{{About|the theosophical term|the Tibetan Buddhist term {{lang|bo-Latn|sprul sku|italic=no}} ({{lang|bo|སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་|italic=no}})|Nirmāṇakāya|the film|Tulpa (film){{!}}''Tulpa'' (film)|the online subculture|Plurality (identity)}} {{short description|Entity manifesting from mental powers}} In traditions of [[mysticism]] and the [[paranormal]] inspired by [[Tibetan Buddhism]], a '''tulpa''' is a materialized being or [[Thought-Forms|thought-form]], typically in human shape, that is created through spiritual practice and intense concentration.<ref name="Campbell">{{cite book|last1=Campbell|first1=Eileen|last2=Brennan|first2=J. H.|last3=Holt-Underwood|first3=Fran|title=Body, Mind & Spirit: A Dictionary of New Age Ideas, People, Places, and Terms|date=1994|publisher=C. E. Tuttle Company|location=Boston|isbn=080483010X|edition=Revised|section=Thoughtform|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/bodymindspiritdi00camp}}</ref><ref name="Rojcewicz1987">Rojcewicz, P.M., 1987. "The 'men in black' experience and tradition: analogues with the traditional devil hypothesis". ''Journal of American Folklore'', pp. 148–160.</ref><ref name="Westerhoff2010">Westerhoff, J. (2010). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=nG_RCwAAQBAJ&pg=PP8 Twelve Examples of Illusion]''. Oxford University Press.</ref> The term is borrowed from the Tibetan language. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed [[imaginary friend]] whom practitioners consider sentient and relatively independent. Modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas a [[psychological]] rather than a [[paranormal]] phenomenon.<ref name="Vice">{{cite web |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/tulpamancy-internet-subculture-892/ |title=The Internet's Newest Subculture Is All About Creating Imaginary Friends |last=Thompson |first=Nathan |date=2014-09-03 |website=Vice |access-date=2020-01-25}}</ref><ref name="Veissière">{{cite book |last1=Veissière|first1=Samuel|chapter=Varieties of Tulpa Experiences: The Hypnotic Nature of Human Sociality, Personhood, and Interphenomenality|title=Hypnosis and meditation: Toward an integrative science of conscious planes|editor1=Amir Raz|editor2=Michael Lifshitz|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title=Personality Characteristics of Tulpamancers and Their Tulpas|url=https://psyarxiv.com/5t3xk|journal=Bethel University}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title=Imaginary Companions, Inner Speech, and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: What Are the Relations?|journal=Front Psychol|year=2019|pmc=6682647|last1=Fernyhough|first1=C.|last2=Watson|first2=A.|last3=Bernini|first3=M.|last4=Moseley|first4=P.|last5=Alderson-Day|first5=B.|volume=10|article-number=1665|doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01665|pmid=31417448|doi-access=free}}</ref> The idea became an important belief in [[theosophy]].
==Origins== The word tulpa (''sprul pa'', སྤྲུལ་པ་) originates from Tibetan, where it may mean "phantom" along with other associated meanings.<ref>{{cite book|author=Das, C. |display-authors=etal |title=A Tibetan-English dictionary with Sanskrit synonyms |date=1902|publisher=Bengal Secretariat Book Depôt |location=Calcutta|page=812}}</ref> The western understanding of tulpas was developed by European mystical explorers, who interpreted and developed the idea independently of its uses in old Tibet.<ref name="TrackTulpas">{{Cite journal |last1=Mikles |first1=Natasha L.|last2=Laycock |first2=Joseph P. |date=2015 |title=Tracking the Tulpa: Exploring the "Tibetan" Origins of a Contemporary Paranormal Idea |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/nr/article/19/1/87/70982/Tracking-the-TulpaExploring-the-Tibetan-Origins-of |journal=Nova Religio |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=87– |doi=10.1525/nr.2015.19.1.87 |access-date=|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Hale claimed in a research paper that tulpamancy can be connected to [[religious]] prayer because of similar techniques used. Hale also pointed out that replacing "God" with "Tulpa" in the book ''"When God Talks Back"'' would be 80% applicable to tulpamancy.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hale |first=Elizabeth |date=2024-05-28 |title=The Inner Vehicle: Prayer, Tulpamancy, and the Magic of the Mind |url=https://journals.colorado.edu/index.php/next/article/view/2685 |journal=NEXT |language=en |volume=7}}</ref>
==Theosophy and thought-forms== [[File:Music of Gounod - Annie Besant Thought Form - Project Gutenberg eText 16269.jpg|thumb|Thoughtform of the ''Music of [[Charles Gounod|Gounod]]'', according to [[Annie Besant]] and [[Charles Webster Leadbeater|C. W. Leadbeater]] in ''[[Thought-Forms (book)|Thought-Forms]]'' (1905)]] 20th-century [[theosophy (Blavatskian)|theosophists]] associated the [[Mahayana |Mahayana Buddhist]] concept of the [[Nirmāṇakāya|emanation body]] (‘tulku’) and the concepts of 'tulpa' and 'thoughtform'. While maintaining a distinction between the terms ‘tulku’ and ‘tulpa’, they simultaneously collapsed the distinctions between a tulpa as a religious emanation, and tulpas as worldly phenomena created by a magician and similar. Their final conception remains distinct from both.<ref name="Mikles">{{cite journal|last1=Mikles|first1=Natasha L.|last2=Laycock|first2=Joseph P.