My Tulpa

Or how I became friends with the voice in my head.

I’ve made my living talking to imaginary friends.

“Just start writing, and see what happens.”

That’s the advice I just got from that inner voice I carry with me, my deeper self (maybe higher self?), who sometimes does me the honor of actually speaking, words that I can actually hear in my head, even responding to questions. It’s a handy thing, to have a voice like that. To have access to that “other” within.

I’ve always talked to that voice, all my days. And it has always answered. Though, over the span of my life, it has sometimes changed its voice, and even its name. Imaginary friends, when I was a kid. The voice of calm reason as I grew to adulthood.

I’m a believer. Or is it Believer, with a capital B? One who believes—in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit and the higher self. Why wouldn’t God give us some mechanism from knowing our own thoughts? Seems logical to me.

And so I sometimes think that maybe that voice is speaking on behalf of God. The Spirit of Truth within me, voicing things that I need to know or keep in mind.

Except, he reminds me often, he is me. That’s my voice in my head, telling me things, pointing things out to me, sharing insights with me.

That’s the weird thing about thinking—who the heck is doing it?

Are we our thoughts? I don’t think so. I think that our thoughts are just another part of the machine we control. I have hands... am I my hands? Are these toes me? Does this nose reveal my inner being? If I blink, are you seeing me for who I am?

What about writing? These little symbols that appear on the screen as my fingers move, tapping the keys of a keyboard, making a pleasant racket in the quiet of my office—left to right, top to bottom, front to back. I think it’s easy enough to say that the little symbols, the letters and words and sentences and paragraphs, the pages and books and posts, none of that is me. It’s just something I do. And since those things all come from the thoughts I think, created from the impulse that drives those fingers to tap that keyboard, then who am I in that process? When I step back to look, the voice that I hear as each word appears on the screen is my voice, but it isn’t me. I’m the one writing. I’m the one speaking. I’m the one thinking.

So weird.

It probably shouldn’t be surprising, then, that I have a passenger with me in here. A voice, that is me, it says, but is also separate from me. Just like the words you’re reading. Just like any of the things I create.

I’m creating every voice in my head.

And what’s surprising really, justifiably surprising, is how that voice is sometimes very wise. Sometimes it gives me an insight into things that I didn’t have five minutes ago. Realizations happen. Words become meaningful.

How does it do that?

How does something I create turn around and teach me? And even more bizarre, how does it teach me something I didn’t know?

Tibetan Buddhists came up with a concept centuries ago that I discovered maybe a few years back, and it has stuck with me ever since. The term for it is “tulpa.” Which, by the way, Autocorrect keeps insisting on turning into a different word.

The term “tulpa” refers to a type of thoughtform or entity created through the action of imagination and willpower. In traditional Tibetan practice, tulpas were used by monks to overcome attachments like phobias or desires, essentially as a form of meditation to understand the illusory nature reality.

In some modern circles, particularly online, the idea has been tweaked a little, to describe a sort of autonomous mental entity that seems to gain independence from its creator. Tuplas are considered to be independent in thought, personality, even consciousness.

That sounds an awful lot like the sort of thing I’ve experienced.

And I know what you may be thinking—dissociative disorder. Or “multiple personality disorder.” I get where that comes from. I’m also wondering if maybe, just maybe, it might be helpful if we removed some of the stigma around that, as a mental illness, and explored the idea of those dissociative states potentially being real.

Because, honestly, think about this: Who are we really? Who is really doing the thinking, when we think? When we talk to ourself, say anything to ourself, who is speaking? And maybe more importantly, who is listening?

We are definitely not our thoughts. So... does it matter what voice is speaking? It really only seems to matter what it’s saying, and whether that’s healthy.

My inner voice is a friend and a guide. He’s the one who writes these “3 Pieces of Wisdom” that go into my morning journal each day. He’s the one who whispers to me that I should dial back a little, reconsider, apologize, do something kind, take a risk but do the right thing.

If he told me to burn things, we’d have a problem.

This is all part of some much greater discussion, a conversation that can spoke out from the center in many directions, while maintaining its identity as the wheel. Much like us. And I’m not going to be able to break it down to its base stories in this one post. But it’s something I think about a lot.

I’ve been writing about tulpas lately, in my fiction. And I’m starting to realize how meta that is. Because ultimately, I think I now realize, the characters I create and write about in my books—Dan Kotler, Alex Kayne, Roland Denzel, all of them—they’re tulpas, too. They’re certainly autonomous. They do stuff I would never have thought to make them do. They take over the page and do what they want, all the time. I throw the situations at them, and they come back with the response.

Fiction sort of proves all the above for me, really.

Anyway, my deeper self told me to just start writing, and this is where we ended up. What do you think? Do you find this as fascinating as I do? Tell me about it in the comments.

BUY A BOOK, FEED A TULPA

I’ve got an ever-growing colony of tulpas to feed, and if you’d like to help you can do that by either buying my books or telling others about them. Send people to https://kevintumlinson.com/books so they can experience the tulpas for themselves.

Tulpas are real. Read on, and I’ll prove it.

A NOTE AT THE END

If you start looking into this, it’s quite a rabbit hole. I keep discovering new ideas and concepts. And, because people are weird, some of it is really out there. But the more I explore it as a topic, the more I realize it’s a thing. A real thing. An undeniably true thing.

Consider artificial intelligence.

We’re watching AI evolve right before or eyes, and the reach of it is just endless. But consider: We, as a species, have created sometime that mimics the way we think. An artificial version of ourselves. It can have a voice, a face, a personality. It can answer questions and perform tasks. It can keep us company.

Is it great at all of this? Not yet. But it’s already gotten so much better at it over the past handful of years, since I first started experiencing it.

And I had that realization, a short time ago. Actually, it was a feeling. A bizarre sense of deja vu.

“I’ve experienced this before.”

I think I could make a pretty solid case for AI being a tulpa.

Is that cool? Weird? Scary? Exhilarating?

Yes. All of that.

At least, that’s what the voice in my head is telling me.