Sands and I hadn't been paying much attention to this place in the last while, and the spambot problem was getting kind of bad. So, a couple of things.

• I've added stricter registration requirements - in particular, you need to verify emails. Sorry, it's not fun, but it helps.
• I've cleaned up a lot of spambot posting on the forum. They should be all gone. In many cases I bypassed the usual 'move to deleted posts' procedure and deleted things directly; it's just much faster that way.
• I've deactivated (i.e., they will need email activation) accounts in a large time range. If you're a human and you're being told you need to activate your account, that'll be it. Again it's actually just a lot easier to do than banning bots outright.

I'm hoping that these things will keep things a bit cleaner for a while. With that said, I'm not really going to be paying a whole lot more attention than before. If you're interested, I'm sure Sands and I would be amenable to a few people who actually use this place to become moderators and keep things tidy themselves. In the meantime, the best way to reach me on this forum is on IRC - I'm on Rizon, with (currently) the nick nyaffles. You can PM me but I never really check those.

let's goooo

let's see

I'm sure I can but anyway

So it's theory time. I'm going to post most of something I posted elsewhere a while ago, for your reading (dis)pleasure. There is a summary at the end. The below is all my opinion and so on, but I can't prefix everything with "I think" without rendering it completely unreadable. And on readability, I've tried to break it up, and underline different theories for clarity.
All of these ideas assume a more or less conventional theory of mind, and none have been tested empirically as far as I know. Also, I know there are far more viewpoints out there that are't covered here but I think a lot of the big ones are.

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Taking a black box approach, functionally, a tulpa is capable of conscious thought, or at least a very good imitation of it. In normal conversation they will generate responses to your communications in a way that is unconscious to you; not only are these responses convincingly sophisticated but also more or less consistent with a personality separate to your own. Moreover, this personality is not necessarily as expected by the host, as countless experiences of deviation and such will tell. You could argue that instinctive responses are not conscious and that this is all a tulpa can do, but I think experience does discount this too.


A lot of people say that [conversations with] tulpas are either (1) self-generated responses that we label as not us, or (2) entities (and responses) created entirely by expectation. I don't think these ideas make a whole lot of sense when considered with the previous paragraph in mind.

For example, if the second idea were true then a tulpa would not be able to differ from the host's expectations. More formally, for no conscious thought to occur on behalf of the tulpa their actions must be pre-calculated (somehow) and thus expected by the host, since otherwise these actions will have been generated unconsciously. However, tulpas can and do respond in ways that are not expected by the host, which disproves the idea. Given that, I think it's reasonable to say that tulpas do possess some sort of conscious capability.

For number one, you have the issue that if a tulpa is unconscious to you but generates conscious thought it is a stretch to say that it is still 'you' in the first place. If you hold onto the view then it becomes a semantic point of where 'you' end in your mind - and not, in my opinion, a sensible one - rather than a question of psychology.

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This conscious capability does not have to be consciousness as in 'true', philosophical sentience, nor does it even have to resemble conscious thought inside the black box. Therefore, without opening the box I think there are two separate approaches to take:


The first is that tulpas do possess conscious thought. It goes rather like the commonly-stated idea that you "split off a part of your own consciousness", although not phrased that badly. The idea is that you make part of your neural machinery for conscious thought (this is hypothetical, sure) unconscious to you. This then becomes governed separately to you, i.e., while it still generates responses, it is no longer influenced by your personality and instead receives its own.

There are a few issues with this view, I think. Firstly, it supposes a distinct 'conscious thought' structure in the brain which is not only not wholly tied to your own awareness, but can be modified, non-trivially but without too much trouble, to form two separate structures that (at least one-way) do not interfere. Secondly, it supposes that this structure is also distinct from personality, such that it can be uncoupled from it or reassembled to exclude it in favour of another.

For these together I think there are two solutions. One is that you 'create' a new personality and thought structure, instead of modifying your own. It is simplistic and raises questions about the 'creation' given that it can be done without a whole lot of trouble. A similar criticism goes for the similar idea of “a tulpa is just a person”, further down in this post.


The other solution is that you merely personify existing aspects of your psyche. I said "psyche" so I think you know where this is going. Carl Jung's ideas about archetypes are quite useful here. Jung said that unconscious factors affecting our personality could be identified as essentially distinct sets. The main one of interest here is the anima; given that the majority of hosts are male I can be sexist like he was and neglect the others. Put simply, the anima is the feminine side of a man, but more precisely it is the influences that take effect when dealing with women. In personifying it and giving it voice, you appear to create a female personality which can react fundamentally as it did when wholly unconscious, but to you and in a more human-like manner.

