0:22 Kayla: Can you do the podcast? Chris: Hi. Hi. This is. This is our podcast. Kayla: We're really good at this. Chris: Welcome, everybody. I'm Chris. Kayla: I don't know what's going on. Chris: That's your name, and this is. I don't know what's going on. This is Kayla, my lovely wife and co host. Oh, I guess Kayla is also okay. And this is cult or just weird. Kayla: I wish everybody could see your face right now. It's. Chris: I'm gonna do the whole episode like this. Kayla: It's like Mister Rogers situation.

1:03 Chris: You're gonna tell me crazy stuff and be like, well, ain't that just a hoot? Kayla: I am about to tell you crazy stuff. Chris: Well, that'll just be quite the surprise. I need better surprise words. Kayla: Mister Rogersisms. Chris: I am just gobsmacked by that. Kayla: I am about to smack your gob. Chris: This is a children friendly podcast. Kayla: No, it's not. Chris: Where we talk about super racist stuff and cancer and suicide and all the. Kayla: Fun things in life. Chris: Fair. Okay, I guess this is adults only, so go ahead and commence with the smacking of the gob. Kayla: Okay. Are you ready? I'm not. Chris: I don't know. Like, you previewed this on the last episode. You're like, oh, the next one's gonna.

1:48 Kayla: Be, well, okay, let's just go. Chris: Are we talking about racists this time? Kayla: No, we are not talking about racists. I mean, like, no, we're not talking about racialists. We're not talking about racists. But the topic that I'm presenting to you today, the topic that I have chosen, I didn't realize that this would happen before going into my research, but while doing my research, I realized this topic has me questioning the entire premise of our podcast. Chris: Oh, my God. Kayla: Like, it almost makes you want to change the name of our podcast or the purpose. Chris: Well, we're definitely not doing that because the brand is out there.

2:30 Kayla: Like, I guess, actually, it's my fault for picking this topic. It's a topic that just doesn't easily fit into the binary of our framework, and it's just. Okay, it's just a fascinating topic. I've been interested in it for a few years, and honestly, I'm less interested in classifying this group as one or the other of our two possible outcomes. And I'm just more interested in, like, talking about it and informing our listeners about it and kind of just getting the info out there into the world and, like, maybe dispelling some rumors about it and just demystifying this topic for our listeners, who may have some preconceived notions about it or may have not even heard about it at all, ever.

3:13 Chris: And then ending the podcast. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So, listeners, this is our last episode. You heard it here? Kayla: Well, potentially. Okay, wait till we get to the end. So you, my co host, Chris, you often start your episodes with a question. Chris: Oh, don't take after me. Kayla: I wanted to go ahead and today, follow your lead and start this episode. Chris: My lead is a terrible one to follow. Kayla: Well, my question is, Chris, have you ever had an imaginary friend? Chris: Have. I don't. Kayla: Did you have an imaginary friend as a kid? Chris: I think I did as a kid. Kayla: What's wrong with you? Chris: Yeah, I mean, I'm weird, so I'm trying to think. You know what? I'll have to ask the interview subject we had for Mary Kayden if she remembers any imaginary friend that I may or may not have had, but I don't think so. I had stuffed animals, but I don't think I had.

4:10 Kayla: Yeah, that's different. Yeah. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: I actually, I texted my mom the same thing, and I was like, did I have any imaginary friends growing up? Because I don't remember any specific imaginary friends. I did a lot of, like, imaginary play and pretend play, but I don't remember any specific imaginary friends. I remember my sister had a ton of imaginary friends, and my mom said that I didn't need them because I had an older sister, but I was the older. Yeah, that's why you're wearing something wrong with you. Chris: So how do we go from imaginary friend to questioning the nature of the podcast? Kayla: We're not quite at my topic yet. Chris: Okay. Kayla: And I'd like to ask you to hold any speculation for now before we can get into the topic. I know, but before we can get into the topic proper, let's take some time to talk about the phenomenon of imaginary friends just so we can lay some important groundwork for the topic later on. My sources on this were Wikipedia, of course, psychology Today, the Globe and Mail Science Friday, and a bunch of other articles. And maybe some things I'll talk about later.

5:07 Chris: You talk to your imaginary friend about. Kayla: It from Wikipedia or my imaginary friend. Wikipedia is kind of like my imaginary friend. So from Wikipedia, imaginary friends, also known as pretend friends or invisible friends, are a psychological and social phenomenon where a friendship takes place in the imagination rather than external physical reality. Although they may seem very real to their creators, children usually understand that their imaginary friends are not real, end quote. Chris: I understand that you're not real and that I just have a fake computer voice doing my co hosting from Wikipedia actually, yeah. Neither of us are real because all we do is aggregate.

5:51 Kayla: That's true. Imaginary friends as a social phenomenon present in children has been observed for hundreds of years, but the practice probably extends back much further. Chris: I mean, I'm sure it extends back forever, right? Like, I mean, since. Kayla: I mean, I don't have any. Chris: Since humans evolved imagination. I do. I've traveled into the distant past. Kayla: In your imagination? Chris: No, but my friend has. Kayla: The first scientific studies into imaginary friends took place in the late 18 hundreds, and they're still currently studied in psychological research today. In fact, some of the most important research into imaginary friends has taken place since 2007. Like, as late as 2007. Chris: Holy crap. Kayla: And beyond. For many years, the presence of imaginary friends and children, especially children older than three or four, was viewed as reflecting some sort of deficiency in the child. Like, that was kind of like the general psychological consensus was that. Meaning if a kid had an imaginary friend past the age of four, it was thought there was something wrong. Like the kid had anxiety or lacked the ability to socialize, so they were experiencing loneliness or delusion. Just, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

6:55 Chris: You're not supposed to use your imagination past stage four. Kayla: No, that's the cutoff. Chris: That's the cutoff. After that, it's, you know, you're supposed to just be all into spreadsheets and stuff. Kayla: I mean, that's when you're supposed to get sent to, like, the factory, right? Yeah. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: In fact, funnily enough, even famed pediatrician doctor Benjamin Spock, who, like, is such a well known, like, authority on childhood like development, that he was parodied in Rugrats. I'm, like, 90%. Chris: And he was the second in command. Kayla: On the original doctor Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician. He was once quoted as saying, quote, a little imagination is a good thing, but if a child still has an imaginary friend at the age of four, a child psychiatrist, child psychologist, or other mental health counselor should be able to find out what they are lacking.

7:43 Chris: Is that true, or is that just a doctor Benjamin Spock thing? Kayla: Let's continue, and we'll find out today. Chris: However, actually, you're supposed to say, we'll get to that. Kayla: We'll get to that. It's actually my next paragraph. Today we know now that basically the opposite is true when it comes to imaginary friends. In fact, children with imaginary friends are more likely to have fewer deficiencies than imaginary friendless children like children. Chris: That explains why I'm so weird. Yeah. Okay, wait. Kayla: You're weird because you didn't have imagination. Chris: Yeah, I didn't have one, so I'm fucked up. Kayla: Yes. Because children with imaginary friends are actually, like, they are more creative than other children, a trait that they carry with them into adulthood. Adults who had imaginary friends as children are, they also score higher on, quote unquote, absorption tests, meaning that they are better able to lose themselves in things like novels and movies, and they have more imaginative inner lives.

8:39 Chris: What about kids that go to the kids corner and the creativity website? What happens with them? Kayla: I think those children may come away with some deficiencies that should probably later be addressed by a child psychologist and hopefully child protective services. Chris: Right. Their imaginary friends can only be white. Kayla: Oh, God. Can we not do racism in this episode? Chris: Sorry. I'm sorry. Kayla: Oh, man. Chris: We can cut that. Kayla: Children with imaginary friends often even have better social skills than other children and sometimes even have larger vocabularies because they basically get to spend more time practicing, like, speaking and conversing and talking and relating to another person. And, like, the same goes for empathy. They get to practice it more because they have this imaginary friend, and they also tend to be less shy.

9:22 Chris: Is there any. Okay, I have a few questions. One is, where is this all coming from? And then there's a bunch of articles. Kayla: That I mentioned up top. Chris: Okay, so, okay, second question is there any correlation to this with having siblings? I know you kind of already said that. Kayla: Oh, I have no idea. Chris: The older younger sibling thing. But I'm wondering if, like, because I had a sibling, you know, like, because you're saying, like, it helps you practice communication and empathy and all that stuff. Kayla: Sure. Sibling's gonna do that, but it's not gonna help you with your, like, creativity. Chris: Right. But as the. It's, I guess in my head, I'm kind of going, like, oh, like, that would make sense, like, for an only child to have to be more likely to have an imaginary friend in order to practice that stuff. Kayla: I don't understand the question. I'm sorry.

10:03 Chris: Is there any correlation? Kayla: So it's actually even though. Okay, so only children or firstborns are technically more likely to have an imaginary friend, but even so, they are not. They don't score as lonelier or less socially developed than other children. Chris: Got it. Kayla: Including other children that, like, have imaginary friends and siblings. Chris: That makes sense to. Kayla: So while in the past, the presence of imaginary friends and children was worrisome to parents, as it was thought to indicate possible mental illness, like we said, the opposite is true today, like mentioned before, the vast majority of children are very aware that their imaginary friends are just that, imaginary. It doesn't matter how elaborate or complex the friend is, or the play or the entire pericosm. We'll get to that word later. The entire paracosm the child might have built for the friend. Kids know that it's pretend. Like it's not an indication of delusion or mental illness. Like Doctor Benjamin Spock potentially thought. It's just they know it's pretend and they didn't just enjoy doing it. And it feels real because it's like you're still getting used to your imagination, but they know it's pretend.

11:12 Kayla: I read a study where out of 100 or so kids interviewed about their imaginary friends, only one child insisted that their friend was real. Chris: That was always Spock's weakness. He was always too logical. Kayla: My God, that doesn't even logic. Different Spock. I kind of want to Google Benjamin Spock there to see what his face looks like. Chris: What if he looked exactly like an ordinance? Kayla: If he didn't shave his eyebrows into that shape, he was severely wrong. Chris: He definitely should have put elf ears on. Kayla: Yeah. In the science Friday article I read, developmental psychologist Marjorie Taylor, who has done extensive research into the field of imaginary friends, talks about how she has in depth conversations with children about their friends as part of her research, which sounds like an amazing job. First of all, you just get to talk to kids about their imagination. Like. Yes. So she asks them details, et cetera, about their friends and what they do. And after a while, the kids will often, after talking for an hour or so, they'll kind of go, you know this is pretend, right? Like, you know, it's an imaginary little girl. Like, they try to make sure, you know, it's all pretend, so they're so aware of this.

