Image descriptions! sorry about that
[ID 1] (michael_lifshitz - OP): Hi, thanks for your question! Our strongest finding was when we looked at tulpa posession. We were using a simple writing task in the fMRI. We found that when a tulpa is possessing the body and writing a sentence, there is reduced activity in a particular part of the brain that's involved in planning actions and having a sense of agency over your actions (the pre-supplementary motor area, or pre-SMA). This suggests that tulpamancers have learned to down-regulate this key agency/planning region, which lets an alternative agent (the tulpa) take control. It's pretty amazing that tulpa systems can do this on demand. We did have a few tulpamancers who could sitch, but we haven't carefully looked at their data yet to see how it's different from normal possession. That's a secondary analysis we're planning after the main results come out :) [End ID 1]
[ID 2] (yukaritelepath): Was there anything about the tulpa phenomenon that surprised you in particular? Or what is your favorite thing about it?
(Circedog's reply): So much! It is very compelling. One thing that comes to my mind is that I used to think that there was one path to tulpa-creation--now I think of mental imagery cultivation (FAQ man's approach) and narrating your day (a more as-if-approach) as different methods.
(Circedog's reply): I am also struck by how much of a process it is, and how different people have different mileposts of autonomy, but everyone has mileposts. [End ID 2]
[ID 3] (michael_lifshitz - OP): I think it's amazing that you don't have to hold a specific metaphysical or religious belief to make a tulpa. That just doing the practices can bring your imagination to life so vividly that it takes on its own agency. I find that really striking and beautiful. [End ID 3]
[ID 4] (michael_lifshitz - OP): Hi :) As I explained in my reply to u/Collective-screaming, our strongest finding, and the one we had predicted before we started, was that tulpa possession reduced activity in a brain area--the pre-supplementary motor area--that is very important to planning actions and having a feeling of agency over your actions. This shows that tulpa systems really are shifting the basic building blocks of the sense of agency in the brain, which is pretty cool. We also found another brain change during tulpa possession, in a specific cluster in the dorsomedial prefontal cortex. This cluster is interesting too because other sudies have shown that it's specifically involved in what's been called "self-other merging". (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8326319/ ) So basically when tulpas are possessing the body, our results suggest that the brain is shifting the way it's processing who is in control--reducing the sense of the self's agency (presumably the host) and merging between the sense of self and the other (presumably the tulpa).
It's hard to know what insights this gives in terms of how best to create a tulpa, because we only scanned experts and didn't track people as they learned. But maybe it implies that focusing on letting go of control is crucial. [End ID 4]
[ID 5] (michael_lifshitz - OP): Hi :) I'll let Tanya answer the DID part and address the point you bring up about fMRI. It's true that there's been a lot of critiques of fMRI in recent years because it turns out there's a lot of ways you can look at a brain and find some pattern of activity that lights up, but if you're not careful the pattern can be pretty much meaningless. A famous study from back in the day showed that you can even find brain activations in a dead salmon. The issue is that the brain is a very complicated organ, and fMRI scans involves summing activity from tens of thousands of points in the brain at once, so you are left with this issue of how to manage the huge statistical overload.
The solution seems to be to either scan a lot of people so you get a really strong brain signal that you can pick out from all the noise, or to have a very specific hypothesis about what patterns in the brain you think are relevant, so you know you aren't just goin on a "fishing expedition" and making up some just-so story about whatever you happen to find.
In our study, we were careful to pre-specify our hypotheses based on previous fMRI sutdies of related experiences (e.g., hearing voices, hypnosis, sense of agency, action control, imagination, etc). We also used the most up-to-date statistical analysis techniques. So we are pretty confident that we did everything in a rigorous way that actually holds water!
(Circedog's reply): Hi--re DID, I would say that there is a formal resemblance between tulpamancy and being DID, but that while trauma is often thought to lie at the heart of DID, trauma is not at the heart of many humans who become tulpamancers--in own experience. But I'd be curious to know what you think! [End ID 5]
[ID 6] (no username provided): ^Umm, do you have any stuff on how tulpamancy relates to or compares to hypnosis?^
(Circedog's reply:) This is a great question! I thinki of absorption, hypnosis, dissociation, and trance as blind men around an elephant, to use that old fable, one feeling the trunk, the other a leg, another an ear, etc. There is some kind of mental process that enables humans to create a different relationship with their own consciousness that expresses itself differently in different people and differently under different conditions. Tulpamancy could be seen as a self-hypnotic practice, although I would also say that it is not all that it is. [End ID 6]
[ID 7] (michael_lifshitz - OP, replying to a different comment): Hi! I just want to add that whenever I talk about tulpamancy in academic circles, among philosophers or psychiatrists or cognitive scientists, I get a big wave of interest. I've spoken to a lot of academics who think the possibility of creating a tulpa has big implications for our understanding of the human mind, the imagination, culture, and the self. I have a feeling the concept is going to catch on more and more beyond the current tulpa community.
(Circedog, also replying to the same comment): I became interested in these subjects after exploring modern magic and witchcraft--it seemed clear that people came into magic on a whim (often), that they used certain practices, and then came to have experiences that loosely one could describe as experiencing self-generated mental events as not self-generated. And then those experiences can build up and change over time. I think that's fascinating and important. The next step for me: seeking to understand the way different cultural ideas about the mind shape these experiences, and also exploring the relationship between the voices of madness and the voices of spirit. [End ID 7]
[ID 8] (LyricalLovia): Hello! I run a server called Tulpa Central. I go by Lyri on there. I also have a youtube channel called the Tulpa Time Podcast. I was just curious as to whether you consider tulpas as a type of Parts Therapy? If so, do you consider it a healthy mechanism for coping with trauma and loneliness, or a way to make peace with certain aspects of oneself? Thank you.
(Ranger_HippoLord's reply): This is a question I feel very strongly about, but I don't want to say anything here if it's too distracting
(Circedog's reply): I think tulpamancy is a healthy mechanism that can serve both purposes.
(michael_lifshitz - OP's reply): Yes, tulpamancy definitely seems to be therapeutic for a lot of people, though not all. I'm very curious about how tulpa creation relates to Parts Therapy, but haven't thought about it deeply enough to have any concrete answers. I guess one obvious difference is that tulpas are created deliberately, as opposed to most "Parts" in parts therapy, and also they seem to have richer more fully autonomous inner lives, I think? Definitely a fascinating question. [End ID 8]
[ID 9] (michael_lifshitz - OP): Interesting to note that the original Tibetan Buddhist idea of tulpamancy (which is quite different from contemporary tulpamancy) actually comes from the dream yoga tradition, and involves creating imaginary forms in the waking state as a complement to playing with lucidity in the dream state. This hasn't really been discussed in the literature yet, but I'm currently working on a paper about this with a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism (Michael Sheehy) who is an expert on Tibetan dream and imagination practices, so keep an eye out for that in the next year or so. [End ID 9]