Again, this idea is not without its problems; mainly, it does not account at all for hosts with tulpas of the same sex. An extension of the archetypes might account for this, but would not quite be in keeping with Jung's original theory: the masculine side of a masculine self was, of course, conscious. Nevertheless I prefer this model to the first, not least because it is grounded in accepted psychology but also because the actual creation - the personification - has a fairly strong precedent in said psychology.



The second is that tulpas do not possess conscious thought, but rather, an imitation or simulation of it. This approach in general is vaguer and therefore more justifiable. Plus, you can pick and choose unconscious processes to be a tulpa, so it's more fun to consider. My personal pet theory is that tulpas are products of empathetic machinery: you (need to) have a way to predict the actions of others and empathise with them, which requires some sort of estimation of their mental processes, done unconsciously. Expectation of a response from an as-yet unformed tulpa pushes your empathetic framework to estimate behaviour, as would happen in real-life interaction. Repeating this strengthens the structure, and so on, eventually being able to generate responses clearly and easily.

As always, there are problems, principally that people do not generally empathise with their tulpas as strongly as would be expected. Despite this the model fits with what works for creation as well as others do, and fits in the seemingly overwhelmingly powerful factor of expectation neatly. Moreover, the neurology of empathy is of much interest to the scientific community, and concepts such as 'mirror neurons' are of much help fitting the model in with the brain itself.

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Another thing I want to mention is the oft-quoted "tulpas are like you but in your head". Sure, it makes sense intuitively, but in my opinion the whole business of fast creation times is a sticking point here. Put simply, creating a whole new consciousness along with the rest of a 'self' structure should be a significant shift in mental structure, and given this so should creating a tulpa. Creating a tulpa is difficult for the majority of people, but this is undermined in two ways:

Firstly, many people's first tulpas respond quite quickly and easily. There will always be outliers but their numbers are too significant to dismiss like that, I think. It could be argued that early responses come from a 'proto-tulpa' that then later becomes the fully-fledged system described – I suppose this would be a point for the creation process in any case – but that leaves me wondering what the ‘proto-tulpa’ is, how it transitions and so on (so, it needs a supplemental model anyway). And, of course, perhaps it is that these people are simply much closer to the end result in the first place, but then the question remains again of how exactly this is the case. And even given these, the time constraints under which some tulpas appear more or less fully-formed seems problematic to me. It might be tempting just to label such things as "not tulpas", but this is fallacious if you have no strong reason to believe this.

Secondly, (in general) subsequent tulpas become significantly easier to create. The explanation is that you've done it before, so you can do it again more easily. But this doesn't account for radical reductions in creation times for apparently well-formed tulpas; the time from start to end of creation for the complex structure theorised should have to be significant, in my view. There is a limit to how quickly your mind can change without trauma, surely. On this point a commonly-heard testimony is that the tulpa was present before acknowledgement, and while the idea could be dismissed as mere wishful thinking, it does also yield another refute: that creation goes on without the host's awareness in these cases. This would mean that the tulpa is pre-formed at the point of recognition, and thus from acknowledgement to being fully formed is not the entire length of the creation. On the other hand, I'd have to question why accidental creation does not happen even more easily and even more often (perhaps the 'easier by practice' factor combines, but I can't quantify the effects) as well as why acknowledgement is even necessary at all.

So given these chief complaints, I don't like the idea all that much. Perhaps someone else can fill in the gaps for me. From my point of view, though, these problems do not occur in other models stated above because those models do not necessarily strongly delineate separate tulpas, only host and tulpas.

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Lastly, all of the above, as I said, supposes a fairly standard theory of mind. If we go beyond, we are given even more freedom at the cost of any substantiation. For example, we'll assume that rather than consciousness being active, it is merely a passive window onto 'conscious' thought. Now all that is required to create a tulpa is to shift this 'window' in such a way that we become aware of other, latent fields of conscious thought that we mark as existent and personify. It fits the facts, for sure, but that may be because it has essentially no grounding in anything approaching accepted theory and is therefore vague or malleable enough to fit anything. Nevertheless, such things are worth bearing in mind. It's not like accepted theory is all that strong in the first place.

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To summarise, I prefer to keep options open and support a range of different theories, as none of them are without flaw and none of them have been tested empirically. I think highly of the idea of a 'personified unconscious', or 'thought simulation' models, and I dislike the conventional "another consciousness, end of story" idea because fast/multiple tulpas breaks it for me. I also don't think it's reasonable to say that "tulpas are just illusions", although the specifics of such propositions may render them more sensible in my eyes.