12:21 Chris: Very kind of them. Kayla: Yeah. Like, these kids wanna make sure, you know that they know that it's not real. Chris: Right? I mean, yeah, I appreciate that, because otherwise I could have a psychotic break. Kayla: You? Chris: Yeah, you already did. Kayla: Yeah. It's really that these kids are just exercising their creativity muscles super hard. And in fact, the benefits of having an imaginary friend are so real, both for children and adults who had imaginary friends as children, that sometimes now parents are worried. When a child doesn't have an imaginary friend, it's like a complete 180. Chris: Interesting. Kayla: Interestingly, I also learned that children aren't the only ones who have imaginary friends. While most imaginary friends and the entire activity of pretend play generally starts up around three years and then, like, Peters out by age ten, many children have been known to carry imaginary friends with them into their adolescent and teen years. And some teenagers even create imaginary friends as teenagers. And again, these teenagers generally have higher levels of creativity, higher levels of social skills, lower levels of shyness.

13:25 Chris: Wasn't there a paranormal activity about this? Kayla: A paranormal activity of kids, not of teenagers? Chris: If somebody just having an imaginary friend too long and whoops, it turns out they're real and it's a ghost, evil ghost. Kayla: And that was paranormal 933. And it was a child, and it was a flashback. Chris: Oh, okay. Kayla: It's all a prequel. Chris: Pardon me. Kayla: Spoilers. Chris: Pardon me. Kayla: So, yeah, so these. So these teenagers that create imaginary friends, like, they get the same benefits as kids. Like, they're not as lonely, they don't have as much anxiety, they don't have social isolation, and they're more creative. So it's just a really interesting thing because I've never really thought about, like. Sounds like a win win coming up with this kind of stuff. Right. It's kind of something that doesn't necessarily leave you in your teen years.

14:10 Chris: Yeah. Oh, and you'd also like. Yeah. You just sort of. Your default mentality there is like, oh, man. If you have an imaginary friend when you're 14, you're a weirdo. You're a weirdo. Yeah. But it's really interesting that it's not. It's like the opposite of that. Kayla: Keep that in mind. Chris: Quick question, actually, two things. First of all, man, this topic is so much nicer than last week. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Second of all, when are you gonna explain paracosm? What is a paracosm? Kayla: Please, we're just about to get into it. Chris: Oh, my God. Thank you. Kayla: For some children, the presence of imaginary friends can grow and develop into something more. An article I read talked about the concept of a pericosm, which, as my co host demonstrated. Demonstrated.

14:56 Chris: Look, I have definition blue balls over here. Kayla: As my co host demonstrated. I said it earlier. I lost the sentence. Chris: Dimmish Mifflin. Kayla: It's fine. A paracosm is an entire imaginary world, to quote the science Friday article, which, by the way, has an entire series on the phenomenon of imaginary friends. So definitely go check it out. These worlds are typically elaborate, entailing their own geography. Chris: Holy shit. Kayla: Transportation systems. Chris: What? Kayla: Governments and holidays. Chris: Oh, my God. Kayla: Was this. Chris: What? Lion, the witch and the wardrobe was basically. Yeah, actually. So I did have. When I was in either fourth or.

15:38 Kayla: Fifth grade, did you have a paracosm? Chris: Well, no, we don't have a paracosm, but we had a fake laser company. Kayla: Oh, I do remember you telling me. Chris: Remember the laser. I told you about the laser company. How? With my friend Joe Bakus. Kayla: What was it called? Chris: It was called LTI laser technology. Like, incorporated or institute or one of it. I don't know. And we, like. We drew little logos for it, and they were like our. You know, our friends were like, members or employees or. So I don't really remember too much about it. Kayla: You made lasers or you had. Chris: No, we did nothing. We just talked about it. Kayla: We talked about it in dropping. We were in fifth grade. Chris: I don't know. We just had a company. It was a club. It was a thing we talked about probably, like three times. Kayla: It was a paracasm.

16:18 Chris: It was a paracosm, I guess, a para corporation. Kayla: Paracorporation. But except for you, who was definitely. This is definitely a sign of something wrong. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Even when kids spin these elaborate, very involved imaginary worlds, it's not cause for concern. Chris: No, it's cause for, like, awesomeness. Please write that down and we'll sell it and make millions of dollars in a book series. Kayla: What? A paracasm? Chris: Yeah, I'm just saying, if I had. If I had a kid that was, like, telling me about his paracon. Kayla: Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. Chris: I would be like, stop what you're doing. Kayla: Let's write it down. Let me get the dictaphone. Chris: The dictaphone. I'm gonna call up JK Rowling because I have her on speed dial.

16:58 Kayla: Have her ghost write it. Chris: Okay, well, whatever. I'll go. Yeah, that'll. I'll sell a lot of copies with the name Chris Carlson on it. Kayla: Hey, she started out just as JK Rowling. No one knew who she was. Chris: Fair. Kayla: So you can do it, too. Kids have an imaginary paracasm. There are circumstances when an imaginary friend can indicate mental illness, like with my co host here, but that's generally when the issue of not being able to determine fact from fiction comes into play. So, children. Chris: Okay, so, like Kellyanne Conway. Kayla: Yeah, exactly. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Children that do not understand that their imaginary friends aren't real may be displaying symptoms of mental illness. There is also some research indicating correlation between imaginary friends and sexually abused children who go on to develop dissociative disorders. But again, it's important for parents to not freak out when kids have imaginary friends, no matter how weird or crazy it gets. Even if children dream up imaginary friends that aren't always nice to them or do things that get them in trouble, it's all part of a natural, normal, even helpful process that generally benefits children well into adulthood. And yes, there are kids that like, their imaginary friends do things that they don't like, or, like they don't actually like their imaginary friend that much, or their imaginary friend does. Yeah, it's a little creepy.

18:13 Kayla: I mean, yeah, it is creepy, but also, I get what the brain is doing there. You know what I mean? Chris: Yeah, I guess it's. It's trying. Kayla: The brain is giving you an opportunity. Chris: To, like, define the boundaries of values that you have. Yeah. Yeah. Kayla: It's very interesting. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Tracy Gleeson of Wellesley College points out the power of imagination is a hugely important trait in our adult lives. Imagination is responsible for innovation, creative fulfillment, and more. Gleeson says, quote, imagination is not just a frivolous thing you outgrow. So we mentioned that. Obviously, we mentioned we're talking about how little kids have imaginary friends. Sometimes adolescents and teenagers have imaginary friends.

18:53 Chris: Please tell me this is like a children's cult. Kayla: Oh, God. Not yet. We're talking about adults next. Chris: Oh, boy. Kayla: While there are fewer instances of imaginary friends documented in adults, the phenomenon is not unheard of. In fact, some very creative folks you might know of have had or had imaginary friends as adults. Chris: Like celebrities. Yeah. Kayla: Wait until you hear these names. Agatha Christie, author of well known mysteries such as. And then there were none and murder on the Orient Express. Chris: Didn't she write, like, a million books? Kayla: Yes. She is the best selling novelist in the world. Chris: So of all time, she had to have an imaginary friend. There's no way she could have written all those books by herself.

19:36 Kayla: She sold, like, 2 billion. I think it's 2 billion copies of, like, her books. Chris: Right. Kayla: But then, literally the best. Chris: Wasn't she also, like, a prolific writer, though, too? Right? Like, she had just published a ton of books. Kayla: Oh, yeah. Chris: Okay. Kayla: So she's actually somewhat famous for her friendships with imaginary friends. Chris: Really? Kayla: So she had siblings, but I think her siblings all went to boarding school and she stayed home. And so she actually was lonely as a child and often created imaginary friends to keep her company, and she pretended she was in school with them, but as an adult, she continued to create imaginary friends to surround herself with. It's actually not uncommon for writers, especially writers who craft characters they use over and over again. Like, well, she created both Herculean Poirot and Miss Marple, who, like, a. They starred in their own entire book series and are very well known characters. So it's not an uncommon thing in writers to, like, feel their characters eventually take on lives of their own or, like, interact with them like they are imaginary friends, right?

20:34 Chris: No, but it totally clicked with me that would just be just a correlation. Right. Like, if you're somebody that does that for a living, then you're somebody that is, like, good at imagining, developing a personality, you know, separate from your own. Kayla: Right. Chris: Whether you're putting it on paper or interacting with it yourself. Kayla: Right. Agatha Christie, however, said that she preferred her imaginary friends to her characters because they weren't as old. And also, she sadly, she could have solved that. Yeah, well, no, because her characters had to grow up, you know? Chris: Oh, right. Kayla: Like, you can't go back in time. Chris: Well, she didn't have to write realistic fiction. She could have written fantasy.

21:15 Kayla: But she did. That was her thing. And also, it didn't really matter because she eventually, very sadly, grew to hate her character, Hercule Perot. Chris: Oh, God. Kayla: And after writing many novels about him, she came to view him as a, quote, egocentric creep. Chris: Yeah, okay. I mean, she feels like. Feels like she had control over that. Kayla: No, but I think at a certain point, it's like the character's. The character. Chris: Yeah, I guess. Kayla: Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Chris: Mind blowing. Kayla: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also grew to hate Sherlock Holmes. Chris: Really? Yeah, he's kind of a know it all.

21:56 Kayla: Well, Hercule was an egocentric creep. I even read an article that claimed important historical figures such as Niccolo Machiavelli and Isaac Newton had imaginary friends as adults. And Niccolo Machiavelli, like, almost certainly did. Because after he got exiled, he would like, or whatever he was, like, in isolation at the end. Right. Chris: I don't remember. Kayla: Well, he got real lonely and he was kind of disgraced. And he would, like, pretend that he was, like. He would come home and I'd pretend he was very popular and courtly and had people all around him. Chris: Oh, well, you know, that's nice for him. That makes me sad. Kayla: But you don't need to feel sad for him. He's fine. But for these three adults we just mentioned, imagination was everything. Their imaginations are why we remember them today.

22:44 Chris: Right. Well, and Isaac Newton, Washington, he was an interesting fellow. Kayla: He was a weirdo. Chris: He did a lot of good science, right. But he also had a lot of strange, pseudo scientific things that he was. Kayla: Into, probably imaginary friends. Chris: But, I mean, that's the thing, right? Is like, if you're that creative, it's not always in one direction. It can be in many different directions. Kayla: On the show that I'm one of our writers, I'm sure he's not the only person that has this theory, but he's the first person that I heard succinctly distill this theory and that he basically is, like, to truly achieve true human greatness, what we view is the pinnacle of human greatness. It takes personality disorder. And he was referencing that guy who climbed half dome or whatever.