|title=Tracking the Tulpa: Exploring the "Tibetan" Origins of a Contemporary Paranormal Idea|journal=Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions|date=6 August 2015|volume=19|issue=1|pages=87–97|doi=10.1525/nr.2015.19.1.87}}</ref> In her 1905 book [[Thought-Forms (book)|''Thought-Forms'']], the theosophist [[Annie Besant]] divides them into three classes: forms in the shape of the person who creates them, forms that resemble objects or people and may become ensouled by nature spirits or by the dead, and forms that represent inherent qualities from the astral or mental planes, such as emotions.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Besant|first1=Annie|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm|title=Thought-Forms|last2=Leadbeater|first2=C. W.|date=1901|publisher=The Theosophical Publishing House|chapter=Three classes of thought-forms|author-link=Annie Besant|author-link2=Charles Webster Leadbeater|access-date=26 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161210191202/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16269/16269-h/16269-h.htm|archive-date=10 December 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> The term 'thoughtform' is also used in [[Walter Evans-Wentz|Evans-Wentz]]'s 1927 translation of the ''[[Bardo Thodol|Tibetan Book of the Dead]]'',<ref>{{cite book|last1=Evans-Wentz|first1=W. T.|title=The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering|date=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0198030517|location=New York|pages=29–32, 103, 123, 125}}</ref> and in the Western practice of [[magic (paranormal)|magic]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Cunningham|first1=David Michael|title=Creating Magickal Entities: A Complete Guide to Entity Creation|last2=Ellwood|first2=Taylor|last3=Wagener|first3=Amanda R.|date=2003|publisher=Egregore Publishing|isbn=9781932517446|edition=1st|location=Perrysburg, Ohio}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=April 2017}} Some have called the [[Slender Man]] a tulpa-effect, and attributed it to multiple people's thought processes.<ref name="Chess2014">Chess, S., & Newsom, E. (2014). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xuGvBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT132 Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology]''. Springer. pp. 132</ref>
In his book ''The Human Aura'', occultist [[William Walker Atkinson]] describes thoughtforms as simple ethereal objects emanating from the [[Aura (paranormal)|aura]]s surrounding people, generated by their thoughts and feelings.<ref name="Panchadsi">{{cite book|last1=Panchadsi|first1=Swami|url=https://borderlandsciences.org/project/aura/ref/panchadasi/ch6.html|title=The Human Aura: Astral Colors and Thought Forms|date=1912|publisher=Yoga Publication Society|pages=47–54|chapter=Thought Form|author-link=William Walker Atkinson|access-date=26 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161003151932/https://borderlandsciences.org/project/aura/ref/panchadasi/ch6.html|archive-date=3 October 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> In ''Clairvoyance and Occult Powers'', he describes how experienced practitioners of the occult can produce thoughtforms from their auras that serve as [[astral projection]]s, or as illusions that can only be seen by those with "awakened astral senses".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Panchadsi|first1=Swami|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12480/12480.txt|title=Clairvoyance and Occult Powers|date=1916|chapter=Strange astral phenomena|access-date=26 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090626055033/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12480/12480.txt|archive-date=26 June 2009|url-status=live}}</ref>
===Alexandra David-Néel=== Spiritualist [[Alexandra David-Néel]] said she had observed Buddhist tulpa creation practices in 20th-century Tibet.<ref name="TrackTulpas"/><ref name="Campbell" /> She called tulpas "magic formations generated by a powerful concentration of thought".<ref name="David-Neel">{{cite book|last1=David-Neel|first1=Alexandra|last2=DʼArsonval|first2=A.|title=Magic and Mystery in Tibet|orig-year=Original French published 1929|year=2000|publisher=Book Tree|location=Escondido, California|isbn=1585090972}}</ref>{{rp|331}} David-Néel believed a tulpa could develop a mind of its own: "Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. According to David-Néel, this happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when her body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb."<ref name="David-Neel"/>{{rp|283}} She said she had created such a tulpa in the image of a jolly [[Friar Tuck]]-like [[monk]], which she claimed had later developed independent thought and had to be destroyed.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Marshall|first1=Richard|last2=Davis|first2=Monte|last3=Moolman|first3=Valerie|last4=Zappler|first4=George|title=Mysteries of the Unexplained|date=1982|publisher=Reader's Digest Association|location=Pleasantville, New York|isbn=0895771462|page=176|edition=Reprint}}</ref><ref name="Westerhoff2010"/> David-Néel raised the possibility that her experience was illusory: "I may have created my own hallucination", though she said others could see the thoughtforms that she created.<ref name="David-Neel"/>{{rp|176}}