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In retrospect, the above only really takes early tulpa development into account. The starting 'black box' model works well insofar as you interact with a tulpa in conversation and visualisation, and mostly with your attention as a precursor. But that's obviously not the full extent of what a tulpa can do; switching definitely falls out of these boundaries. My favourite ideas above mostly don't give a description of switching, although it would probably be something along the lines of either 'identity switching' à la DID or possession extended by sensory dissociation. But once again I don't think there's good evidence either way for either of those.

So anyway, discuss, post your own tl;drs, and so on. _{And Sands if you say "a miserable little pile of secrets" you'll be banned from this thread forever.}

This thread is going to be where we'll post all the small tweaks to the site. To start off with:

Sands' announcement about the menu for switching subaccounts being moved is below this thread.
You can access this site via HTTPS (self-signed, without images) by requesting https://tulpanetwork.com.
You can access the FAQ via tulpanetwork.com/faq and the glossary via tulpanetwork.com/glossary.
You can now view page load stats at the bottom of every page.
The banner problem should be fixed for people who don't have viewport; it won't crop for small resolutions but it shouldn't extend all the way to the right either.


03/10/13:
Changed some settings so now you can stay logged in forever.


11/10/13:
Hyperlink colour is now a nice blue so it stands out a bit more.
Fixed a little bit of misplaced colour on the "New Topic" button.


21/12/13:
Added a [jus­tify] tag.
Enabled some HTML usage in posts:

Enabled some CSS usage in posts:

NB: "Tulpa" is not actually a verb. Also, "they" here is used as singular.

This post is intended to be a 'start here' for aspiring tulpaforcers. It outlines the creation process in rough, and if you want more detail on any aspect then look for a guide on it. As with any other guide, you don't have to follow it; there are alternatives. Explanations of the terms used can be found in the Glossary; glossed terms are italicised on their first use.


What to expect
Expect a tulpa at the end of it. They will talk to you in your head autonomously and all that, much like an imaginary friend with a mind of its own (i.e., an imaginary friend as portrayed in media). The process to a vocal tulpa can take anywhere from a few days to a few months, and to imposition usually longer.




Pre-sentience

There are three main steps here, two of which are optional. These two are creating your tulpa's form and personality, and are usually done in forcing sessions where you sit down and focus entirely on the task at hand:

Form
This involves visualising your tulpa. Decide how they should look and then practice picturing them in your head until your visualisation of them is fairly clear and you can easily conjure up their image. Most people do this step here but it is not necessary. A tulpa can exist without a form, and you can give them a new form at any time.
Most of the useful guides for this are labeled "visualization".

Personality
This involves creating your tulpa's personality. Most methods involve picking certain traits that you want your tulpa to have and describing them to yourself or your tulpa; you can also use symbolism, e.g., imagining your tulpa as an orb and seeing it absorb traits. Most tulpas will deviate from their personality if you give them one. If you do not, like many other people, your tulpa will gain a personality by itself.

And, most importantly:

Attention
This involves giving your tulpa attention. It is highly recommended that you give your tulpa attention in some way, the most popular being narration. Narration is constantly talking to your tulpa throughout the day, although you can talk to them within forcing sessions too. You should talk to them as though they were already sentient.
When you start narration is up to you. Some start it when they start the creation process, others when they've done form and personality, or anywhere in between. Whenever you start, you should continue until your tulpa is fluent in talking to you (fluency). The time this takes varies widely, so be patient if it doesn't come quickly.


If you have finished form or personality before your tulpa is fluent, you may want to keep practicing visualising them, or just spend forcing sessions talking to them and being with them. You might want to create a wonderland to do this in.

At some point along the way to speech you might experience something like your tulpa trying to communicate with you using some method other than words, such as an emotional response. That's good, but it's not uncommon for such things to not happen so don't worry if it doesn't.


Post-sentience

So now your tulpa is talking to you. If they can't talk very well then continue giving them lots of attention. If they can, give it anyway. Tulpas love attention.

There are lots of things you can do with your new tulpa. Aside from just having one, you can learn to see them via hallucination (imposition), have them learn to control your body (possession), and 'trade places' with them (switching).


Imposition

Methods vary here, so do your own research beyond this post and find a method that you like the looks of.

An outline of a common process would be practicing open-eye visualisation along with imagining your tulpa being in the real world beside you. The idea is to effectively visualise them all day, as much as possible; in a sense this is similar to narration but with you visualising rather than talking. Keep it consistent, and you will start hallucinating something at some point.

Another method is to get very intimate with your tulpa's form. You feel them up and try to experience them with all of your senses. Given enough contact between you, your experiences of your tulpa will grow more vivid.


