about.

I don't know if I made the point unclear, but I am happy about the non-occultism thing going on here (altough in practice it seems to not differ that much). This should be considered psychological experimentation.

 

What i hear from this is a frustration at the organization of this community and it's approach to the creation of tulpa. This phenomena has only recently begun to be viewed from a scientific perspective. As it stands there is no credible research being done on the subject. finding a method in which to test this phenomena will be difficult but for now most are intent on drawing attention to the issue. They hope to attract the attention of proffesional researchers or those with access to facilities where these studies could be conducted. To consider what we're currently doing to be psychological experimentation would be bad science. Without an empirical approach to the creation process, you can't expect everyone to agree. Please be understanding with the multitude of guides and their differing views untill such a time as we have credible research to support one method over another.

 

Also I just started my own tulpa project and if I discover (or even succeed) I'm sure to post any insights gained from such process.

 

It actually helps if you go into the process believeing you will have results. yes it's biased, yes it abbandons the null hypothesis; but this is a complicated form of self dellusion.

And posting your insights is much what others have wanted to do when they create a guide. They want to share their personal view on the process and what worked for them.

i reccomend that you start a daily log on the forums, i'm curious to see how you progress.

---

I should clarrify that everything i just said is my opinion and may not be representitive of some members of this forum. I apologize if i misrepresent or offend anyone.

[dreampunk]

Well the problems arising are mainly that of philosophical and semantical in nature. Some of these are:

Defining the tulpa: does it need to be fully developed and imposed? Is a vocal and sentient creation a tulpa? These are purely just semantics, but being purely subjective experience, definitions are needed in order to compare data. I'd suggest more specific definitions for different stages of tulpa. So people would have same standards. Maybe completely new word or neologisms. I think the origins of tulpa as metaphysically forced seperate physical being and the modern varied definition of psychologically created independent personality coupled with full sensory hallucination to roleplayed imaginary friend. I think different words for different stages of completion should be used (as some are might not even be interested in creation full blown hallucination and others expecting it). Using same word for all things just creates confusion.

 

I'll admit some or most of my rantings arise from the frustration that stem from my will (or even need) to create a tulpa or experience the full blown hallucinated entity. And the fact that I do not know clearly what I am doing and why and how does it all play together. For clarification, I would almost want to know to the point of neurological changes it inevitable creates (and I do realize this may never be studied scientifically). The subject is quite interesting and it has far reaching implications such as religion, how to raise a child, learning and so many subjects. It would be sad to see it go waste. So I think we should as the pioneers of this subject try from the start to keep this as scientific as we can (altough there are of course limits). Also trying to get giving it enough public attention might grasp the attention of scientific researchers.

 

Yes religion and the tulpa phenomena might be closely interconnected, for example some Native American tribes had all their (male only?) members to go out and have a vision quest by fasting and sleep deprivation. Praying and thinking about God(s) might spontaneously create a tulpa phenomena (feeling of divine presence, communication via feelings, etc). Dreams are also something that are closely related and this is why I think it's completely plausible (as it's proven every night) to have full blown controlled hallucinations at will. I will still maintain my point about this being abnormal in waking state and the reason why I believe it's not easy. What I am trying to say by it being abnormal is, the brains are extremely good at what it does. It is complicated process to perceive and interpret the perception accurately and the brains are correcting the interpretations with constant stream of (multisensory) perception. Trying to (while awake) affect that process consciously by telling the brains they are seeing (or hearing) something that isn't there is something brains are trying to not let happen. It isn't perfect and there are glitches and cognitive process which affects the way the actual perception gets interpreted.

 

With skeleton of this process I meant the things actually taking place. Like how do you make yourself hallucinate, how do you dissociate safely, what happens when you create an alternative personality willingly vs. when it's caused by trauma. What happens psychologically when these are being done, are there measurable neurological changes, can these be reproduced safely in others, if there are individuals who are unable to spawn tulpa, is there clearly identifiable reasons (brain trauma, mental conditions, drugs)?

