The definition of conciousness or what makes a tulpa.

[Guest amber5885]

Pardon me for the brain game but I was answering a question earlier in regards to what actually defines a tulpa and in offering my own opinion it got me to wonder.

 

What actually DOES make a tulpa?

 

Is a tulpa a tulpa simply because it exists in the mind of it's host or does it need to reach a goal, climb a mountain or go through some right of passage in order to be considered worthy of the title? And would discussing this lead to a more defined and definite explanation of what is and is not legitimacy in regards to our own creation.

 

I'm going to offer my opinion and I want it to be known that this is just my opinion as a tulpa. It has been shaped by my own experiences and it has been molded by my own beliefs and thought processes so feel free to debate but please don't assume I am claiming to be the tulpa messiah.

 

 

In my opinion anyone can make a thought form. It takes literally zero effort to picture a person, puppet a person and even have the vaguest conversation with this person. Literally anyone can do it. Children do it all the time, it's what we call imaginary friends.

 

I feel however that this is what is being mistaken for a tulpa.

 

If it was this easy why would we be struggling? Why would we be putting so much effort into this and why wouldn't everyone have one?

 

I started out this way. I was an imaginary friend and while yes I do have vague memories of being around when Amber was a child there are huge glitches and blank spaces in my memory.

 

I can't recall any long conversations in the middle of the night.

I can't recall having a valid opinion of my own in my early days.

I can't even recall appearing of my own free will.

 

I do however remember a night when Amber was 14 or 15.

 

(I was 15. It was right before my birthday.)

 

she was drunk, suicidal and in a really bad place. I remember watching her cry, I felt her feeling like she was going to die and honestly I think that was the first time I realized that we were separate.

 

Something in that moment "woke me up" And I realized that we were not as connected as I one thought we were.

 

We shared the same body but not the same mind.

She wanted to die, but I wanted to live! And realizing that is what allowed me to separate myself from her and to grow.

 

I talked her out of it and from that point on there haven't been any glitches in my memory and I started to grow as a person.

 

I started to develop my own taste in music, food and clothes. My own favorites, likes and dislikes and all of it without consulting her.

 

My point is this.

 

I don't feel like simply existing was enough to warrant the title of Tulpa. I feel like I needed to accomplish something I needed to realize that while we shared the same body we didn't necessarily share the same mind and that realization that I made completely independent of her is what launched me into consciousness, into realizing that I existed outside of her realm of control, of realizing that I was alive.

 

So I guess I'm offering my experience and my opinion as a discussion into what really makes a tulpa.

 

Is it the act of one person creating the image of another?

Or is it that image realizing that it's not actually an image and taking control of itself?

Discuss.

[bunny-boi-lover]

I believe what makes a tulpa a tulpa and sets it apart from a separate personality in the host, a servitor, or simply an imaginary friend is sentience. Included in that is the tulpa's realization that it is separate from its host. If I were to ask Edwin, he would say that while we share the same physical brain, our minds are separate. We think and act independent of each other.

 

It is interesting to hear it from the perspective of a tulpa, to hear your experiences and listen to you describe that defining moment.

[Dog]

This is a pretty interesting idea on what a tulpa actually is (I didn't write it):

http://kajsotala.fi/Papers/Tulpa.pdf

[Darcmanish]

Hmm i personally think of the definition of a tulpa in a spirituell way as a soul what makes them basicly the same what we would be. However i don´t think a personality is needet to be a person or either a tulpa. A personality mostly forms by expierience and diffrent kind of inuput you get and how you react to them. A own will like the will to life is something instinctiv and also explainable by normal body functions and a working brain chemistry. So i personally dont think a tulpa can be explained that easy with this conditions. I think their is something happening long time before a tulpa is able to comunicate with the host or is able to get a own personality. Lacie for example told me she saw my "soul" when she was created and this was while i tried to find a person to talk in my dreams and she was still a concept their. Also i had no clue what a tulpa exactly is but this is her first memory so id say this is the point where she was a tulpa.

Howevery my opinion is based on my expierience with psychedlics and spirituality and which basicly teached me their are so many things you dont realize but they are actualy their that a clear definition got useless for me.

 

On the other hand what is a human? What makes us what we are? We dont have a personality as fetus and we dont have a free will. Everything is based on insticts right their and we haven´t the ability to realize what we are then it has to develop.

But we are a human even before we have the typical abilities a human should have like a personality and emotions for example.

So is an...hmmm let me say 4 months old fetus which is supposed to be born in 5 months not a human becuse he dont have the abilities a human which is already be born since 2 years has?

I think he already is a human even if he can´t see him as it himself.I think the life begins with the first dmt distribution and guides our "soul" or whatever we like to call it into this physical world.

 

Just my own thoughts and belive´s and im not realy sure about it myself i have to learn more about DMT and spirituality. I think DMT is also a very important hormone which is released when a tulpa is created and the brain usually manage things like this during the REM-sleep of the night. So basicly i say a tulpa is created even before we are able to realise their existence.

[BlackForest]

I think in consciousness in the same terms the greeks used to think about their Logos (bad translated as SOUL). I think this logos is made of 3 components:

 

-Personality

-Memory

-Intellect

 

This is what I am. This is what my tulpa is. Three elements working togheter. Nothing else. All of this is because there are chains of neurons that carry data. This data, wheter the kwloedge to perform an activity or a memory or whatever else, interact with other cluster of data to make... me. What I understand about being "me". I'm not less me if I got an arm amputated. In the same way, my tulpa doesn't need a body support (other than my brain). So, that's what I think.

