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The Difference Between Tulpas and Soulbonds?


Caldera

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As others have mentioned, semantics are a bitch.

 

A long time member of the multiple/plural community, "I" was interested to see much of the same terminology employed here. It makes sense and from an empowered multiplicity POV Tulpimancers are part of that community. From a clinical psych POV Tulpamancers are self induced, non disordered DID-OSDD folks. Something clinical psych says isn't possible which doesn't help research into tulpamancy.

 

I think a workable model from a tulpamancytech hard science POV would be:

 

Conscious/subconscious initial generation. Tulpas generica are crafted from nothing on up consciously. Soulbonds present to the conscious "You" as a pregenerated characters and are a subset of tulpas.

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  • 3 months later...
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http://soulbonding.org/ / The Living Library was the site, but it seems sorta dead right now, idk if there were others

 

 

 

It says unavailable... so eerie

 

 

 

I miss that forum, although I only lurked there. I wonder why it closed?

 

 

The Living Library closed on August 16, 2017 for undisclosed reasons. The closure announcement was still available on soulbonding.org until recently. You can view it here:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180903061906/http://soulbonding.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&p=7664&sid=1ba6a5c11f8bbfd056737c56d1768ba0#p7664

 

You can get a taste of the forum here, though much of it was never archived:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20170621054301/http://www.soulbonding.org/

 

There have been many others, Lucilyn, though Many Worlds seems to be the main one now. Look two posts back in this thread for further information. Many of the soulbonders who weren't assimilated into tulpamancy seem to have been assimilated into the fictionkin/otherkin community.

 

These are small forums. Two months before it closed, The Living Library had 6491 posts, 718 topics, and 200 members. Today, Many Worlds has 3950 posts, 295 threads, and 87 members. The administrators' system alone accounts for 1172 of those posts.

 

 

Maybe we should create a section just for the soulbounding folks and capture them up here.

 

 

 

I completely agree. There's a Metaphysical section, why not one for Soulbonds?

 

 

Capture them? The deepest distinctions are cultural. Bringing them here would tend to be acculturating. But if there was enough demand here already to keep a thread going continuously, it might become worth discussing a subforum. Let this be the test case. ‘Bonds and ‘Bonders, stand forth and declare yourselves. What do you want to talk about?

 

 

Well, technically, if the character kept their backstory, aren't they more of a soulbond?

 

 

Yes, technically, but I think this is a case where self-identification trumps written definitions.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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My tulpas took the forms of original characters that i had no intention of making tulpas. They deviated from there, but i don't love or care for them any less. I didn't consiously pick Misha or Dashie, i started making Ashley, kind of like one of my original characters, i mean, by voice and form, then, two other similar characters from the same book were 'chosen for me'. They came to life by walk-in and i couldn't bear to turn them away.

 

If i had made Ashley completely, she'd probably have been a different person, and i didn't consiously choose Dashie or Misha to be like they are, nor did i choose them to be tulpas, they won the initial negotiation and Ashley gave me a strong ultimatum to keep them.

 

They are purely tulpas now since none of them have a created lore or backstory other than what they told me of their 'rescue' and Ashley's insistence that she was with me for decades before.

 

I don't see any issue starting with characters, are there any examples (by name) or evidence that starting with a preformed character leads to dissapointment, infant mortality increase, or tulpa trauma? (Significantly higher than normal?)

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the many threads by people whose tulpas were based off creepypasta/fanon stuff like Pinkamena who can't/don't want to change their tulpa even though their tulpa causes lots of drama or is a very negative influence etc.

 

even our own Flan had a bit of this maybe, I mean the original Flandre back in the day was popularly seen as mentally unstable.. it seems like our Flan's problems were her own and because our system was immature at the time, but either way she was an accidental/natural tulpa who had in-system drama I guess and was eventually split into two tulpas back then just as a way to convince her and lumi that she should be able to change, basically

 

but like I said in my first post, this never ever happens to hosts who are actively trying to avoid it going into tulpamancy, it's always people who knew what they were doing could be bad but doing it anyway (ie making an insane tulpa on purpose) or at the very least immature systems (11-14 or so) who don't have great mental environments/control yet to keep things stable

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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So if they had created one from scratch, do you think everything would have gone better? Was the negative influence specifically due to the flaws of a negative pre-existing character?

 

We have the example that sparked this clarification, Twilight Sparkle, beloved MLP main 6 original, also a little loopy at times, could a loopy tulpa be just as likely from scratch, or is that preexisting condition the problem?

 

I don't see why it couldn't be fixed, since the tulpa Twilight may diverge easily. What say you?

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As others have mentioned, semantics are a bitch.

 

A long time member of the multiple/plural community, "I" was interested to see much of the same terminology employed here. It makes sense and from an empowered multiplicity POV Tulpimancers are part of that community. From a clinical psych POV Tulpamancers are self induced, non disordered DID-OSDD folks. Something clinical psych says isn't possible which doesn't help research into tulpamancy.

 

I think a workable model from a tulpamancytech hard science POV would be:

 

Conscious/subconscious initial generation. Tulpas generica are crafted from nothing on up consciously. Soulbonds present to the conscious "You" as a pregenerated characters and are a subset of tulpas.

 

In my brief stint in nursing training, I plucked up the gumption to mention the possibility that demons exist (i.e., SHOULD we treat patients who talk about demons as categorically, objectively wrong?) but for some reason bringing up the deliberate development of 'audiation' (which is the audio form of 'visualization') stuck in my throat.

