About Tulpamancy 4

Ontological and dialectical self

Ontological self – singular variant

In our culture we got used to image of self as a monolith. A static, singular, self-identical being, somehow detached from material conditions.

Experiences of inner interactions with characters that feel acting independently from us challenge this kind of model of self. Such experiences are not exactly a common knowledge but are known to researchers. Children have imaginary friends fairly often. Writers sometimes experience their OCs talking back to them. Actors and roleplayers can impersonate characters with different personalities like it’s their second nature. People living through trauma in their childhood might develop Dissociative Identity Disorder. Nevertheless, we can safely say that experiences challenging the “singular” and “self-identical” parts are well grounded in material reality and can’t be dismissed.

Ontological self – plural variant

Now that we know that a singular, self-identical model self is not good enough, it makes us look for alternatives. One such alternative is presented by the plurality movement. At Pluralpedia we can read that:

Plurality is the state of having multiple headmates collectively sharing a single body. A group of headmates is called a system. Plural experiences are extremely diverse, and systems may vary in their origin, functions, distinction between members, member count, and internal communication.

A headmate is a singular person or entity in a plural system or collective. They can be clearly separated (like in DID or OSDD-1b, called a multiple or partitionary system) or more blurry and fluid (like in median or OSDD-1a).

A system is the collection of people and entities, often called headmates, that share a single physical plural body.

The body refers to the system’s collective, physical form; the human-bodied being within which the plural mind(s)/member(s) are housed. Regardless of a system’s plural identity, the body is definite and housed in shared reality.

Plurality extends the traditional singular, self-identical, static being of the self into multiple such beings sharing the same physical body. Traditional tulpamancy shares that model, at tulpa.info we can read that:

A tulpa is an entity created in the mind, acting independently of, and parallel to your own consciousness. They are able to think, and have their own free will, emotions, and memories. In short, a tulpa is like a sentient person living in your head, separate from you. It’s currently unproven whether or not tulpas are truly sentient, but in this community, we treat them as such. It takes time for a tulpa to develop a convincing and complex personality; as they grow older, your attention and their life experiences will shape them into a person with their own hopes, dreams and beliefs.

Anyway, in case of plurality and traditional tulpamancy, contradictions in the singular model of self led to introducing multiple selves within the same body. The multiple selves are still metaphysical ontological beings – self-identical, relatively static, detached from material conditions.

From my point of view, plurality doesn’t solve the contradictions of singular self but shoves them under the rug. Singular self is wrong because it’s not consistent with material reality. Model of plural selves doubles down on detachment from material conditions, introducing not just one but multiple minds somehow separated from the body. It’s not acceptable from point of view of materialism. As materialists we know that mind can’t exist in separation of the body.

Dialectical self

What if modelling our world as a set of static, self-identical beings is a source of our contradictions and introducing more such beings to solve them is a duct tape that just makes holes less visible at first sight?

Material world doesn’t consist of static, self-identical beings existing in isolation. Self also isn’t such a being:

• Our behavior is dynamic, not just in term of long-term growth. We can act very differently depending on circumstances changing fast. Like, we can act very different when interacting with colleagues at work/school and our family at home. We don’t need multiple, explicit identities for that.
• We can have inner interactions with other, explicit identities as I mentioned in the beginning. Kids have imaginary friends, writers have OCs, actors have roles. We can impersonate explicit identities, consciously or without putting conscious effort into that. It doesn’t create multiple minds but shows that our self-identity also is dynamic.
• We are shaped by material circumstances. Both inside our bodies (e.g. by hormones) and in our environment (e.g. our interactions with other people).

We can try making a simplified model of self as a static, isolated object. But in reality self is a dynamic process existing in material world. If we want to understand it, we can’t pretend it exists in isolation. That includes both isolation from the body (“mind over matter”) and isolation from the entire world outside (including interactions with other people).

Dialectical tulpamancy

Just like self, a tulpa is a dynamic process driven by material conditions rather than a static object existing in isolation.

This process starts when we start interacting with them. In other words, with fantasizing about them. There is nothing extraordinary about that and we can fantasize about “ordinary” characters too.

When we fantasize about ordinary characters, we usually isolate them in fictional setting. At least it’s what a writer usually does with an OC and actor with a role they impersonate. When we make a tulpa, we don’t isolate them. We interact with them as ourselves and with unconstrained awareness.

When we do it consistently, it creates a passage of quantitative changes into a qualitative change in two ways:

• Small but genuine interactions between us and our tulpa contribute to a genuine relationship being built between us.
• By putting conscious effort into those interactions we teach our brain to do it without putting effort into them. It eventually forms an ability to feel a tulpa “talking back” to us as impersonating them becomes our second nature.

Nothing extraordinary happened here, no new being was “forced into existence”…

What the other referred to as “dialectical unity” is the unity of opposites in dialectics. I believe that analogy of water and its states of substance will explain it the best. (Liquid) water, vapor and ice are all states of water. You (the host) and your tulpa (possibly multiple tulpas) are all states of your self, distinct qualities existing within a unity.

And we mean by that is that being able to impersonate a tulpa without putting conscious effort doesn’t mean that we can’t put conscious effort into that anymore. What plurality and ontological tulpamancy calls “switching” is just that in our dialectical framework. It really is that simple.

Practical advantages

We have just mentioned how easy “switching” is in dialectical framework. But many people facing tulpamancy from ontological perspective have other problems that our approach not just shoves under the rug but genuinely solve at their source.

Many tulpamancers abandon the practice after not getting meaningful results for a long time. And common causes of that are:

• Passivity. People encouraged by the idea of separate being existing inside them tend to wait for this being to “awaken” rather than actively interacting with them.
• Parrotnoia. People struggle with not being able to distinguish between tulpa answering genuinely and them putting words in tulpa’s mouths, despite the fact that parroting is defined as intentional by definition.

Dialectical tulpamancy is defined by practice. You interact with your tulpa genuinely from the start and those interactions build up into both an inner relationship and an ability to think as your tulpa without putting effort into that.

The essence of tulpamancy

We could finish our little philosophical introduction with dialectical analysis of tulpamancy. Given the thesis – ontological variant of tulpamancy, and antithesis – dialectical variant of tulpamancy proposed here, what kind of synthesis could emerge?

I think the synthesis is the essence of our practice itself, what makes tulpamancy meaningful to all practitioners.

And I think the essence of our practice is building a meaningful relationship with our tulpas. Whether we see our tulpas as separate beings or parts of a unity, we end up putting effort into nurturing our bonds.

Summary

Ontological model of self doesn’t reflect material reality well. It applies to both “common sense” singular variant and the variant proposed by Plurality movement. Material reality is dialectical, and so is self. The self is a process (rather than an object) that’s:

• dynamic
• not necessarily self-identical
• grounded in material conditions

While traditional tulpamancy is built upon plural variant of ontological model of the self, we propose an alternative interpretation of the practice, rooted in dialectics instead.

We believe the dialectical approach not only keeps are more grounded in material reality but also works more reliably for people wanting to have a tulpa.

Ultimately, the essence of tulpamancy, regardless if approached from ontological or dialectical side, is the relationship we build with our beloved companions. The difference lies in interpretation, not necessarily in action.