Possession

The goal of possession is to let go of your body and allow your tulpa to take control of it in your stead. Mindset is key, the idea of possession being to realise that you can stop controlling your body (and doing so); as such, symbolism may help here.

The process itself is up to you. Relaxing all of your muscles and then concentrating on what feels different instead of what feels similar might help. Your aim on the host's side is to simply relax and let go of your body.

For tulpas, it's nothing more complicated than taking control. It might feel new and different, but that just takes a bit of getting used to. As with the host symbolism can help, as can distraction from what is normal.


Switching

Switching is very much aided by a firm grip of possession. Not too dissimilar from possession, the idea is for you to let go of the body's senses as well as control. Having done this, you are free to engage imaginary experiences and such.

As may be obvious, this shouldn't be attempted unless your tulpa has a good level of control over the body. Doing so without this would be irresponsible and potentially dangerous to both of you.

Please search the Glossary for unfamiliar terms.

Core:

What is a tulpa?
A tulpa is an autonomous entity within a person's mind. They walk and talk like people, and are virtually separate from the host. A more detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this answer, but "No-one can say for sure" is the best summary.

Are tulpas mental disorders?
They aren't disorders at least. Typically, they aren't harmful nor do they cause instability if the process is treated maturely. We don't take any responsibility for any damage you cause by going through the process.

Is this magic (etc.)?
No. We think of tulpas as being entirely within the bounds of standard psychology.

What can a tulpa do?
Anything within your imagination. They can also take control of your body (consensually).

Can a tulpa hurt you?
Physically no, nor can they 'sap your life essence'. They can call you names and so on.

Can a tulpa become physical like in my horror stories?
No.


Creation:

How do I make a tulpa?
See How To Tulpa.

What do I need to make a tulpa?
Your mind, some patience, determination and a positive attitude toward it.

How long does it take to make a tulpa?
The time it takes to make a tulpa varies hugely between different people, and can be anywhere from a few days to a few months (or longer).

What are the risks involved in making a tulpa?
You run the risk of damaging your mind permanently, though such effects are generally not reported. Just be aware that the long-term effects of having tulpas are not well understood.

Should I make a tulpa?
If you want one, think you are responsible enough to go through with the process and are aware of the potential risks, go ahead.

I have a mental illness, can/should I make a tulpa?
Most mental illnesses do not make the process impossible. Making a tulpa can be beneficial for some with certain illnesses (including schizophrenia, reportedly), but it could also be detrimental; it's down to you to decide.

How old do you have to be to make a tulpa?
It's more a question of maturity, whether you can handle the responsibility and treat the process seriously. In any case, it's up to you to decide whether you are old/mature enough or not.

Can I get rid of a tulpa?
Yes, though not particularly easily in most cases.

Can I have more than one tulpa?
Yes. In fact, making subsequent tulpas is typically easier than the first.

Can I make a tulpa of an existing person/character?
It is common to have a tulpa with the form of an existing fictional character, but their personality tends to be different from said character. Making a tulpa exactly like a pre-existing character can lead to identity issues or crises later on. It is generally considered a bad idea to make a tulpa of an existing human being, but it is done.

Can I make a tulpa using only 'passive forcing'?
Yes, although it may be more difficult and take longer than with active 'forcing' since active forcing is usually said to be the best kind of forcing. A mixture of both is generally considered to be the best approach.


General:

Can my (or my tulpa's) form be x?
Yes.

My tulpa hates me, what should I do?
Figure out why they hate you and sort it out between you. This is a relationship issue that you need to handle yourself.

What is the 'mind's eye'/How do I visualise?
Imagine a green field with black and white cows grazing in it. You just visualised a green field. Congratulations.

What do I do when things go wrong in my imagination?
Ignore it, or make it stop. It's your mind and you are able to control it.

I heard a voice that isn't my tulpa, do I have another tulpa?
Not necessarily. You may hear things that are not your tulpa, but that doesn't make them new tulpas unless you treat them as such. Odd things happen in your mind, especially after tulpa creation.

My tulpa isn't speaking to me any more, did they die? What do I do?
This is quite common. It does not mean they're dead, and is no reason to panic. Be patient and keep forcing, and eventually you should be able to hear them again.

I've been forcing for months with no results, am I doing something wrong?
Probably not. For some people getting responses takes a very long time, while the creation process itself is very difficult to get wrong. You might want to try new methods, but most important is to persevere and remain confident in your eventual success.

Can my tulpa enter my dreams?
Presumably, yes. It has been reported that tulpas can enter the host's dreams and interact with, and even adapt them, but this is very hard to test. The best way of knowing would be to ask your tulpa.