23:31 Chris: Oh, yeah. Kayla: Because to do that, you truly have to have almost something, quote unquote, wrong with you. You need to have some sort of. Chris: Yeah, I mean, I hesitate to say, wrong with you. Kayla: Like, that's why I said, quote unquote. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: It's not the right. Chris: I think that you need to have something in the extreme, whether it's extreme dedication or extreme passion or extreme, you know, skill or whatever. Kayla: It is such an extreme that it. Yeah, it's almost something that differentiates you from other people. Chris: It's definitely something that differentiates you. I wouldn't say it necessarily means that it's like, it's disordered necessarily. But the fact that I think it makes sense to say that, yeah. To do something extreme takes some extremely different mental makeup.

24:17 Kayla: Right. Like Isaac Newton. Chris: Yes. Kayla: If you google, quote, why is imagination important for adults? You responded to with article after article explaining the immense benefits and value of imagination. Forbes has an article all about the ways imagination is crucially vital in business innovation. HuffPo explains that imagination can be more important than reality in igniting our passions and creating our futures mental flaws has a whole article about how imagination boosts problem solving skills, preserves memory, and even gives us self confidence. In fact, imagination. Chris: I do have to imagine my self confidence. Kayla: Yeah. That's the only way I'm gonna have any. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: In fact, imagination is one of the few things I believe that truly makes us, quote unquote, human. Like, it's something. We have the rare ability to picture something in our minds and then, like, take the steps to make that thing happen in the real world. Like, other animals don't really have that in the same way that we do.

25:12 Chris: Yeah. As far as we're aware. That's. That's one of the only really differentiating things. Although I also am not, like, super up on the research. So, like, I don't know if research has shown that, like, oh, ravens can do that, too, but. Yeah, but to my knowledge, probably not. Kayla: To the extent we can. Even if they can, like, picture, oh, if I put this rock in the water and it raises the water up, I can get the food or whatever the experiments they do with the raisins. Chris: Right. Kayla: They're like. They're not raisins. Chris: Or the ravens. Kayla: The raisins. The California raisins. Chris: Well, the ravens could be getting the raisins to eat. Kayla: Yep, that's what I said. And either way, the ravens, the raisins, they're not doing no space travel. Like, space travel is the result of imagination. Movies, tvs, computers, cars, like, right. Anything that someone has quote unquote invented is the result of imagination. What I'm getting at here is imagination is really fucking important.

26:00 Chris: No, it's super important. Yeah. Like, anything like that, you have to go through a process of picturing something that never existed before. Kayla: Right? Chris: And in all of those cases, to bring it into reality, like, you have to imagine it so vividly that you can share it with others to help you bring that to fruition. Kayla: Right. Now that we're all on the same page here about the importance of imaginary friends and the importance of imagination in general, what's the cult? I'd like to finally introduce my topic today on today's episode of culture. Just weird. We are going to be talking about tulpas. Chris: Oh yeah, I've talked to you about tulpas. You've talked to me about this before.

26:42 Kayla: Quite a bit, in fact. Chris: Oh boy. Kayla: So I want you to try and like, forget everything that we've talked about and just try to go into this conversation with an open mind. I know I've talked to you a lot about tulpas, but I've learned a lot. Chris: I will bring a sense of naive wonder to my reactions. Kayla: And for our listeners who may not know what tulpas are, don't worry. Chris: Shut down the podcast right now. Kayla: No, don't. Just don't worry. We're gonna get into it right now. Chris: It's not bad. No, it's actually quite interesting. Kayla: It's fascinating. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Kayla: When you google tulpa, in addition to getting the Wikipedia page, you also get the following people also ask, is creating a tulpa dangerous? How long does it take to make a tulpa? What is the tulpa effect? And is a tulpa an imaginary friend? So what is a tulpa exactly?

27:36 Chris: An imaginary friend. Kayla: It's an imaginary friend. The short answer, I guess that's the short answer. The slightly longer answer, but still short, is the Wikipedia description. Tulpas is a concept in mysticism and the paranormal of a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers. It was adapted by 20th century theosophists from tibetan sprulpa, which means emanation or manifestation. Wait, let me finish the quote. Modern practitioners use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend, which practitioners considered to be sentient and relatively autonomous. Chris: That's wack. Did you say that this was a thing before, like, in the 18 hundreds?

28:16 Kayla: Oh. Chris: Honeydeheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh this isn't an Internet thing. This isn't like people being weird on the Internet thing. Kayla: I mean, yes and no. It has roots in, theoretically, ancient culture. Chris: Do not like. Nope. Don't. Don't like that. Kayla: Yep, you should. You really should. It's okay. We're. Chris: What the fuck? Kayla: So the long answer as to what a tulpa is much longer, and that's why we're doing this podcast. I have absolutely no idea when I first started learning about tulpas or why or how, but I first came across the concept, like, at least four years ago, and it definitely had to do with Reddit because, not surprisingly, the largest gathering place for tulpa enthusiasts is the subreddit r. Tulpas.

29:06 Chris: Guess where we're promoting this episode. Oh. Kayla: Oh. Chris: Oh, man. This is gonna, like, triple our listenership, right? Kayla: They already know. Spoiler alert. Attacked. To a bunch of tulpas. Chris: Not to the people. But you talk to the tulpas both. Fuck, that's awesome. Oh, my God. I'm rubbing my eyes right now since you can't see that I'm rubbing them because I'm just so excited. Kayla: So on R. Tulpas, the community description is as follows. Ever wondered what it would be like to have a mental companion who can think and act on their own? I mean, for me, no. But do you?

29:47 Chris: I have not wondered that, but I. Kayla: Wish I'd wondered that like this. Chris: Well, I wonder it now. Kayla: The whole tulpa thing makes me honestly feel like I have a very underactive imagination. It makes me kind of feel inferior. I'm not gonna lie. Ever wondered what it would be like to have a mental companion who can think and act on their own? That's what a tulpa is. Yes. It's a strange word. We didn't make it up. The Tibetans did, many centuries ago. Discuss tulpas. Share your experience with having tulpas, and give advice to fellow Tulpa creators here. Chris: So I know you're probably gonna go into this, but they. So, you know when you were talking about the kids. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: And the kids would go for a little bit, and they'll be like, you know this is imaginary, right? To the adults, right? This is not that. Right? Do they know it's imaginary? Or where is that? What is.

30:32 Kayla: We're gonna get into it. The long and short of it is that. Yes. The vast majority of tulpa enthusiasts know that it's imaginary and knows that their tulpas don't exist in the real world, but they also believe that they've created an imaginary friend that purely resides in their imagination but is autonomous. They don't have to think about what their imaginary friend would do. Like, the imaginary friend is basically something that exists in their mind but has a mind of its own, almost. Chris: So this is coming from someone who didn't have an imaginary friend. So grain of salt. But speculation for me is that it feels like that's also what kids with imaginary friends are doing. It doesn't feel like the kids are like, take, for example, the kid that you talked about, or the kids that have imaginary friends that do things contra to what they want them to do.

31:34 Kayla: Right. Right. Chris: That doesn't feel like the kid being like, all right, I think that you should think this, and then let's go do this. It feels more like there's some unexplainable level of autonomy there that is happening, like, in a different part of the Brain than the Kid's conscious thought. Kayla: Right. Chris: That's in their Subconscious, and that, like, manifests itself as, I don't know. My imaginary friend wanted to rob the Liquor Store, so I guess I had to. Kayla: Well, I think the difference here, and again, we're going to talk a lot more about, like what? Like the specifics of tulpas and tulpas in this, like, Reddit Community. But the difference here is that to create a Tulpa is a lot of conscious work.

32:16 Chris: Right? Kayla: You can't just go like. Like, I feel like a little Kid could kind of go like an imaginary friend. Here's what they are. Here's what's happening right now. Chris: Isn't that almost more autonomous? Like, my imaginary friend, he walked in the door. I don't know. Kayla: But these, to create a tulpa, it requires a lot of very specific, focused, Repetitive Work and concentration. Chris: That is like nuts, man. That is crazy. Kayla: It's amazing. Chris: It's like you're meditatively willing yourself into this Personality Dissociation. Kayla: Well, we'll get into that. Chris: And that's not Judgmental. Kayla: The majority of the Tulpa community is very aware of the specifics of dissociative identity dIsorder, which is, like, the correct term for multiple personality spur personality or like, whatever.

33:03 Chris: Oh, my God, I'm rubbing my eyes again. This is so interesting. Kayla: So many of them are very aware of those specifics and are very aware that this is not, that. We'll talk about it more. We have to start at the beginning now we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to go. Chris: You're tickling my brain meat so much. Kayla: Back, back. So, before we dive into the community itself, we're going to talk a little bit more about the history of these imaginary friends known as tulpas. You'll notice in the Reddit description, and we talked about it, they mentioned something about Tibet. So let's start there, kind of. Chris: Let's start in Tibet, kind of. We leave off from our story with qinghai, and there are some similarities. Oh, my lord.

33:50 Kayla: Alexandra David Neal was born on October 24, 1868, in a suburb of Paris, France. She was the only daughter born to her parents. Her father was a teacher, revolutionary activist, and Freemason, while her mother was a Roman Catholic. She had a somewhat turbulent upbringing. Her parents were poor and often fought. Her father was very involved in political activism and even brought his daughter to witness public executions to. Chris: That's some good ass parenting right there. Kayla: To see the atrocity. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: She was interested in the spiritual from a young age, which I think is natural, having a freemason for a father and a Roman Catholic for a mother. Like, there's a lot of spirituality there. And by the time she was 15, she had already dabbled in fasting, mortification of the flesh, and asceticism. By 18, she had joined Madame Blavatsky's theosophical society. Madame, or Madam Blavatsky, was a well known russian occultist around the turn of her century, and her theosophical society was this, like, very well known group meant to advance theosophy, which is kind of just like another word for occultism. Like western occultism.

34:56 Chris: Yeah. In the 18 hundreds was whack as hell. Kayla: Oh, my God. I want to be a 19th century occultist. So bad. So bad. Chris: I think they have. There's probably Reddit for that, too. Kayla: Check out this quote about Alexandra David Neal from Brian Haughton's article. A mystic in Tibet, she joined various secret societies. She would reach the 30th degree in the mixed scottish rite of freemasonry, while feminist and anarchist groups greeted her with enthusiasm. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she was associated with the french geographer and anarchist Alice recluse. This led her to become interested in the anarchist ideas of the time and in feminism that inspired her to the publication of pour la vie for life in 1898. In 1899, she composed anarchist treatise with a preface by Elysee Recluse. Publishers did not dare publish the book, though her friend John, her friend Jean hastent printed copies himself, and it was eventually translated into five languages. So this girl's got, end quote. This girl's got a lot going on for her, right? She's educated, she's an activist.

