# Are tulpas real? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 7, 2019, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689 "2019-03-07T13:08:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![yellow\_sausage\_bandit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yellow_sausage_bandit/32/394_2.png) [@yellow\_sausage\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellow_sausage_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/1 "2019-03-07T13:08:52Z")
So Tulpas are a concept from Buddhism, basically objects/companions created through meditation. 4channers discovered it 10 years ago and started using the same techniques to create imaginary girlfriends/companions which supposedly can be seen as if they were real and think/talk independently. I spent a lot of time on image boards those days and I always considered people who were seriously posting about their tulpas to be trolls, trying to trick people into thinking the concept was real. But nowadays there are subreddits and forums about tulpas unrelated to 4chan with hundreds of thousands of posts, all talking about their tulpas. That would be some really dedicated trolling :dubious:. And they don’t have some spiritual explanation for the phenomenon, they say it’s just a psychological quirk. Obviously the brain can create visual characters that act independently from you (in dreams), but is really possible to do this intentionally while awake? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/2 "2019-03-07T13:24:11Z")
Writers of fiction do this all the time. They describe people who do not exist saying and doing things that never happened! Takes skill, though. (Note, so does Buddhist meditation, and other mental gymnastics.) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/3 "2019-03-07T13:39:49Z")
One thing which is very common occurs in the psychology of social interaction. In order to deal with other people, your mind (more or less successfully) models and simulates others’ mental states. There are even “mirror neurons” in the brain which fire when an action is observed, as well as performed. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/4 "2019-03-07T13:48:01Z")
> [@yellow\_sausage\_bandit](#): > > But nowadays there are subreddits and forums about tulpas unrelated to 4chan with hundreds of thousands of posts, all talking about their tulpas. That would be some really dedicated trolling :dubious:. And they don’t have some spiritual explanation for the phenomenon, they say it’s just a psychological quirk. Yeah, but there are also subreddits and forums about people’s otherkins and deadly child prostitution rings organized by Democrats operating from underneath pizza joints which I’m the only one wot knows about it. Also lots of teen girls flash their tits at the slightest provocation. And before the interwebs there were Satanist moral panics and backmasked messages hidden in rock’n roll music and UFO abductions and seances and fairy sightings. What I mean to say is that attention seeking behaviour is not altogether uncommon among humans. ---
**Author:** ![yellow\_sausage\_bandit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yellow_sausage_bandit/32/394_2.png) [@yellow\_sausage\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellow_sausage_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/5 "2019-03-07T13:48:02Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Writers of fiction do this all the time. They describe people who do not exist saying and doing things that never happened! > > Takes skill, though. (Note, so does Buddhist meditation, and other mental gymnastics.) Yes, I daydream a lot, but when I talk to imaginary characters in my head _I_decide what they say. Tulpas are not supposed be like that, they’re supposed to think/talk independently from your own thoughts, as if they were another sentient being. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/6 "2019-03-07T13:54:04Z")
So…you actually believe people can fashion sentient being from their imaginations…because of subreddit and 4chan? ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/7 "2019-03-07T14:06:07Z")
> [@](#): > > British actor BOB HOSKINS was driven to the brink of insanity by his role in 1988 movie WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT - he spent months suffering hallucinations of cartoon characters from the film. From [here](https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/136605/Hoskins-Roger-Rabbit-drove-me-mad). ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/8 "2019-03-07T14:20:47Z")
I suppose you can have an “imaginary friend” but it is mathematically problematic to say that a mind can manufacture an autonomous entity that has its own consciousness. The mind must create everything in the mind. If the mind perceives a truly autonomous entity that exists only within that mind then that mind is suffering from psychosis, or perhaps simply allowing itself to be deluded. > [@](#): > > Obviously the brain can create visual characters that act independently from you (in dreams) When this occurs in dreams, the characters are still animated by your own mind, based on what you expect such a character might do; you are not somehow running a little JVM that has a mind of its own. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/9 "2019-03-07T18:07:16Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > I suppose you can have an “imaginary friend” but it is mathematically problematic to say that a mind can manufacture an autonomous entity that has its own consciousness. The mind must create everything in the mind. If the mind perceives a truly autonomous entity that exists only within that mind then that mind is suffering from psychosis, or perhaps simply allowing itself to be deluded. > When this occurs in dreams, the characters are still animated by your own mind, based on what you expect such a character might do; you are not somehow running a little JVM that has a mind of its own. But despite them coming “from” your mind, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have conscious control over them. Actual hallucinations come to mind – just trying to “think them away” won’t generally work. And I have heard a few authors describe characters in a kinda related way, as if they “lost control” of the character and, at some point, were just recording “what happened.” Obviously hard to tell if that’s just flowery language or self-promotion, though. I’ve no evidence of tulpas being “real” in any meaningful sense, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume folks claiming so are just consciously “making it up.” I can IMAGINE folks that have sorta trained their brain to have a vivid “imaginary friend” they don’t perceive any control over, but I certainly don’t think they’ve created a truly independent entity. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/10 "2019-03-07T18:29:57Z")