==Tulpamancers== Influenced by depictions in television and cinema from the 1990s and 2000s, the term tulpa started to be used to refer to a type of willed [[imaginary friend]].<ref name="Mikles" /> Practitioners consider tulpas sentient and relatively autonomous.<ref name="Vice" /> Online communities dedicated to tulpas spawned on the [[4chan]] and [[Reddit]] websites. These communities call tulpa practitioners "tulpamancers". The communities gained popularity when [[bronies|adult fans of ''My Little Pony'']] started discussing tulpas of characters from the television series ''My Little Pony''.<ref name="Vice" /> The fans attempted to use meditation and [[lucid dreaming]] techniques to create imaginary friends.<ref name="Veissière" /><ref>{{cite web |author=T. M. Luhrmann |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/opinion/luhrmann-conjuring-up-our-own-gods.html |title=Conjuring Up Our Own Gods |work=The New York Times |date=2013-10-14 |access-date=2017-04-22 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170812174624/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/opinion/luhrmann-conjuring-up-our-own-gods.html |archive-date=2017-08-12}}</ref> Surveys by Samuel Veissière explored this community's demographic, social, and psychological profiles. These practitioners believe a tulpa is a "real or somewhat-real person".<ref name="Veissière" /> The number of active participants in these online communities is in the low hundreds, and few meetings in person have taken place. They belong to "primarily urban, middle-class, Euro-American adolescent and young adult demographics"<ref name="Veissière" /> and "cite loneliness and social anxiety as an incentive to pick up the practice".<ref name="Veissière" /> 93.7% of respondents said their involvement with the creation of tulpas had "made their condition better"<ref name="Veissière" /> and led to new, unusual sensory experiences. Some practitioners have sexual and romantic interactions with their tulpas, though the practice is controversial and trending toward [[taboo]].<ref name="Samuel">{{cite book |chapter-url=http://somatosphere.net/2015/04/varieties-of-tulpa-experiences-sentient-imaginary-friends-embodied-joint-attention-and-hypnotic-sociality-in-a-wired-world.html|chapter=Varieties of Tulpa Experiences: Sentient Imaginary Friends, Embodied Joint Attention, and Hypnotic Sociality in a Wired World|author=Samuel Veissière|title=Hypnosis and Meditation|editor1=Amir Raz|editor2=Michael Lifshitz|isbn=9780198759102|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|date=April 3, 2015|access-date=July 14, 2016}}</ref> One survey found that 8.5% support a [[Metaphysics|metaphysical]] explanation of tulpas, 76.5% support a neurological or psychological explanation, and 14% "other" explanations.<ref name="Veissière" />
Practitioners believe tulpas are able to communicate with their host in ways they sense do not originate from their own thoughts. Some practitioners report experiencing hallucinations of their tulpas. Practitioners that have hallucinations report being able to see, hear and touch their tulpas.<ref name="Veissière" />
Veissière's survey of 141 respondents found that the rates of [[neurodiversity|neurodivergence]] including [[autism]] and [[attention deficit hyperactivity disorder]] (ADHD) was significantly higher among the surveyed tulpamancers than in the general population. He speculates that these people may be more likely to want to make a tulpa because they have a higher level of loneliness. Tulpamancers were typically white, articulate, and imaginative and lived in urban areas.<ref name="Somer2021"/> A 2022 study found people who did not have psychosis and experienced more than one unusual sensory phenomenon (in this instance [[ASMR|autonomous sensory meridian response]] (ASMR) and tulpamancy) were more prone to hallucination than people who experienced only one of the two sensory phenomena.<ref name="Cooper2022">{{Cite journal |last1=Palmer-Cooper |first1=Emma |last2=McGuire |first2=Nicola |last3=Wright |first3=Abigail |date=2022-05-04 |title=Unusual experiences and their association with metacognition: investigating ASMR and Tulpamancy |journal=Cognitive Neuropsychiatry |language=en |volume=27 |issue=2–3 |pages=86–104 |doi=10.1080/13546805.2021.1999798 |pmid=34743647 |s2cid=240130491 |issn=1354-6805|doi-access=free}}</ref>
Somer et al. (2021) describe the Internet tulpamancer subculture as being used to "overcome loneliness and mental suffering", and noted the close association with [[reality shifting]] (RS), a way of deliberately inducing a form of self-hypnosis to escape from reality into a pre-planned desired reality or "wonderland" of chosen fantasy characters.<ref name="Somer2021">Somer, E., Cardeña, E., Catelan, R.F. et al. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02439-3 "Reality shifting: psychological features of an emergent online daydreaming culture"]. ''Current Psychology'' (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02439-3.</ref>
==See also== {{columns-list|colwidth=15em| * [[Alter ego]] * [[Bicameral mentality]] * [[Doppelgänger]] * [[Egregore]] * [[Etiäinen]] * [[Golem]] * [[Guardian angel]] * [[Homunculus]] * [[Plurality (identity)]] * [[Rebirth (Buddhism)]] * [[Reincarnation]] * [[Takwin]] * [[Thoughtography]] * [[The Circular Ruins]] * [[Á Bao A Qu]] }}
==References== {{Reflist}}
== External links == * {{Wiktionary inline|tulpa}} * {{Wiktionary inline|thoughtform}}
[[Category:Hallucinations]] [[Category:Paranormal terminology]] [[Category:Theosophical philosophical concepts]]