36:05 Chris: She's in all kinds of crazy. Kayla: Yeah. She's clearly interested in finding some sort of enlightenment. By the age of 21, she had actually converted to Buddhism and began to teach herself Sanskrit in various tibetan languages. And this is so interesting because she was not really traveling in buddhist groups. She was traveling western occultists, and Buddhism was, according to her, not really a big thing in Paris at the time. And so the. I don't know how to pronounce this, but I'm going to just try it. The Jimei Museum, an art museum with a large collection of asian art, is sometimes credited with being one of the sources of her interest in East Asia and her desire to pursue Buddhism, etcetera. A lot of other really interesting things happened in her life, like she became an opera singer, an artistic director of this place in Tunisia.

36:51 Chris: Like, how do people do all this? Kayla: I don't know. Chris: How do people be so polymath? I don't get it. Kayla: Those things, unfortunately, aren't really relevant for this podcast. However, I do encourage our listeners to go ahead and google this woman. She's amazing. Chris: Nuts. Kayla: She was also very protective of her individualism and freedom. And in 1912, she left France and she traveled and left Europe entirely. She traveled to India to keep studying her Buddhism. The area she started in is called Sikkim. It's a state basically in northeast India that borders Tibet. And there she befriended the crown princess. No idea how she friended the crown prince of Sikkim and was able to then travel around the region, visiting many different buddhist monasteries. And along the way, she met and befriended a number of spiritual leaders in the area, including the 13th Dalai Lama.

37:41 Chris: How do you just do this? Kayla: And helped her continue her education. I don't know. And she, like, lived in a cave. She, like, just lived in a cave in Seacum, and she just meditated and studied and in caves are pretty tight. And in 1916, she made her first trip to Tibet, an area that foreigners were forbidden to enter at the time. And she did that multiple times. Chris: She was kind of like, but it was forbidden. Kayla: She just went. She literally just was like, I'm not going to ask anybody's permission. And would just go. And she would go to Tibet and study even though it was technically not allowed. Chris: Seems a little presumptuous. Kayla: Well, yeah, I mean, this is a white european woman just being like, fuck.

38:21 Chris: It, I can go. Kayla: Okay, there's definitely some, like, it's not colonization, because that's not what she's doing here, but there's definitely a little bit of, like, privilege and entitlement happening here. But also, like, a lot of people were like, ugh, how dare she do this? But then a lot of people were like, good for her. It was. Chris: Yeah, it's a little ambiguous. Kayla: Her most well known trip to Tibet was the one she took in 1924, where she disguised herself as a beggar monk and traveled to the forbidden city of Lhasa, which was, like, the biggest city in Tibet at that point, or, like, the cultural center. She traveled all around the city and then into the surrounding areas, and that's where she first encountered the concept that would eventually evolve into modern day western tulpas as we now know them. Now, from my research, it very much seems like the western interpretation of the tibetan tulpa concept has had some liberties taken. Like, some people say the concept was mistranslated or misunderstood.

39:20 Chris: It seems like whenever ideas traverse that cultural boundary, they tend to get. Kayla: I think the translation is really difficult, and especially when you're like, if you're taking a western occultist, and granted, she was buddhist, but she was a western occultist first. If you take a western occultist lens and turn it on, anything else, if you are, like, looking at Buddhism through an occultist lens, of course, there's probably room for misinterpretation there. Chris: Even if you're not a western occultist, if you're just a western person, you're just going to bring a different context. Kayla: Well, I mean, if you're a western occultist, you straight up believe in magic, right? Chris: Right. Kayla: So we'll get into it. Chris: It's like yoga. Kayla: It's exactly like yoga. Yoga is definitely a cult. I don't know. It might be. We'll see. So, like I said, some people say that the concept was mistranslated or misunderstood. But in her eventual book about her travels, Alexandra wrote that tulpas are magic formations generated by a powerful concentration of thought. An accomplished bodhisattva is capable of affecting ten kinds of magic creations. Remember that word?

40:22 Chris: Oh, yeah. Kayla: Bodhisattva. And, like, this woman's traveling around fine enlightenment. She's just like, supreme Master Qinghai. Chris: Yeah, they could have been buds if they lived in the same time period. Kayla: An accomplished Buddhisattva is capable of affecting ten kinds of magic creations. The power of producing magic formations, tulkus or less lasting and materialized tulpas does not, however, belong exclusively to such mystic exalted beings. Chris: Excuse me? Tlkus. Kayla: Tulkus. We'll get into it. Chris: Is it like a super tulpa? Kayla: We'll get into it. Chris: Tulpas like Toku light? Kayla: We'll get into it. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Any human, divine, or demonic being may be possessed of it. The only difference comes from the degree of power, and this depends on the strength of the concentration and the quality of the mind itself. Okay. It's important to note here at this point in our story, there's a number of different definitions of tulpas that we're dealing with. First, we introduced the idea of tulpas as generally understood in the Internet sub community, which is basically an autonomous imaginary friend.

41:23 Chris: Yeah, that's the one that I'm operating with. Kayla: Now. What Alexandra is describing here is a quote unquote emanation body, which she interpreted and supposedly witnessed tibetan monk's create, in which powerful, focused thought creates a physical or semi physical being in the real world. Chris: Ooh, neat. So, like, magically creating, like a glowing, like a little friend. Friend. What does it look like a person or. Kayla: It depends upon the person concentrating. Okay, then there's this, like, third definition of tulpa, which has to do with the actual tibetan ideas, but we'll get into that in a second. Alexander David Neal went on to describe tulpas as such. Quote, 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. This Saitibetan occultist happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. Alexandra went on to create her own tulpa. And for her, it was in the image of, like a friar tuck like monk. And eventually, I don't have much details on this, but eventually it got too much of a mind of its own, and she had to destroy it.

42:33 Chris: Oh, man. Yeah, I got darkest. Kayla: And then after that, it made her wonder. She actively wondered if her tulpa was actually a self induced hallucination. But she did adamantly spoil. She did adamantly claim that she and others could see the thought forms, the tulpas that the tibetan monks created. So, okay, let's take a second to talk about the tibetan version of tulpas outside of Alexander's definition, outside of our Reddit definition, please do not take what I'm about to say as authority, as I know very little about tibetan buddhist traditions, but from my research, it does seem that western interpretation of tulpas or emanation bodies, differs a bit from their tibetan sources. The word that we say in English, tulpa, is a translation from the tibetan words tulku or sprulpa. I could be pronouncing those totally incorrectly.

43:25 Kayla: I also learned that there's, like, lot of different tibetan languages, so there's a lot of room for mistranslation here. So those words, in their tibetan languages literally mean emanation or manifestation. But a tulku, in actuality, is the tibetan concept of a reincarnated spiritual leader. Basically, like, Tulkus are spiritual leaders that teach students in whatever their spiritual methods are. And then when the tulku diese, they get reincarnated, and the students that they taught now raise the new master, basically. So, like from a baby. So the most well known example of a tulku is the Dalai lama. That's exactly what the Dalai lama is.

44:11 Chris: Oh, interesting. Kayla: So that's kind of like, there's a real big difference between that version of tolku and what we're calling tulpas. It's a very different thing. Chris: Yeah. The Dalai lama is a real physical person. Kayla: Right. However, there is at least one buddhist text that does say the ability to create a mind made body can be achieved. And other texts describe similar mind made bodies, but frankly, their definitions appear to be far closer to astral projection than an actual physical thought form coming into existence. Chris: Got it. Okay. Okay. Kayla: So it's unclear to me if tibetan Buddhists actually have a concept of creating an autonomous imaginary friend or if Alexandra just misinterpreted the tradition of tulkus sprulpas. Either way, its very clear that modern western tulpas of today, as described and enjoyed by Internet culture, differ greatly from their origins.

45:11 Chris: Right? Yeah. Kayla: But their origins are still there. Chris: Right? Yeah. Okay, so just to track back the three different types. So theres this, the buddhist tradition type, which more refers to the way the. Kayla: Dalai Lama works, more like reincarnation or astral projection or. Yeah. Chris: Mm. And then there's the Alexandra. What was her last name? Kayla: David? Neo. Chris: Yeah, her. There's her version where it's more like, okay, if I concentrate, if I use the force strong enough, then I can make myself a little force, buddy. Kayla: Right. Chris: And then there's the sort of modern Internet version, which is, I'm not necessarily magicing this into physical existence, but I I am creating something that lives autonomously inside of my mind.

45:58 Kayla: Correct. Chris: Got it. Okay. Kayla: Either way, whatever was right, whatever was wrong, at the Alexandra time, 20th century theosophists grabbed onto this concept that she presented, and it was also, like, kind of floating around in other western buddhist occult traditions. The term thought form, another word for tulpa, was used in occultist literature as early as 1927. Chris: More descriptive, less cute, right? Kayla: Yeah. Thought form is. I get what it is, but tulpa, I like it. Some sources say, like we mentioned, the western occultist definitions were more inspired by tibetan traditions rather than based on. Chris: That's what it seems like. Kayla: And while tibetan tulpas were based on buddhist faith, western tulpas and thought forms were more related to western magic.

46:42 Chris: Right. Kayla: Like western occult magic. Other cultists in the early 20th century developed their tulpa ideas alongside the concepts of auras and astral projections. So they've just kind of been developing ever since. But they started kind of in that realm of, like, true magic, almost theosophical magic. Chris: Right, right. Kayla: As the 20th century progressed, the concept of tulpas slowly began to enter somewhat mainstream culture. Chris: What? No, it didn't. Kayla: In fact. Oh, yes, it did. I would argue that the X Files, the television show, is probably one of the biggest sources responsible for popularizing tulpas. They had not one, but two episodes about tulpas.

47:25 Chris: What? Wait, okay, so I know I'm gonna lose a lot of nerd cred by saying this, so here. But here it goes. I didn't watch the X Files. Kayla: That's fine. Chris: I know it's fine with you, but all my friends are gonna be like, you didn't watch the X Files? Oh, my God. Anyway, now that's over with. What? Yeah, they did two. The X Files did two episodes. Kayla: There was an episode in, like, 1996 and then an episode in, like, 2016. Like, the more recent season. Two. Two different episodes. Chris: The fuck? Kayla: Oh, it gets weirder. Hold on. In fact, their first episode about tulpas, which was season six, episode 15, titled Arcadia. Go watch it. Oddly enough, while the monster of the week in that episode was a tulpa, the rest of the episode was centered on a too perfect, kind of culty planned community in southern California. What? Based on the writer's experience with bizarre, intrusive HoA rules while living in a planned community in southern California.

