Unconscious impersonation
We often experience tulpas talking back to us without putting conscious effort into it. You will likely experience it too as a side effect of fantasizing about your tulpa at some point.
Researchers’ perspective – Illusion of independent agency
Sounds extraordinary? As I already mentioned, it doesn’t happen only to tulpamancers. It’s also experienced by fiction authors with their original characters and by children with their imaginary friends. In the article provided in the source, the experience is called Illusion of Independent Agency1. From its abstract:
Abstract of Taylor, M., Hodges, S. D., & Kohányi, A. (2003). The illusion of independent agency: Do adult fiction writers experience their characters as having minds of their own?
The illusion of independent agency (IIA) occurs when a fictional character is experienced by the person who created it as having independent thoughts, words, and/or actions. Children often report this sort of independence in their descriptions of imaginary companions. This study investigated the extent that adult writers experience IIA with the characters they create for their works of fiction.
Tulpamancers aren’t the first to experience characters talking back to them and aren’t really special in this area.
The illusionary part of IIA is the character having their own, independent mind
Illusion in the name doesn’t mean that our interactions with our tulpa are fake. What’s illusionary in this experience, is tulpa being perceived as having independent mind. In reality, all of our thoughts come from the same mind. When tulpa talks back to us, it’s still our thoughts. It’s us, the same human being, thinking from tulpa’s perspective, unconsciously impersonating their identity.
Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card
There is no host’s independent mind and tulpa’s independent mind. There is a human independent mind. In other words: our independent mind.
Unconscious impersonation is a human skill
Making imaginary characters feeling alive in one’s mind is a skill of a human to unconsciously impersonate a character. It’s not that character’s skill to speak.
If you learn how to unconsciously impersonate your tulpa, you might experience it spontaneously with other characters too. You might catch yourself talking with a waifu from anime you just watched. It might be tempting to try to keep all the characters that ever talked back to you as tulpas… But you probably won’t build lasting relationships with most of them and eventually stop interacting with them at all in that case. Remember, ability to hear a character doesn’t turn them into a tulpa, building a genuine relationship with them does.
It’s also possible to experience it with other forms of imagination. If you practice wonderlanding, you might experience the imaginary place acting “alive” while fantasizing about it.
It’s worth to mention that if you already experienced unconscious impersonation of characters outside tulpamancy or have a predisposition to it (maybe you roleplay or write?), you might experience it with your tulpa very fast, even before starting to put some conscious effort into fantasizing.
Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card
When it comes to our skill, nowadays we can make any character talk to us when we’d like to hear them. But as the other me mentioned earlier, it doesn’t make those character tulpas by itself.
Unconscious impersonation is unreliable
Sometimes unconscious mind will refuse to cooperate and you just won’t hear your tulpa. And that’s one of reasons why people shouldn’t depend on it too much when it comes to interactions and relationships with their tulpas. Interactions built upon conscious effort are as valid as those coming from unconscious impersonation. They ultimately come from the very same mind. This experience doesn’t mean that tulpas have their own independent mind. Of course, it’s good to be able to spend time with your tulpa without putting much conscious effort and there is no reason not to utilize unconscious impersonation when it happens.
Also, sometimes our unconsciousness just throws garbage at us. It’s not wise to accept everything coming from our unconscious mind unconditionally. If what you feel tulpa just said feels completely out of character, you should reject it just as you should reject fantasies that start not feeling right with you.
Luna’s “I’m a tulpa” card
It’s not like when thinking as host you never feel like you thought something out of your character, is it?
Summary
Experience of imaginary companions acting alive in our mind might not be well known in whole society but is known to researchers. It’s not specific to tulpamancy, kids experience it with imaginary friends too as well as writers with their OCs. This experience doesn’t show characters that talk back having their own independent mind but human’s ability to unconsciously impersonate characters.
Experiencing it is a skill not specific to one character. And while experiencing it brings more immersion to fantasizing, it doesn’t make your tulpamancy experience more valid then before. It also doesn’t turn anime waifu, that happened to talk back to you accidentally, into a tulpa by itself.
Be careful to not become completely dependent on unconscious impersonation when it comes to your interactions with your tulpa.