Woodwindwhistler on www.asexuality.org

 

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. -Eric Hoffer

 

"We can never achieve perfection, but maybe we can approach it asymptotically. Never give up on plugging in those numbers!" ~Me

 

You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note. –Doug Floyd

 

My poetry: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5qMnL2tDkJYOGNhLW4tRHFHa0E&usp=sharing

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Here we go. We are gonna post our opinion. We believe that is why we exist on this forum though. We do think it is important.

 

We believe there is no substantive difference between soulbonds and tulpas whatsoever. The differences are merely cosmetic. Soulbonds are based on literary characters, or began life as literary characters, and may or may not still be strongly tied to the story from which they are derived. Other than that, there is no major difference between a soulbond and a tulpa. Some tulpas have some soulbond traits if they are based on a literary character and could be easily described as a soulbond.

 

We would take this even farther. We believe there is no substantive difference between any thoughtform of any kind, be it a role playing character, a method acting persona, a soulbond, a daemon, a dream guide, a tulpa or a plural system mate. The categories and labels and divisions we give them all are contrived. There is no such thing as one type being more independently sentient, while another is not sentient for instance. They are all figments, dissociation, altered states and aspects of a single human mind. The only difference between thoughtforms, other than cosmetic details, are the levels of apparent independent agency, persistence of existence, how seasoned the thoughtform is, and how emotionally profound it is.

 

So a soulbond is basically a tulpa, and a tulpa is basically a soubond. The differences between them are really minor and more or less window dressing or cosmetic.

 

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-living-imagination-a-median-aspect-in-tulpa-land?pid=167957#pid167957

 

 

.

Skeptical and unconvinced about independent sentience.  

 

Living Imagination  New Topic Index  Mistgod's Deviantart  Melian's Deviantart

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Here we go.  We are gonna post our opinion.  We believe that is why we exist on this forum though.  We do think it is important.  

 

We believe there is no substantive difference between soulbonds and tulpas whatsoever.  The differences are merely cosmetic.  Soulbonds are based on literary characters, or began life as literary characters, and may or may not still be strongly tied to the story from which they are derived.  Other than that, there is no major difference between a soulbond and a tulpa.  Some tulpas have some soulbond traits if they are based on a literary character and could be easily described as a soulbond.  

 

We would take this even farther.  We believe there is no substantive difference between any thoughtform of any kind, be it a role playing character, a method acting persona, a soulbond, a daemon, a dream guide, a tulpa or a plural system mate.  The categories and labels and divisions we give them all are contrived.  There is no such thing as one type being more independently sentient, while another is not sentient for instance.  They are all figments, dissociation, altered states and aspects of a single human mind.  The only difference between thoughtforms, other than cosmetic details, are the levels of apparent independent agency, persistence of existence, how seasoned the thoughtform is, and how emotionally profound it is.  

 

So a soulbond is basically a tulpa, and a tulpa is basically a soubond.  The differences between them are really minor and more or less window dressing or cosmetic.

 

https://community.tulpa.info/thread-living-imagination-a-median-aspect-in-tulpa-land?pid=167957#pid167957

 

I can't yet say whether or not I agree with the point about all thoughtforms being of the same "nature" or "species", but I definitely disagree with the part about categories and labels all being contrived or cosmetic. Even if all thoughtforms are fundamentally the same "species" in the same sense that all humans are the same species, that doesn't make the different labels meaningless, it just means they're not describing the nature of the thing they're labeling. I think words like "tulpa" and "soulbond" describe the relationship between the thoughtform and human, like the words "dad" and "uncle" describe the relation that one human being has to another.

 

Tulpas and soulbonds are distinguished from each other by the fact that tulpas are consciously developed while soulbonds appear without conscious intent; it's like the difference between a biological and adopted child. There may be other distinguishing features but this is the main one.

For death begins with life's first breath, 

And life begins at touch of death.

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Very insightful, but I would only add that the intent to make them separate people may not have been there, but the work involved, forcing (to borrow a term) was done while writing the book or while studying the character.

 

Considering all my tulpas came to me on the same day, all fully vocal and willful, and 'borrowed' the formes of my characters that i created from writing, they were definitely soulbonds. However, they rejected their backstory and characters right away and deviated very quickly, like the next coulpe days. That's tukpa territory. I assumed sentience from the start, but i didn't have to assume much.

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I can't yet say whether or not I agree with the point about all thoughtforms being of the same "nature" or "species", but I definitely disagree with the part about categories and labels all being contrived or cosmetic. Even if all thoughtforms are fundamentally the same "species" in the same sense that all humans are the same species, that doesn't make the different labels meaningless, it just means they're not describing the nature of the thing they're labeling. I think words like "tulpa" and "soulbond" describe the relationship between the thoughtform and human, like the words "dad" and "uncle" describe the relation that one human being has to another.

 

Tulpas and soulbonds are distinguished from each other by the fact that tulpas are consciously developed while soulbonds appear without conscious intent; it's like the difference between a biological and adopted child. There may be other distinguishing features but this is the main one.

 

This kinda makes sense except that there is a kind of fluidity between the different "types" with thoughforms changing or shifting from one to another category.  Sometimes its ambiguous as to which category or type a thougthform belongs.  So I don't think these are very solid definitions at all sometimes (frequently in fact).  So, I would say they are kinda squishy definitions or foggy around the edges.  Add to that the fact that people can't even to agree on the qualifications or definitions and you have a confusing mess.

 

For a follow up on this, go here https://community.tulpa.info/thread-confessions-of-a-poorly-trained-tulpa?pid=247808#pid247808

Skeptical and unconvinced about independent sentience.  

 

Living Imagination  New Topic Index  Mistgod's Deviantart  Melian's Deviantart

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