48:26 Chris: Irvine? Kayla: I don't know. I don't think so. I think it might have been closer to San Diego, but it's an Irvine like place. And the entire episode is based on these. Like, the episode's barely about tulpas. It's mostly like, oh, my God, the crazy Hoa rules. And you have to. If you. You don't conform to the HoA rules. The tulpa comes and kills you. Chris: Holy crap. Kayla: Like the guy, like the president of the plant community, the Donald Bren wanted to. He needed like a way to get people to conform to the rules. So he created this, like, tulpa that would keep people in line. Chris: I don't. So I don't. If you. Oh, my God. Kayla: If you put a pink flamingo on your yard, the tulpa would come and kill you. Chris: If you had. I'm rubbing my eyes again. You had told me, hey, my episode's gonna be about tulpas. Guess which other episode this is going to connect to what it most relates to. I think the Irvine episode would have been last.

49:19 Kayla: Yeah, potentially. Yeah. Chris: What the fuck? X files. Kayla: Go watch the episode. It's good. The other episode, I think it was like season ten. I don't know. It's like one of the more recent seasons. Chris: The nouveau season. Kayla: The new one. Yeah, it was also good. But the season six, episode 15 was basically tulpas and Irvine. What? Chris: Oh, my God. All right. Are we almost done? Because my brain's full. Kayla: We're recording an hour. Chris: Oh, man. We're like, not even close, but my brain's full. Misses Westergart Dobson. Kayla: Like we mentioned, the largest and most well known tulpa community today exists online. And while Reddit is where most folks have congregated, the modern Tulpa phenomenon started. Where else?

50:06 Chris: Four chan on four chan. Kayla: Oh, you'll remember four chan from our episode about Cicada 3301. It's basically an online message board that's largely anonymous and it's just kind of this site that allows for and attracts a lot of just like really weird shit. Like we mentioned, there's intense gore and porn and then there's like weird spooky stories and of course, things like 3301. Chris: And tulpas and racism, if you want to get back. Kayla: Definitely racism. Chris: There's racism there. Kayla: But if you think the story goes, people started talking about tulpas on four chan and then they were a thing. Oh, my friend. There is so much more here because, dear friends, dear listeners, around 2009, a very specific group of people began experimenting with and popularizing tulpas and tulpa culture on four chan.

50:53 Chris: Wait, when did it start? On four chan? So it started on 2009. And then 2009 was also when this. Kayla: Group of people, these people started talking about tulpas in 2009. That very specific group is, of course, none other than bronies. Chris: Oh, boy. Kayla: Yep. Chris: Wait, bronies started the whole tulpa thing? Bronies that's not good. Kayla: Yep, it's true, though. I don't remember if we've discussed bronies on the podcast before. Chris: I don't think so. We tweeted about them from Comic Con. Kayla: They might be a topic in the future, so I'll only briefly brush on them here for context. Yeah, bronies is the term used to refer to a specific subset of the fandom of the children's cartoon show. My little friendship is magic. It's an adorable show targeted at little girls about cute cartoon ponies, but for some reason, it developed an intense fandom that consists of adult men who unironically love the show. Some get deeply obsessed with it, like it's a whole thing. We'll do bronies one day and then we can really, like, unpeel that onion. Peel that onion.

52:01 Chris: Peel that onion. It's peel. Kayla: Why isn't it unpeel de peel? Chris: Because peeling refers to removing the layer. Kayla: I know, but the peel is the layer. Chris: Unpeeling would be putting layers back on. Kayla: I'm just saying, if the peel is the thing on the outside, peel the peel. You should depeel the vegetable or the fruit, not peel it. Chris: I guess you're right. Kayla: I am. I don't know where I was. No, nobody does. So one day we'll talk about bronies in depth, but what's important. Chris: Apologies in advance. Kayla: What's important here is to note that some of the earliest Internet adopters of tulpas were bronies. I read quite a bit about why this particular fandom glommed onto the tulpa thing, and I couldn't really find any definitive answers. It's speculated that certain boards on four chan were more likely to be tulpa friendly than other boards. So folks already interested in tulpas naturally gravitated to the MLP board, or even the X board, which is where, like, cicada first started showing up.

53:00 Chris: MLP, meaning my little pony. Kayla: And it's. Yeah, it's a board specifically for bronies. I've seen other speculation that tulpas appeal to bronies because of their the bronies inherent loneliness or inability to connect with the opposite sex or romantic partners. But for me, that feels a little, like, reductive and stereotypical. That isn't to say that some bronies haven't created tulpas for their reasons. Some bronies created tulpas of the MLP characters specifically to be able to engage romantically or sexually with the characters they so love. So it is a thing, but I can't say it's the only reason. Anyway, tulpa culture grew and grew on four chan, and eventually it migrated on over to Reddit, where R. Tulpas now has 27,600 subscribers.

53:43 Chris: That smacks my gob. Kayla: And from here, an entire collection of jargon and lingo sprung up round the community. I think I meant to say around the community, but I put round the community. Chris: That's like the folksy way of sprung. Kayla: Up around the community. Chris: Sprung up around the community. Folks around here make shit up in their heads and love them some. My little pony. Kayla: And so this jargon, this lingo, it was all about Tulpamancy. Chris: Tulpamancy. Kayla: Have I mentioned Tulpamancy yet? Yeah, that's how the community refers to the practice of creating, cultivating and interacting with your tulpas. Chris: I figured. Great word.

54:24 Kayla: Yes, it is. Fantastic word. People who create tulpas are tulpamancers. The process of creating your tulpa is called forcing. And honestly, I don't like the connotation of that word. I don't like the word forcing, but it's just the word. And the practice itself actually sounds like a very deeply meditative practice, from what I understand. Again, this whole process takes a great deal of focus and intense concentration. Chris: Right. I can see that being meditative. Yeah. Kayla: Right. And so from what I understand, forcing is basically focused mental work to force your tulpa into existence. A lot of tulpa mansters actually begin just with meditation and using that practice to be able to, like, tap into that focused inner world that you kind of get into when you're really in your meditation.

55:13 Chris: Okay, this sounds like it's kind of bringing it back to the whole buddhist monk thing. Kayla: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. The roots are there. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: So while you're in this meditative state, you basically, again, with focus and concentration, think about your intended tulpa, like, what you want them to look like, what you want them to sound like, how you want them to act, what kind of attributes you want them to have, what kind of personality. Chris: Hold up. Kayla: Yes. Chris: Look like. Kayla: Oh, I mean, we'll get to it, but. Yeah, but what part of that? Chris: Well, they're imaginary. Kayla: Yeah, but can't you imagine what something looks like? Chris: Sure, sure, I guess. Okay, so, all right, that makes sense.

55:53 Kayla: Yeah, I know it does. And so do they. Chris: It's just, it was just weird because, like, look, like implies that you're somehow, like, going to be able to see it. Kayla: Yeah, but, like, I can picture right now what? Like, I can picture something that I've never seen before and what it looks like. Chris: No. Yeah. And now that I think about it, like, I've played dungeons and dragons and the descriptions of how the different characters look are very important. Yeah. Kayla: So eventually, once you've done your forcing, you move on to interacting with your tulpa, even if they can't interact back yet. So, like, you can still be in the process of forcing and you start interacting. So you continue forcing by, like, talking to your intended tulpa and wait for their responses, even if you know that it's not going to talk back to you yet. And to me, that is not dissimilar to the practice of raising a baby because current wisdom says that you should talk to your baby super often and in full sentences, even if they can't understand or respond yet. Like, that's a real thing that you're supposed to do with babies that are trying to grow up into autonomous, sentient beings. So it kind of makes sense to me here that, like, even if your tulpa isn't a fully formed tulpa yet.

57:08 Chris: You talk to it, but babies are real. Kayla: Well, I mean, the practice of talking to your baby helps them get a grasp of language. It just kind of, to me, like, I see that. I see a parallel there. Chris: Yeah, I guess not. Kayla: And I'm not saying that, like, the topple community is saying, like, this is what you do because you do it with babies. It was just when I was learning about this, it made me think about it. Chris: You thought about the baby thing? I mean, as much as I want to be, like, babies are physical, like, I see what you're saying. Kayla: Babies are barely real. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. A, babies are barely real to begin with. B, I can see it as, like, if you're in this process of personality creation, right. That talking to something might be like, a way of sort of programming that personality until they can develop enough to talk back, I guess.

57:55 Kayla: Yep. Chris: That's pretty crazy. Also, you don't have to change their diapers. Kayla: You don't. Chris: That's a pro. Kayla: Don't have a baby. Have a tulpa. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: There's also something called quote unquote narrating that you do with your tulpa. And that's basically where, like, you read your tulpa or you describe things to your tulpa, you narrate what you're doing to your tulpa. Chris: I kind of want to do this. Kayla: And again, this is for baby tulpas, but again, it feels similar to the narration that we're supposed to do with baby. Babies. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You read them stories before they can even. Kayla: Right. They just go like, look at that bird. Chris: That's exactly how babies sound. Yeah, they sound like Charlie Brown's mom. Kayla: Yeah, that's. Wa wa. Pardon me. Clearly, of course, a lot of descriptions that I've read of the tulpa creation process also seems to be similar to the two theories of evolution that I'm aware of. And again, this is not something that tulpa manservant biological evolution. Yes. This is not something that toblemancers are saying. This is something that I'm saying. So, like, from my reading, it's like there's two theories, right? There's philetic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. Right, right. Those are the two. Those are the two, right?

59:00 Chris: Sure. Do you want. I mean, I don't have enough memory of biology class, and I'm not sure all of our listeners do either. Kayla: Well, I'll talk about it. So philetic gradualism is. Is where evolution takes place over a long, slow process. Chris: Okay. Kayla: So kind of in that framework, some people's tulpas slowly form over a long, gradual period. And for some people, it actually seems to be more akin to punctuated equilibrium, in which all of a sudden, after a period of forcing, their tulpa will kind of, like, pop into existence, either with, like, a sudden response to a question, after, like, period of no response and things like that. So punctuated equilibrium was more when, like, things were, like, in stasis, things were normal, and then all of a sudden there would be an evolutionary change.

59:44 Chris: Right. There'll be a volcano and, like, some major change to the environment and then, oh, shit, everything gets thrown off and has to. Yeah. Kayla: So those are two of, like, the more common, like, styles of tulpa birth that I've read about. Chris: Good analogy. Kayla: So for many people, that's kind of where the Tulpa Mansi process stops, at least when it comes to creating the tulpa itself. After a lot of intense work, tulpamancers are rewarded with their own completely autonomous, sentient imaginary friend who is entirely in their mind. Chris: That's pretty awesome. Kayla: I know, it is. It's amazing. Chris: That's a good quest reward. Kayla: Yeah. It's the only thing, and we can talk about this more later, but, like, it is not dissimilar to having a baby in the sense that, like, it's with you for life, man.