Then of course if we assumed this went public and mainstream and scientists actually studied this, how would they arrange the study to be ethical. How would they discern between individuals with tulpas and individuals who are fabricating or deluded or lying?

 

The method (the flesh if you will, staying on the original analogy) should ideally then stem from the answer to those (and more) questions.

 

I think I have missed out the Fede's guides, I will have to check them out. I haven't decided yet if I want to have a log about my progress, but as I'm combatting procrastination (big surprise there) I think it might be healthy to make it a habit of logging it with as much scientific rigor I can muster out of myself.

 

Also as an afterthought about the dangers of tulpa, if tulpa is capable of possessing the personality, then it can be as dangerous as people normally can be. For example, there are suicidal people and people have committed suicide. Just food for thought, but if suicidal people created tulpas who can possess them and the tulpas themselves "inherit" that tendency they can be life threatening. But really just an afterthought, I doubt the chances of that happening are extremely low to nothing.

[waffles]

I can assure you that there are neologisms enough here. We need less, not more, if anything.

A tulpa becomes a tulpa when it's sentient, really. The definition of a 'completed' tulpa is really subjective. The classic definition would be fluently vocal and fully imposed. I think that it's around the point where co-processing is possible; the rest is just accessory. Terminology isn't the clearest, but it's clear enough:

 

Sentient: can think

Vocal: can speak - usually via mindvoice

Imposed: can be seen via hallucination

 

Perhaps a few things are a little ambiguous in the guides, but it becomes clear enough upon inspection.

 

Public attention is not necessarily the best thing when it comes to gaining scientific attention. Keeping quiet, experimenting, theorising and writing papers would do a lot. A Youtube channel would not. Of course, this site is supposed to be founded on scientific principle. There are plenty of people here willing to take a strictly scientific approach, and study the subject in depth.

 

Yes, "God is a tulpa" is often stated. Yes, dreams could be vaguely linked to tulpas. I get the feeling you're just ranting to no end here. Are you trying to say something with this third paragraph?

 

The answer is that no-one has any idea. Of hallucination and dissociation themselves we - humanity - possess a very sketchy understanding. You'd find that your questions would be left truly unanswered for years even if they were to be, right now, picked up by a team of professionals. There are many here who wish to answer these questions in the near future.

 

Truth be told, you don't have to understand something to do it. You can operate a washing machine without a clue of what's going on inside: just follow the instructions. Likewise guides, except the same goes for writing them. For the most part, the guides here aren't based on theory, only on what worked for the writer. This may leave you frustrated, but in the end it works just as well.

 

Be warned about Fede's guide. It is untested and distrusted. Use it at your own peril.

 

Tulpas have been known to be suicidal. However, it would be something of a dick move to kill your host too. Tulpas can be 'killed' - some refer to this as 'dissolution' instead - by the host without the host's death.

[dreampunk]

The third paragraph was mostly just answering (or lack of answer) to Xantan and acknowledging his point. And somewhat ranting about my opinions of the whole phenomena. And dreams of course are related for they are purely(or mostly) perceptions that lack external stimulus, given that the tulpa phenomena is basically same thing being done while awake but only in limited and controlled fashion.

 

The questions in the fourth paragraph were more rhetorical and thought provoking than to be answered right here and right now.

 

My spidey sense is tingling and senses bias about your warning concering Fede's guide. Why specifically apply that warning to that guide?

 

Yes I can use even this computer without knowing how it works, but when it comes to such things as the toys of the mind I think it's reasonable precaution to try to understand it as much as possible. I can buy a new computer if this one gets broken, but I'd like to be more careful when tampering with the brains.

 

As I said, just an afterthought.

[waffles]

Fede's guide is radically different from the increment-change guides that populate the rest of the section. His methods differ enough to warrant their own testing; here, a warning on the lack of it.

 

The problem is that no-one really understands the mind. Even the professional field of psychology is nothing like computer science, because no-one really has a clue. For the most part, neuroscientists are guessing, and psychologists just make things up as they go along, really. An understanding of what we're doing would be nice, but out of the question.