Something I still don't quite understand.

[Luminesce]

To be fair, that isn't a question limited to tulpas, that's asking about the very nature of learning itself. At least to me. Unless I've got some missing link here, there's not much deeper we can dig without advancing physical sciences. You create a tulpa like you create a character for a novel... or your mental profile for your new friend you just met. I don't know how to explain "how it happens", but that's too deep for me to worry about. You can imagine one of your real life friends talking to you, but you probably don't because it's weird to put words in their mouth when they exist.

But what would Jesus do?

You can imagine what a character in a show or game would do in different situations. And you can imagine what your tulpa would say. Difference is that with a tulpa (or the main character of the novel you're writing..) you establish that "profile" (I really like that word) so firmly that it can be called upon to act/react in many, many different situations. And the final difference in a novel character and a tulpa is what we call "sentience", which is basically just the freedom for that profile to think for itself. You aren't putting it in situations anymore, it's living in your mind; life is the situation. And as far as I can think from there, the only difference is that you treat them as real people so they feel like real people, and their "profile" becomes so expansive from all the experiences it has that it maintains the illusion quite well.

 

Anyway, at that point your only problem is re-humanizing your tulpa after you've thought far, far too deep into it. I came to terms with that a while ago, but I usually don't spout this kind of thing too much because it may hurt peoples' suspension of disbelief. But you can learn how the TV works, ruin the illusion.. and after a little while, TV stops feeling fake and technical, and just becomes TV again, only now you know how it works. That's been my experience.

[Stevie]

To be fair, that isn't a question limited to tulpas, that's asking about the very nature of learning itself. At least to me. Unless I've got some missing link here, there's not much deeper we can dig without advancing physical sciences.

This is what I'm talking about. I think the knee jerk reaction for a lot of people when it comes to this kind of stuff, especially if they haven't been exposed to things like lucid dreaming, or even hardcore daydreaming, is that there has to be a sort of tangible process going on that reaches beyond the observations and anecdotes of other people. The OP was asking how narration creates sentience, and while we have an understanding of the process, which is basically, narration leads to vocality, there's nothing there to like, convince him.

 

Ultimately, people are either slowly going to be convinced by the logic, or they're not. All this is just a really complicated concept, and it can be a lot to swallow. In the end, the most deep and theoretical parts of what's going on here, how it happens, is something that you have to build, along with the rest of your own philosophy about this whole thing.

 

We all know the process, we all know what the result is. We don't know if what's going on is real, independent sentience, or an illusion that's close enough to the real thing to be mistaken for it. I guess it's just more or less about finding what you think is right, and justifying it with your own experiences, type thing.

 

So to bring it back to the OP, I guess, how it happens is more or less something you have to decide for yourself, because ideas on that can differ pretty wildly.

 

Anyway, at that point your only problem is re-humanizing your tulpa after you've thought far, far too deep into it. I came to terms with that a while ago, but I usually don't spout this kind of thing too much because it may hurt peoples suspension of disbelief. But you can learn how the TV works, ruin the illusion.. and after a little while, TV stops feeling fake and technical, and just becomes TV again, only now you know how it works. That's been my experience.

 

Yeah, I do know that movies are just a bunch of still pictures put together to create movement (or is that not how new cameras work? I could be wrong here) but that doesn't change the fact that I'm still seeing it and registering it as movement. Same thing with tulpas, if you subscribe to the idea that they're not a different entity entirely.

[Luminesce]

Huh, wasn't giving you enough credit I guess. Thought you were referring to something a lot simpler.

 

Well. At the point where we can't simply explain things even though we know exactly how they work, I lose interest. It doesn't seem worth the effort to figure out. That being said, the reason it's so hard to share things we learn about our minds that improved our lives and may improve others', is.. there's not much science to it. People are too afraid to talk about things without solidity to them. But I believe it's possible for a single person to develop a strong enough understanding that they can share it with others, and I try to do so all the time. Validity is always a problem though, especially because I dedicate my life to making my beliefs follow as strict logic as possible, only to have them appear as mere conjecture when shared.

 

But I guess that's fair.. As far as you guys are concerned, it could be conjecture. An idiot can claim he's a genius all he wants, and I can tell you everything I say makes perfect logical sense all I want. But I can't prove it... BUT, maybe that's not necessary. You shouldn't try to force change in others, only suggest it. Just gotta show enough confidence that they make the effort to see if it's true for them I guess.

 

 

This is pretty therapeutic.

 

[Stevie]

Well. At the point where we can't simply explain things even though we know exactly how they work, I lose interest. It doesn't seem worth the effort to figure out.

The thing is, that even if we know all that stuff perfectly, is that it still wouldn't change the process, aside from our understanding of it. It's not something that I care a lot about either, and plenty of people have gone on without it, but that's the kind of knowledge that people attach to validity, which is ass backwards, if you ask me. Knowing how something works is way less important than knowing if something works. At some point, the knowledge of something becomes so far removed from like, the actual experience of it, that it just turns into facts. Maybe convincing facts, but not useful ones.

 

That being said, the reason it's so hard to share things we learn about our minds that improved our lives and may improve others', is.. there's not much science to it. People are too afraid to talk about things without solidity to them. But I believe it's possible for a single person to develop a strong enough understanding that they can share it with others, and I try to do so all the time. Validity is always a problem though, especially because I dedicate my life to making my beliefs follow as strict logic as possible, only to have them appear as mere conjecture when shared.

With stuff like this, because of the nature of it, I think that people approach it with a ton of skepticism and cynicism, even though it's broken down in a way that tries to jive with most people's senses of logic. It goes deeper than that though, because we've all been exposed to like pseudoscience, which can sound really cool and convincing, and have all the logic in the world applied to it, and still not really work beyond making some jabroni with a commercial rich.