1:00:34 Chris: When I rp on World of Warcraft. Is that a tulpa? Kayla: I don't think so. Chris: What? Why not? Kayla: Is it autonomous? Chris: P. Jennings. I mean, no. Kayla: So, you know. Oh, sorry. Chris: Is it. Is it getting there? Kayla: No. Wow. So real tulpas, of course, need somewhere to live, and that's gonna go ahead. Chris: Oh, yeah. My crazy wow thing was crazy. But real tulpas. Real tulpas needs somewhere to live. Excuse me. Kayla: And that brings me back to the concept of a paracosm, because remember we talked about paracosms up top. An imaginary worlds some children will create for their imaginary friends to live in. Chris: Good album, by the way. Paracosm.

1:01:15 Kayla: Is there really an album called Paracosm? Chris: Yeah. Kayla: From who? You're a liar. Chris: No, it's a real album. Kayla: By who? Chris: Look it up. Right now. You have a computer in front of you. Kayla: Paracosm studio album by washout. Does that sound about right? Chris: Yeah. Kayla: All right, so that's a paracosm. Well, tulpamancers kind of have their own version of that is generally called the Wonderland. Essentially, the Wonderland is a plane of existence simply within the Tulpamancer's imagination. And it's, like where the tulpas reside. I suppose at this point, I can say that often the tulpa manswer will refer to themselves as the host. So the Wonderland is the host's imagination, and the tulpas hang out there.

1:01:57 Chris: Question. Kayla: Yes? Chris: Are we just living in the wonderland of some vast intelligence? Kayla: Okay, God truly only knows. Chris: Well, it would. I mean, not only would God know, he would be the tulpa. Answer. Kayla: We'll talk a little bit more about. Chris: That a little bit later. Wow. All right. Getting deep. Kayla: Like tulpas, the Wonderland can basically consist of whatever the tulpa mancer wants. Like we talked about earlier, tulpas and whatever you want. They can be six foot tall, anthropomorphic rabbits. They can be cool ass dragons, anime girls, little ponies. Chris: Like, literally all of the above. Kayla: Whatever you want. Yeah, all of the above in one freakish amalgamation. And the Wonderland is essentially a dreamscape. It's like a paracosm. The only limits are the host's imagination.

1:02:43 Chris: So it could be like, caramel waterfall. Okay. Kayla: I also read a lot about how tulpas can get bored because literally, they don't have anything to do. They live in your head. So tulpamanswers will basically. Confusing, though I know. Tulpamancers will basically force things for them to do, like books and games and things for them to, like, play with to pass the time. And again, those things all exist in the Wonderland. Chris: Very, very sweet of them. Kayla: Yeah, it's nice. Chris: Wait, do some tulpa manswers. Not treat their tulpas well? Kayla: I hope not. Chris: I bet there are. Kayla: Don't. Don't talk about that. That hurts my feelings. It makes me feel sad. Tulpamancers can interact with their tulpas in the Wonderland themselves. Like, given the proper meditative state, tulpa mancers can imagine themselves in the Wonderland and make it feel as real as day. And I'm sure that's a wonderful experience. If you, like, have a tulpa, there's probably always. It probably always feels like there's a little bit of a separation between the two of you. So to be able to go to a place where you're kind of together. I don't know. It sounds really nice, the face you're making.

1:03:44 Chris: No, no. It does sound nice. I'm just. These folks have. Whatever part of your brain is responsible for imagination and visualization must just be, like. They must just have double the number of neurons there that I do, or. Kayla: They work at it. I don't know if it's necessarily like their brains are born different. I think that they make a choice to. Chris: That's right. Kayla: To work at it. Chris: More neurons don't actually mean anything, but more connections do, which requires work. Kayla: There you go. And again, once you have your dreamscape, your wonderland. For some people, this is where tulpa Mancy stops. But for others, there's still more to do. Some tulpamancers practice what's called imposition, which is basically the process of training yourself to visually see your tulpa in the real world. Kind of like a self induced hallucination.

1:04:39 Chris: I was just gonna ask. Okay. Kayla: And some tulpa manswers go further. Go even further. And they practice something called quote, unquote switching. Do you want to guess what that is? Chris: It feels like the guess is pretty obvious, right? Yep. Kayla: Some Tulpa managers get so advanced, the. Chris: Tulpas take the pilot seat. Okay. Kayla: Yep. I mean, the tulpas don't necessarily take the pilot seat. It's more that the host abdicates. The host is able to. Chris: I don't mean forcibly, like. Yeah. Kayla: The host is able to get to a place where they can dissociate with their own bodies and allow the tulpa to take over and experience meat space, as opposed to just, like, being a figment of someone's imagination.

1:05:21 Chris: Definitely sounds like, at least adjacent to dissociative personality. Kayla: Well, dissociative personality is not a thing you're thinking of. Dissociative identity disorder. Chris: Dissociative identity disorder. Kayla: And I'm going to ask you to hold that thought because we'll get to it. Chris: Okay. Hey, maybe this is a better thing to ask later, but I'm just wondering, like, if I created three tulpas and I had them all sell amway for me, and then they each created their own three tulpas and so on and so forth, do you think that I could make a shit ton of money? Kayla: I don't, because I don't think tulpas have money.

1:06:02 Chris: But. But there's. If they recruit, they. Then they recruit. Kayla: You could recruit forever, but there's not going to be any money changing hands. Chris: I think this is a surefire business solution. Kayla: And, yes, this is the question I thought you were going to ask and you didn't. Chris: What? You thought I was going to ask a good question. Kayla: But you might. You might. You might also be wondering this question. So, yes, some tulpa masters do have sex with their tulpas. Chris: Okay. I wasn't wondering that. But you're right. I should have been wondering. I should have been wondering that, like an hour and a half ago. Kayla: I've read about that phenomenon in multiple places on the forum itself, in articles. Here's a choice passage from a vice article written by Nathan Thompson.

1:06:45 Chris: God bless vice. What would we do without you? Like, would life even be worth living? I would have to, like, make up a paracosm that included vice if it didn't exist in the real world. Kayla: Exactly. God bless vice. So according to that article quote, we totally bang says susie a. Tulpa, hosted by Kelson, who wanted his. Chris: Oh, it's the tulpa. Kayla: Suzie's the tulpa. It's spelled s I o u x s I e. I guess you're asking about the mechanics of it, right? It's like jerking off, but you mentally dissociate with the actual world and just go nuts in the wonderland. End quote. Chris: Okay. Okay. Sure. Kayla: It makes sense to me. Not that I'm gonna try it anytime. Chris: Soon, but is that. If I did that, would that be. Would you consider that cheating?

1:07:27 Kayla: If you. Yes, I do think I would. What? I do think I would. Chris: It's my own brain, man. Kayla: But if you truly believe that it was an autonomous, sentient being that lived inside of you, I don't think I would be okay with it without us. Like, setting some ground rules, like, talking about it. Like, if you just had sex with your tulpa, it would definitely be cheating adjacent, I think. And that's very weird. It's very weird to say so I. Chris: Can'T just bone my imaginary friend. Kayla: Please don't. Chris: Fine, then, like, what's the point of making an imaginary friend? Kayla: Okay, well, that's really offensive, actually. Chris: To. Kayla: You, I think to this, the whole practice.

1:08:07 Chris: Hold on, just while I was joking. Kayla: Again, hold that thought. Chris: You're the one that brought this up. I was gonna make a whole pyramid scheme and you're like, what about fucking your tulpa? Kayla: Well, it's comes up. It's not. Okay, tulpa sex is not necessarily a taboo topic, but there are ethics around it. And that's why your thing about, like, why do I have a tulpa unless you can fuck it? Like, you're not the first person to ask that again, as the tulpa is a separate autonomous being, rules and ethics of consent apply. So you can't just fuck your tulpa. You have to get active, enthusiastic, ongoing consent. Chris: But when I can't, I force it to want to have sex with me.

1:08:49 Kayla: Okay, well, many tulpa mancers highly caution against the practice of creating a tulpa just because you want to have sex with it. It's encouraged to think about how that would make the tulpa feel once it's created. And that just kind of opens up a whole can of ethical worms. Chris: This is like when we had the argument about sex bots. And like, if it's ethical to program them to want to have sex. Oh man, this is wax. Kayla: So it's just best, in my opinion, best to steer clear of that. And if you're going to be creating a sentient autonomous being, create a truly sentient autonomous being. Chris: Right. Kayla: But then the other thing is you're giving it characteristics that you choose. Chris: Right. And are we even sentient autonomous things anyway? Kayla: I don't know.

1:09:29 Chris: I'm just a bag of meat that responds to chemicals. And like you say, you know, when you do the forcing function, like, you're kind of doing that with a child too, when you raise them in the way that you want them to be raised and the church you want them to be raised in and the values you want them to have. Kayla: So please don't raise your child to want to have sex with you. Chris: Again I ask, what is the point then? Kayla: You have to cut that out. That is absolutely nonstank outtakes, bloopers. That's also not going to be bloopers. Chris: Do you? I think we should definitely keep it. Kayla: No. So all of that notwithstanding, it's also something that's hilarious to me, is that the tulpa community seems to kind of have like a bit of a tongue in cheek approach to like, sexing your tulpa because really, well, they're able to have a sense of humor about it because in addition to, like the regular tulpa subreddit, there's also an r tulpas gonewild. And for our non Reddit Listeners, r GoneWild is a SubReddit where basically Reddit users post sexy, naked Pictures of themselves. And that's what the Gone Wild part is. You're welcome for your future viewing pleasure. So in this version, as opposed to seeing sexy bodies, you've basically got a bunch of pictures of empty rooms and scenery. Because as much as the hosts describe the sexy antics, tulpas aren't real, exists in the physical world, can't get their pictures taken.

1:11:01 Kayla: So it's usually like, you know, it's like titled. Like, you know how Gone Wild Subreddit Posts are titled? They do. It's like you do. You've never gone to Gone Wild. Chris: Maybe once or twice. I know this is gonna make me sound like, really lame to everyone, but. Kayla: If you don't go to Gone wild, you're definitely lame. That's the position of. Chris: I've been to other subreddits. Kayla: Okay, well, they're all titled the same, where it's like sexy female 24, ready to have some fun and it's like her in the shower or whatever, but they'll do that. But it's for tulpas. And then it's just a picture of an empty room and it's the funniest thing in the world and I love it so much.

1:11:42 Chris: That's hilarious. Kayla: And it's not like, oh, they're putting this picture. Cause they're picturing a sexy tulpa there. It's literally like, it's funny. Chris: Just cause it's funny. Yeah, that, yeah, that makes sense. Kayla: You kind of already hinted at this with your pyramid scheme, but yes, if you were wondering, listeners, a tulpa mancer can create more than one tulpa. Chris: Excellent. Kayla: You can have as many tulpas as you fucking want. I've seen tulpa manswers with multiple tulpas refer to themselves as a quote unquote system. So there you go. Chris: It's a multi tulpa system. Actually, though, to do the pyramid scheme thing, though, you would have to not only have multiple tulpas under your system, but tulpas would also be able to need to make tulpas. Is that a thing?

