Tulpa and switching

We finished the previous chapter with conclusion that when we experience tulpa talking back to us, it’s still us but thinking under different identity.

Switching identity

When the tulpa talks back to us, our identity changes unconsciously and reactively. Does something stop us from doing it consciously and proactively too?

In theory, it’s straightforward. Just think consciously from your tulpa’s perspective. You’ve just been the host a moment ago, now you are the tulpa. Nothing special is supposed to happen. Just like switching between seeing a duck and a rabbit in the picture below, it’s ultimately just a change of perspective.

When interacting with your tulpa, don’t just depend on IIA happening or not, try thinking from your tulpa’s perspective too. Don’t just imagine their actions as observer, see yourself as them rather than your usual self.

It’s what people do when they “let tulpa control their bodies”. It isn’t about letting some other mind control you but about you thinking as a tulpa.

The human, the system and the host

Traditional tulpamancers often introduce the term host together with tulpa. I’ll do it just now, to underline a difference between the host and the whole human.

What’s the difference between the human and the host? The host is the default identity of a whole person. Your whole human being includes all identities, the host and the tulpas. In tulpa community, the set of person’s identities is also called a system.

Host is the character/identity we see ourself as by default. For most of people the term host wouldn’t be very useful as they have only one character as their identity. Furthermore, that character is implicit, associated with how their physical body looks like.

But as a tulpamancer, we often (unconsciously by IIA or consciously by switching) manipulate our sense of self and replace our main identity with another, explicit (as in coupled with an independent character) one, our tulpa.

Can we switch in everyday life?

What if we tried maintaining tulpa’s identity in our everyday life? It’s possible but you will encounter some obstacles.

First, there are plenty of relationships that are associated with your main identity. E.g. when someone ask you something, will you remain your tulpa when you reply? As the tulpa doesn’t have any relationship with that person, you’ll probably do it instinctively from perspective of your default self.

Second, a lot of stuff you might do doesn’t require keeping a consistent identity. After you finish doing chores, you might not remember that you were supposed to be a tulpa if you lost focus on that meanwhile.

These obstacles can be overcome with some practice if you’d like to try it anyway. But most of people don’t really care and if anything, they do it anonymously in internet.

Summary

When tulpa talks back to us, we switch identity unconsciously and reactively. We can do it consciously and proactively too. And it’s what people have in mind when they mention tulpas “controlling their bodies”.

We introduced a few terms:

• The human refers to all aspects of human being.
• The system refers to the set of human’s identities.
• The host is human’s default identity, usually implicit as in associated with a character that’s derived from how our body looks like.
• The tulpa, as an identity, is explicit as in associated with a character independent from how our body looks like.