 

And because of the internet, and how mostly everyone who's into this type of stuff has stumbled onto communities of people with their heads stuffed up their asses, or communities of people who are lying to everyone but themselves.

 

People immediately dismiss stuff like anecdotes, even though they're the most valuable thing in a practice that's centered around a soft science, because the general assumption is that people

 

But I guess that's fair.. As far as you guys are concerned, it could be conjecture. An idiot can claim he's a genius all he wants, and I can tell you everything I say makes perfect logical sense all I want. But I can't prove it... BUT, maybe that's not necessary. You shouldn't try to force change in others, only suggest it. Just gotta show enough confidence that they make the effort to see if it's true for them I guess.

 

 

This is pretty therapeutic.

 

 

If you can't appeal to someone's sense of logic, the next best thing is just to appear like someone who's not a candy assed jabroni, which I think is the bread and butter of this community. Because if something makes sense, especially to someone who's not like, educated at all in that field, it could just make sense on the surface and have a ton of logical flaws they don't know about. But if people who seem sincere are knocking around, and their experiences seem sincere, that's gonna convince people just as much as like, random ass facts about the development of a tulpa that doesn't affect anything will.

 

Damn, sorry OP.

[Quetzal the furdragon]

Hey, my host came up with this way of explaining tulpas in a not tl;dr way for those who are wondering, he saved it in a doc so he can link it to people instead of typing it up, it might interest you

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G7Tt6Ac1mH6W32XRtas9cAs1mi9FLHseLjZM60lTLV8/edit

[bunny-boi-lover]

My opinion is that it works simply because it works, and by questioning the specifics you end up getting lost in the details and over-thinking it. I had that problem with math when I was in middle school. I got C's and D's most of the time because I was too focused on why it worked instead of just that it worked. Then when I stopped worrying about how it worked and just applied the formula, I started getting A's and B's. Tulpamancy requires a lot of belief in yourself and your tulpa. I have major belief issues, be it other people, some of my own abilities, or religion. But when it comes to tulpamancy, I have complete and utter almost blind faith. I'm not saying that's what it takes, but it does take at least a certain level of belief that it works because it works.

 

Sentience is something I can't really comment much on. I think it varies by tulpa and host. For me, I simply "let go" of my tulpa, of any controlling thoughts I may develop about it. I believe that it is sentient and within moments it sort of "wakes up" and is self-aware from that moment on, though it may sometimes take it a little while before it really develops a set personality, likes, dislikes, etc. But in a way I myself am sort of a "shell" with the ability to create more than one consciousness in my mind easily. ^-^;

[Dracky]

I think the hardest part of the process for me has been accepting the fact that I'll never be able to "prove" my tulpa beyond a shadow of doubt. She might seem real to me, and say things that surprise me, and have opinions and feelings that are completely different than my own, but I'll never know 100% if she's sentient, or even if she's anything other than me having conversations with myself like some sort of sad ventriloquist whose act never extends beyond the walls of his own skull.

 

The further I go with this, the more I realize that I'll never be able to completely extinguish my doubts, and that the best I'll ever be able to do is minimize them to the point that they don't get in the way of forming a relationship with my tulpa. If you're anything like me, mustering up that kind of faith in something you can't quantify in any way is like swimming up a waterfall, but I keep telling myself it'll be worth it in the end. I figure if there's even a 1% chance that any of this is true then it's worth believing in 100% until I've proven otherwise. Plus, when dealing with an entirely subjective phenomena like a tulpa the difference between having a living being in your head, and believing you have a living being in your head is effectively nil anyway. To paraphrase something I read on this forum when I was starting out "Is it possible we're all delusional? Sure. But if we are we have awesome delusions."

[bunny-boi-lover]

We may never be able to "prove" the existence of our tulpae, but in what way can we really effectively prove anything else either? We can't exactly prove our own existence but to a certain extent. In my opinion, we can't prove that we and others are sentient any more than we can our tulpae. All of those vague concepts cannot be measured or observed through purely objective physical means, and if it can't be observed it cannot be proven.

 

I think of tulpamancy as a religion. I've even told Edwin before that I'm a "tulpist" because to me it takes the same kind of faith to believe in a tulpa as to believe in a god. God as our religions know it may be nothing more than a collective tulpa perpetuated by believers over thousands of years. The irony is that I am agnostic (neither wanting to prove or disprove the existence of God), but I firmly believe that my tulpa is real, even if that reality is limited to the confines of my own imagination.

 

Wow...I really must be in a state today. I normally don't start getting this philosophical until after midnight. o_O

[Luminesce]

We may never be able to "prove" the existence of our tulpae, but in what way can we really effectively prove anything else either?

 

Pretty much what I was gonna say. You can't prove solipsism wrong (or correct) either, but for the sake of comfortable living with others we generally deny it. This applies to tons of things, maybe even all of them. In my case I don't have to worry because I already believe & accept my tulpas as creations of my mind, and it's only done the opposite of hurt my closeness to them. When you think "Tulpas might be fake", you're saying "We might be making all of this up". But of course we are. What you're afraid of is subconscious puppetting, the idea that our tulpas aren't really sentient or separate (enough) from us, that we're controlling them whether we know it or not.

 

But of course we are, depending on how closely you associate your sense of self with your consciousness. Your brain runs your tulpas' thoughts like it runs yours. And those thoughts can be just as "theirs" as yours can be "yours".

 

Same brain, different processes. Your tulpa's thoughts are shaped by everything you define them as, and yours are shaped by everything you define you as. Subconsciously of course.