1:12:23 Kayla: You know, I'm actually going to take this moment, while we're talking about multiple tulpas, to admit to our listeners that, like, somebody with multiple tulpas, this is going to be a multiple episode topic, so we can talk about that particular question. Maybe next episode. If that's really. Chris: There's tulpas can create tulpas. There can be a chain of tulpas. Kayla: I don't know, but I'm going to look into that specifically so that I can answer your question next episode. So, like I said, this episode is going to be at least a two parter. I started getting into, like, as I was writing my script right here, I started getting into, like, the community itself, the demographics, my conversations with actual tulpamancers and their tulpas and just everything like that. But honestly, it started to get too overwhelming, and it just became clear to me that this one's gonna be a two parter, so we're not gonna get too. Too into the details of the community just yet. Like, if a tulpa can have a tulpa guarantee, you're not the first person to ask that question.

1:13:21 Chris: No, it can't be. Kayla: Instead, today we're going to finish up by talking about the specifics of, like, still an outsider's, an outside observer's perspective on the community, kind of like how we've been doing. We can decide how we feel about it, and then we can come back in next episode and talk some more and see if our decision on whether or not the Tulpa community is a cult or just weird changes. Chris: Yeah, I think the way I'm feeling about it is weird. Kayla: I don't think you're wrong. I think that probably by now, a huge question our listeners are asking might be, and a question that you kind of just asked, isn't this just mental illness? Chris: Well, okay, hang on now. Hang on. I don't. My question isn't so much is this mental illness? Is, does this share features and brain functions that certain mental illnesses have?

1:14:15 Kayla: Well, we're gonna go through that because specifically, the two, like, legit clinical mental illnesses that I've seen, Tulpa Mansi compared to is schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, which we've talked about plenty of times. Chris: Why schizophrenia? Kayla: Because schizophrenia. Hold that question. Chris: Okay. Okay. Kayla: And honestly, the answer to the question, like, is it mental illness or is it mental illness adjacent? It depends on who you ask. And if you ask tulpamanswers, the answer is no. I might have mentioned before that many tulpa mancers are very aware of did in particular. Chris: Right. Kayla: And they're actually very well versed in its signs and symptoms. Like, people who want to create tulpas don't want to give themselves mental illness. And like we mentioned, I think we probably mentioned this before. Oftentimes, some people who are coming to Tulpa Mansi are already dealing with, like, depression or anxiety. That's not something they want to pile on, you know?

1:15:07 Chris: Right. Kayla: Nobody wants to pile that on. Chris: The fact that, by and large, they know what the signs are and they're versed in it. Like, that's not an obvious thing. Right. Like, there could totally be a community where they're just like, oh, I want to make an imaginary friend and do it really hard. Kayla: Right. Chris: It's not a foregone conclusion that community would also be aware of, like, the borders of behaviors against other mental disorders. Right. So the fact that they're aware of it is actually really interesting. The fact that they are so careful about it is actually really interesting in a very, I think, positive way.

1:15:53 Kayla: Yes. For sure. This is a little bit of a spoiler for our next episode, but the vast majority of tulpamancers believe that there is a neurological or psychological or scientific explanation for this phenomenon, and a much smaller portion of the population believes there's some sort of metaphysical, magical basis for it. Chris: Interesting. Kayla: So while it seems kind of like Loosey Goosey woo, like we're making imaginary friends, these people are, like you said, they're very aware of the possibility of mental illness. They're well versed in it. They're taking a more scientific, psychological, clinical, neurological approach to this.

1:16:33 Chris: Yeah. And, I mean, that's the flavor I've gotten from what you've told me today. It hasn't, as weird as it is, it hasn't felt woo. It's felt more like brain stuff. Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. So, and this kind of, like, this kind of speaks to that, this whole, like, the fact that they're well versed in dissociative identity disorder and other mental illnesses. In the meantime, like, we can. We can talk about that next episode, what they know about did. So in the meantime, let's talk about what other people say. So there's another article. I read a lot of articles for this. I hope. I hope that I'm referencing all of them. I read an article from a place called Primemind, but prime mind by a writer named Aaron Stewart. And say that five times fast. I cannot say tulsas again. So this article was saying that, like, tulpas can't really be considered auditory or visual hallucinations.

1:17:28 Kayla: Even though we said self induced hallucination earlier, it can't really clinically be called a hallucination because tulpa mancers are choosing to create them. For something to clinically be considered a true hallucination, the sensation must be involuntary. So similarly, tulpamancy differs from did in some other ways. For example, tulpamancers don't have memory issues or a sense of psychological disturbance. This article was focusing in particular on did, and it also said that some people with mental illness, prior to forcing their tulpas, found that tulpamancy actually helped their various conditions. And again, I want you to remember that for our next episode because we can get into it in a lot more in depth. Like, we have some actual stories of people with very severe mental illnesses, like even including schizophrenia, who found that their symptoms were helped by having a tulpa.

1:18:21 Chris: Dude. Kayla: Yeah. And people saying, like, my tulpa is capable of, like, because it's like such a powerful mental tool. Like, my tulpa is able to help keep my, like, anxiety thoughts at bayong. My tulpa is able to physically prevent me from self harming. My tulpa is able to organize my schizophrenic thoughts. So just keep that in mind for the next episode. Chris: Bonkers. Kayla: And again, that's in particular not a scientific study done. That's self reporting. That's anecdotal evidence. But still, it is anecdotal evidence. These are stories that happen to people. Chris: Well, that makes me wonder, by the way, has this been studied by researchers?

1:19:02 Kayla: We'll get to it. Chris: We need shirts or we need like an easy button. We'll get to that. Kayla: So let's talk more about what dissociative identity disorder is actually, okay. Like, we're just. I don't know why I wrote this. Let's talk about it for a second. Let's not. Chris: I already said that it might have been your other personality the wrong time. Kayla: Yeah, probably was my tulpa. But yeah, we want to get us a better sense of why it differs from Tulpa Mancy. And we're going to go ahead and just rely on good old Wikipedia for most of this because Wikipedia gives us a nice quick overview. Dissociative identity disorder, or did, which was previously known as multiple personality disorder, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two distinct personality states. People with did experience memory gaps, like we mentioned, beyond normal forgetfulness. People with did can also be observed exhibiting their various personalities by marked changes in their presentation, affect. So again, right there, pretty different than tulpas, right. Like, tulpamancers have to work really hard to do the switching. It's a difficult, very intentional process, and they don't lose control of themselves. They don't black out in their dominant personality.

1:20:12 Kayla: You remain conscious, you just kind of switch places with the tulpa. As opposed to dissociative identity disorder. The idea is that one personality takes over and the other one is dark, and then you can switch back and forth between the two or three or however many. One similarity, however, is that people with did often have other mental illnesses, which is also somewhat common in people with tulpas. Did can be often accompanied by borderline personality disorder, ptsd, depression, substance abuse, self harm, and anxiety. Interesting, but dissimilar to tulpamancers. People with did often develop the condition after severe childhood trauma such as abuse. And, like, remember how we talked about the imaginary friends, how like, yes, imaginary friends can be correlated with childhood abuse.

1:21:01 Kayla: It's also not really like the vast majority of children that have imaginary friends don't have them because they're dissociating from trauma or abuse. Chris: Got it. Kayla: Also, we should note here that, as we kind of mentioned in the Teal swan episode, dissociative identity disorder is a controversial diagnosis that might not even be real. Many professionals believe that did is actually caused by therapist suggestion. Kind of like memories of satanic racial abuse. Yeah, and it's really interesting because cases of dissociative identity disorder have increased rapidly since it became, like, popularized in, like, mainstream culture. And so it's hard to know, like, okay, well, does that mean people are seeing this happen and, like, think they have it? Does it mean we're better able to.

1:21:49 Chris: Identify it, or is it. Kayla: But a lot of. There are a lot of people who believe that it's real. And there's also a lot of people who believe, like, no, it's not actually real. It's a therapist suggested thing, just like memories of satanic ritual abuse. Another dissimilarity between tulpomancers and people with did is that did is six times more likely in women than in men. And with tulpas, it is vastly men. It's like 75%. Chris: Wait, what? Did is six times more likely in. Kayla: Women, six times more likely to be diagnosed in women. And the vast majority of tulpamancers are. Chris: Men because bitches be crazy. Kayla: These bitches be crazy. Chris: Yeah, that's a joke. Kayla: They're not. Chris: What? Kayla: We're going to cut it out if you keep going. So there we go. There's some differences. My co host is a terrible person. That's what you should take away from this podcast.

1:22:40 Chris: Did I think they know that by now? Kayla: So there's a lot of reasons why they don't really share those two things. Don't really share a lot of similarities. Chris: Okay. Kayla: It is, however, a little less clear when we talk about schizophrenia, which we will in a second. But it's important to remember that it's very difficult to diagnose something like tulpomancy as mental illness like schizophrenia, because tulpomancy is intentional. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is a, quote, mental disorder characterized by abnormal behavior, strange speech and a ydezenhe and a decreased ability to understand reality. Other symptoms may include false beliefs, unclear, confused thinking, hearing voices that do not exist, reduced social engagement, and a lack of motivation. So, again, people with schizophrenia have no control over their hallucinations or their disordered thinking. Often they may not even realize that theyre not interacting with true reality. But tulpamancers, on the other hand, are very aware of these facts. Okay.

1:23:40 Kayla: The only real similarities here are one that both schizophrenia and topwomancy, again, often co occur alongside other mental illnesses. To. Chris: That, to me, sounds like I'm not hearing necessarily correlation versus causation there. Right. Kayla: I'm just saying that's a similarity. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: If we're trying to, if we're talking about whether or not they share traits, that's one of the only ones I could find, and it's not a very strong. Chris: Right. Well, that's kind of what I'm saying is, like, maybe they share those traits, and then people with those traits tend to do things to, what's the word I'm looking for?

1:24:23 Kayla: Cope. Chris: To cope. Yeah. And then creating tulpas is one of those ways versus people with dissociative did or schizophrenia have those other things because your brain is complex and comorbidity of. Kayla: Mental illnesses, a lot of people with depression have anxiety. A lot of people with borderline personality disorder also self harm. A lot of people with eating disorders also have borderline or depression. A lot of mental illnesses are comorbidous. Chris: Right. And so it could be that it's comorbid for mental illness, but for tulpamancy, it's less that it's comorbid and more that it's like a coping skill.