Alexandra David-Néel, a French-Belgian explorer and religious scholar, went to Tibet in the early 20th century. As part of her practice, she created a tulpa, which subsequently became malevolently creepy, and she had to put it down. She wasn’t clear as to whether it was an externally real thing, or a hallucinatory being she’d made. I mention her, because a) she’s awesome and everyone should know about her, and b) she actually made a tulpa, as well as c) she’s a westerner who was deeply versed in Tibetan culture, and was a pre-internet person, uninfluenced by modern perceptions of the issue. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/11 "2019-03-07T18:51:09Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Writers of fiction do this all the time. They describe people who do not exist saying and doing things that never happened! > > Takes skill, though. (Note, so does Buddhist meditation, and other mental gymnastics.) To continue on this path: I’m a writer. We sometimes talk about how our characters “want” to do things. We’ll even describe how we had an idea for how a plot would turn out but our character “decided” to do something else. It’s a bit like simulating an AI or engaging in an empathy exercise: What would Character X do in Y situation? When a character is well-developed, such an experience can certainly \*feel \*like there’s another person answering your questions, but I don’t know of any writers who’d claim we actually created sentient life. (No sane ones, anyway.) ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/12 "2019-03-07T20:46:08Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > but I don’t know of any writers who’d claim we actually created sentient life. (No sane ones, anyway.) That’s what writers say right before their characters come alive and come after them. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/13 "2019-03-07T21:08:31Z")
> [@yellow\_sausage\_bandit](#): > > So Tulpas are a concept from Buddhism, basically objects/companions created through meditation. 4channers discovered it 10 years ago and started using the same techniques to create imaginary girlfriends/companions which supposedly can be seen as if they were real and think/talk independently. > > I spent a lot of time on image boards those days and I always considered people who were seriously posting about their tulpas to be trolls, trying to trick people into thinking the concept was real. But nowadays there are subreddits and forums about tulpas unrelated to 4chan with hundreds of thousands of posts, all talking about their tulpas. That would be some really dedicated trolling :dubious:. And they don’t have some spiritual explanation for the phenomenon, they say it’s just a psychological quirk. If you find this evidence compelling, perhaps you would be interested in watching [this documentary](https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/Tulpa:_Tibetan_Spirit_Sigil) concerning an encounter with a tulpa. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/14 "2019-03-07T21:27:20Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If you find this evidence compelling, perhaps you would be interested in watching [this documentary](https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/Tulpa:_Tibetan_Spirit_Sigil) concerning an encounter with a tulpa. I love documentaries! I’m going to put this one in my queue right after I finish “Sharknado”!! Is [this another one?](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjIuvn1_PDgAhVIKawKHXZBA94QtwIwAnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKrs0HVqNrNc&usg=AOvVaw3ZRkz5C11KeQ4zuialoE42) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/15 "2019-03-07T22:09:00Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > From [here](https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/136605/Hoskins-Roger-Rabbit-drove-me-mad). Why would he have nightmares about being amongst cartoon characters? The cartoons are added afterwards-he was on set responding to visual cues, not cartoon characters. Watch [this video of him reacting things that were added after](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_VnHAy1Vdc) and explain why he was having nightmares about cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/16 "2019-03-07T23:03:27Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If you find this evidence compelling, perhaps you would be interested in watching [this documentary](https://supernatural.fandom.com/wiki/Tulpa:_Tibetan_Spirit_Sigil) concerning an encounter with a tulpa. I would also suggest [this one](https://x-files.fandom.com/wiki/Arcadia). It’s really fun, too. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/17 "2019-03-07T23:33:43Z")
I think that actually makes it more likely that Hoskins would hallucinate them, not less. In order to be able to react to the toons appropriately, he had to imagine them doing whatever it was they’d later be drawn doing. All that practice in imagining them could lead to him accidentally imagining them even when he didn’t want to. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/18 "2019-03-08T01:20:22Z")
> [@yellow\_sausage\_bandit](#): > > Obviously the brain can create visual characters that act independently from you (in dreams), but is really possible to do this intentionally while awake? Just contact your local drug dealer. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2019, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-tulpas-real/830689/19 "2019-03-08T03:25:18Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > But despite them coming “from” your mind, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have conscious control over them. Actual hallucinations come to mind – just trying to “think them away” won’t generally work. > > And I have heard a few authors describe characters in a kinda related way, as if they “lost control” of the character and, at some point, were just recording “what happened.” Obviously hard to tell if that’s just flowery language or self-promotion, though. > > I’ve no evidence of tulpas being “real” in any meaningful sense, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume folks claiming so are just consciously “making it up.” I can IMAGINE folks that have sorta trained their brain to have a vivid “imaginary friend” they don’t perceive any control over, but I certainly don’t think they’ve created a truly independent entity. I suppose it could happen without conscious effort, because our minds are very complex and do an awful lot of stuff that we are not conscious of. Ultimately it still comes from within the mind. For example, you cannot conjure up a being that speaks fluent French if you don’t speak a word of French. It might sound like what you imagine French sounds like, but it would be French-sounding gibberish.