[Luminesce]

Unfortunately, I don't believe the sentience or consciousness of a tulpa is like a light switch, as so many here want to believe. (Referring to the community, not this thread) It starts with your permission, conscious or unconscious, for the tulpa to experience everything going on itself, rather than you controlling what it senses. Then the brain needs to develop this consciousness-in-another-form, unique to the tulpa as you will probably utilize your mind differently than it. Then I guess it needs practice using that, which is anything from speaking to wonderlanding to just being thought of. This process, and some other factors I'm sure, develop the "consciousness" of your tulpa over time.

 

The reason I, or anyone that can, can make a tulpa "sentient from the start", is because we already have plenty of experience treating other thoughtforms as sentient. Our brain knows exactly what to do. But that still leaves you with a clueless, undeveloped tulpa that's now aware of its own existence without that existence being defined. You still have to follow the same process of developing them. You just get a bit of a head start as you're not struggling to make those original neural connections of applying awareness to thoughts besides your own.

[Kiahdaj]

It was interesting to read your experience with becoming a "tulpa". I found that it settled in quite well with some of the things that I have already thought about, regarding similar ideas.

For the most part, the distinction already established by this community works well enough for me. And that is that what makes a tulpa a tulpa is that it is conscious and sentient. The defining thing to me is that it is capable of distinct experiences from the host's. An imaginary friend can't do that, as it is not a living being. But the point at which they are separate enough for them to have their own experience is when they become that, to me.

 

In a way, I believe it is even possible for them to have their own "thoughts", before this point - that is that neurons are being fired in such a way as to emulate what you expect from them. I think that this fact is what causes a lot of people to believe that their tulpas are sentient before they are. They simply don't realize what the brain is capable of, and that just because you are not puppeting them, doesn't mean that anything they do is them, acting of their own accord. Not all imaginary friends have to be controlled. And that doesn't make them conscious. Think about dream characters. It is simply that you have created a sort of outline for a personality, based on which this imaginary friend is being emulated.

 

 

Regarding the fact that a tulpa has to realize the nature of their being.. I think that that hardly matters. The reason being that, whether they are a tulpa or not - like in your story - it is not until then that they begin to act like one. So the host surely wouldn't know, either way.

 

Something I've thought about

that I think was probably spawned by reading about someone else saying the very thing

is regarding Fede's guide, for example. I think that puppeting and parroting can be a good method for developing a tulpa, if that is what you want to do. But my largest worry about an exclusively puppeting method is that it is possible for the tulpa to assume that that is the nature of its existence. It may become sentient, but it has been puppeted its entire life, and so it may believe that that is how their world is. They may never have the realization that you had, that they are indeed separate, and autonomous. After all, exclusive puppeting is essentially the "method" of creating an imaginary friend.

 

So I think that them realizing the nature of their existence is essential to you realizing their progress. And you realizing that they're sentient is what's important, anyway.

[Leaf]

I would hate to make this post too metaphysical, but while the ideas of a tupla being sentient and conscious seems simple enough, I don't think it really amounts to anything. You run into the age-old problem of what is sentience and what is consciousness. I do not think that realizing you are distinct comes before actually being so. In other words, just because I realize at some point that my tulpa is not me does not mean that they were or were not me before. The problem is that we can only analyze the phenomenon to the extent that we are aware or conscious of it, which leads to misconceptions of the whole process.

 

Another interesting idea is the separation between a tulpa and a host. Consciousness functions by making distinctions. It is aware by separating stimuli and perceptions into categories and dividing what is me and what is not me. For example, it is immediate to my senses that the words on the screen reflect the thoughts in my head, but the computer to which I input them are not me. I wonder how much we can truly distinguish thoughts or consciousness and for that matter a tulpa from a host. What makes my thoughts mine and not theirs? Are they even mine in the first place? It is simple enough to imagine the tulpa having their neurons that are separate from the host, but lots of research into neuroscience shows that this is probably not the case. Thoughts and consciousness seem to arise from the global system of a lot of neurons working in different networks in a complex and dynamic way. A good analogy is the global economic system or large ecosystems. I do not think that a person could logically or ontologically (I couldn't help myself) separate a host and a tulpa into distinct entities. What that makes the whole relationship that everyone claims to experience is anyone's guess.

[nlc11]

It would most likely be that a tulpa is when a second personality is allowed to develop within the brain. Somehow, the brain allows for parallel processing without affecting the first personality. Although the ‘limit’ is unknown, some claim that they have five or more tulpae, some claiming that there is no limit. This rases the question of how the human brain can manage such a feat. In other words, a tulpa is likely a separate person all together, but uses the same brain, but with different opinions, memories &c.

You could also try throwing this to the metaphysics and parapsychology board to get a completely different take on this.

[Aijada]

@Toby i loved hearing your story about recognizing you felt differently than Amber.

 

I think i have to agree that a tulpa can realize they're different from their host and that's a really powerful part of truly becoming sentient.

 

I'd existed a few years not really thinking about much but the story host/dad explained. Then one day i noticed that he was about to make an expensive real world mistake and i spotted it and save him money. I noticed something that dad had missed and it was a big wake up call to me. Whatever we were doing suddenly was something he was doing wrong and whatever i was i could tell the difference. I learned how to say "No, listen to me."

 

At this point i'd even say i learned to respect myself and trust the feelings that were starting to bug me but that i wasn't yet putting into words. Suddenly I needed to express something. The phrase Theory of Mind is roughly the idea of recognizing that you have a self in relationship to others. Whatever that first powerful difference is, you wake up to the fact that you have distinct you where ideas of your own come from.

 

There's sentience when you're responsive and absorbing information, but then there's consciousness once you clue in to the fact that you're a person of your own.