1:25:05 Kayla: Right. Okay, so that's one similarity. Another, if we have to find a similarity, another similarity is that schizophrenia and tulpas are more present in men like, so, as opposed to dissociative identity disorder, which is mostly diagnosed in women, schizophrenia is more commonly diagnosed in Mendez. Both of these things usually begin in early adulthood. So schizophrenia, usually, its onset is usually, like, early adulthood. And most tulpamancers either are young adults or they began their tulpamancy journey in early adulthood. Chris: Okay. But, like, a lot of things change with your brain in early adulthood. Kayla: So. Yeah, so those are kind of similarities, I guess. Of course, there is another similarity, which is quote, unquote, hearing voices. So people with schizophrenia often have auditory hallucinations. People who have tulpas literally hear a little voice in their head. That's the primary way you interact with your tulpas. You talk to them with your brain.

1:26:06 Chris: But isn't it intentional? So therefore not hallucination. Kayla: It is intentional, but you're still hearing voices. Chris: But wait, is it intentional or not? Because I thought they were autonomous. Kayla: You intentionally created it. Okay, so hearing voices. I'm gonna say that again and again because. No, I'm serious. Chris: That because, listeners, we are the voices. The voices you are hearing. Kayla: That phrase is important because I actually learned during. This is gonna blow everyone's minds. I learned during my research that there is an entire movement dedicated to destigmatizing the phenomenon of hearing voices. Chris: Whoa.

1:26:47 Kayla: There is an entire movement dedicated to destigmatizing the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations. And they actually prefer to use the phrase hearing voices because it's more destigmatized than auditory hallucinations. Chris: Really. Kayla: It's called the hearing voices movement. The individual groups, the one that I came across is called the hearing voices network, and they're basically trying to do the Lord's work for tulpomancers and people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses alike. And according. According to the hearing Voices Network, and I largely. This is largely talking about stuff that they're saying. I didn't do a lot of corroborating, finding out what other people are saying about it. It could be totally bunk. I just thought it was interesting that there was even a movement about this. I'm not condoning what they're doing. I just think it's really interesting that there's even a movement about this. I never would have thought that. According to the hearing Voices Network, hearing voices that do not have true auditory sources is natural, meaningful, understandable.

1:27:46 Kayla: Though unusual, human variation proponents believe that hearing voices is not necessarily a sign of mental illness. And again, that's why they prefer the term voices as opposed to hallucinations from their website. I'm going to quote a bunch of stuff. If you hear voices, see visions, or have similar sensory experiences, you're not alone. The statistics vary, but somewhere between three and 10% of the population have experiences like these. Chris: What? Kayla: And it increases to about 75% if you include one off experiences like hearing someone call your name out loud or feel your phone buzz in your pocket. Oh, how many times have you had that happen where you're like, what, someone said my name and it feels really real and no one said your fucking name?

1:28:27 Chris: I don't think I've had that. Kayla: Oh, I've had that. Chris: With the phone buzzing in my pocket, I get like a ton. Kayla: I think some of that is also just like conditioning, right? But I've definitely had the, like, heard a voice, but like, it's a one off, not a like all the time back to their website. Despite being relatively common, many people who hear voices, see visions or have similar experiences feel alone. Fear of prejudice, discrimination and being dismissed as crazy can keep people silent. And at a time when we are told that it is time to talk, it is important that anyone courageous enough to speak out is met with respect and empathy. People of all ages and backgrounds can hear voices at some point in their life for many different reasons. While some are distressed by their experiences, people can and do find ways of living with them.

1:29:15 Kayla: We focus on helping to create respectful and empowering spaces whilst challenging the inequalities and oppressive practices that hold people back. Our aims are to raise awareness of the diversity of voices, visions and similar experiences challenge negative stereotypes, stigma and discrimination help create more space for people of all ages and backgrounds to talk freely about voice, hearing, visions and similar sensory experiences raise awareness of a range of different ways to manage distressing, confusing or difficult voices and encourage a more positive response to voice, hearing and related experiences in healthcare settings and wider society. Chris: That was a lot of words. Yeah, but it sounds like they're doing good work. Kayla: Or are they a cult? I do.

1:29:56 Chris: Oh, is that what this episode's been about this whole time? Kayla: I just. I just don't know. I've never heard of this group before. I was fascinated to learn about them. I think it's. Chris: Should I jot them down for the future? Kayla: Potentially. I also think it's really interesting. They could either be doing the Lord's work and like, destigmatizing something that should be destigmatized, or they're destigmatizing something that is like, symptom of mental illness and shouldn't be treated as like a quote unquote variation, human variation, and like, it's something that requires and deserves treatment. I don't know. Okay. I could really go down a rabbit hole here. And I know I kind of veered off topic, but I just wanted to point out that this aspect of tulpomancy that, like, might seem to some people like a quote unquote slam dunk in the tulpomancy is a mental illness basket.

1:30:44 Chris: It already feels like we're down a rabbit hole. Kayla: We're definitely down a rabbit hole. But I'm just saying, like, talking about this is just to make the point that even if you go, nope, they're crazy. Cause they hear voices. Okay, well, that's not really necessarily the slam dunk that you think it is, because there's people who are like, nope, there's potential for hearing voices to not even be mental illness at all. So there we go. Chris: Interesting. Kayla: All right, we are wrapping up the first episode on tulpas, the introduction to tulpamancy, if you will. Next episode, like we said, we're going to take a deeper dive into the online Tulpa community and we'll actually talk directly with some tulpamancers and their tulpas. Chris: And we're going to answer whether you can have a meta tulpa. Kayla: We will answer that question. We'll talk about what the community is like as a whole. We're going to be focusing a lot on the Reddit, the subreddit r tulpas. But there's an entire tulpaverse on Reddit. That's their word, not mine. With such forums, such as our touchscreen wild.

1:31:41 Chris: Yeah, which I'm totally going to take a look at later. You go to sleep? Kayla: Oh, yeah, it's very dirty. Chris: Sounds hot. Kayla: Here's a whole list you've got. Tulpa metaphysics for metaphysical discussion, tulpa lounge for off topic discussion, tulpa meme for memes, tulpa art like Tulp Art Tuesday, but every day. Ask Tulpa for asking tulpas anything, tulpa Ama for Ama's with tulpas Tulpa fic for fiction with tulpas advanced Tulpa Mancy for hardcore fun, assuming that means like hardcore tulpamancy, not like hardcore porn. Tulpaphobia for the scary stuff, just tulpas for tulpas to improve their speaking skills, meta tulpas for all metaphysical discussion, including tulpas. Tulpa tasks for daily challenges for tulpas, tulpa personality for personality typing, your tulpa. Another personality typing and Tulpa related discussion, and my personal favorite, r tulpas for skeptics, which is very interesting.

1:32:38 Chris: Holy shit. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Wait, a personality one? Why can't you just give them, like, Myers Briggs? Kayla: Of course you can, but this is, like, conversation. A lot of them are not, you know, some are more, far more active than others. Some are very inactive. Tulpa for skeptics is very active. I spent a lot of time on there because I was really interested to, like, that was kind of my first clue into this whole thing that, like, oh, these people don't necessarily think that this is a metaphysical supernatural phenomenon. Like, there are skeptical people involved in this, and there are people who think that this is purely, like, they're not thinking, oh, I'm creating a being. They're not thinking about, like, the western occultism of, like, ooh, I'm making a friar tuck that I'm gonna have to destroy later. Like, they're thinking, no, I'm doing a neurological process in my brain, and I just found it interesting.

1:33:26 Chris: So I'm just doing brain stuff. Kayla: Do we want to try and answer our question, or do we want to save it for next episode? Chris: I would say that if next episode is going to be a different group or topic, then. Then we should answer the question now. Kayla: Well, it's not different. It's just different. Chris: But if it's the same group or topic, then we should answer the question at the end of next episode. Kayla: You don't want to make a prediction? I mean, you kind of already did. You said that you think it's weird. Chris: Well, I mean, no, I said that I was feeling weird. Kayla: Feeling weird. Chris: But yeah. Like, so far, this is definitely very weird. Kayla: Yeah. And amazing. Far more creative than our previous episode. Far more true. Creativity and imagination and just cool stuff.

1:34:10 Chris: It is really funny that we did an episode on creativity and then followed it up with something that is, like, one of the most creative things I've ever heard. Kayla: Yeah, and we didn't plan that, listeners. No, it really just happened. Especially because I chose my topic without consulting a third party. Really? Oh, wait. I asked my sister. I just forgot to ask our producer, Alyssa. Chris: Whoa, Alyssa. I'm sorry. If you're hearing about this first time on our show. Kayla: Sorry. Chris: Geez. That is so. Is she fired? Kayla: No, of course not. How dare you? Chris: Well, you're the one that's going around and doing other production work with other producers. Okay. And not only that, it was nepotism. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Holy shit. Sorry, I do not approve.

1:34:50 Kayla: Are we done? Here. Chris: Yeah. Because is next episode going to be a tulpa of this episode? Kayla: Oh, you can answer that. Next. Next episode. Chris: Okay. Kayla: Are we. Are we signing off? Chris: Because we have to. Kayla: Because you and I are actually about to go watch an episode of Adventure Time because apparently there's an episode about a tulpa, so let's go. Chris: Well, that show is conclusively weird, so. All right. Yes, this is the best episode ever. Kayla: So, yeah. So come back in two weeks, guys. We will talk about the actual telepal community. We will officially answer our question and. I don't know. We've got some. We've got some good stuff in store. Chris: Yeah.

1:35:31 Kayla: Do we have a call to action? Do we have a call to arms? Oh, yeah. Email us your. We have still have our email inbox open. Email us your creative things that you're working on. We'll talk about them as long as you all include a culture. Just weird topic that we can talk about. And we will give you a nice little shout out on our show. Chris: Yes. And if you have a tulpa that you are working with. Kayla: Yes. Chris: This offer is open to them as well. Kayla: And this tulpas count is a creative project as well. Chris: Right. But I'm saying if you're a tulpa listening to this, don't feel like you need to wait for your master's permission. Kayla: Don't. Excuse me. Chris: Just email us. Kayla: Do not say master. Chris: Whatever. What is the host? Excuse me. Kayla: Good Lord.

1:36:12 Chris: Sorry. Hosts or Matt. I don't know who I'm saying. Sorry. Kayla: I don't know who you're saying. Sorry. Chris: We should probably go ahead and cut this off before I dig myself any further. Kayla: Tulpas. Send us your creative projects. Hosts, send us your creative projects and your tulpas. Everyone else, thanks for listening. I'm Kayla. Chris: And I'm Chris. Kayla: And this has been cult or just weird. Nailed it. Chris: Nailed it. Kayla: That was a real ending. Very proud of it.