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Comment by braaileb | Hacker News Reader

I've had these pernicious pseudo voices off an on since I did something stupid as a lonely teenager: tulpas or tulpaforcing. Basically an imaginary friend that you try to hypnotize yourself into believing it really exists.

Once I got really busy in my late teens and early twenties it became just a chapter in a shitty past life but in times of stress or use of drugs like weed it comes back. Crazy how impressioned the practice became.

Lately the stress and boredom of being unemployed had morphed it into having old traumatic relationship experiences becoming that pseudo voice. Like my own mother abandoning and rebuking me. Quite luckily I found out that cimetidine helps a lot.

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How does this differ from a regular internal monologue/voice?

Anyone with vivid episodic recall will self-critize the awkwardness dredged up by memory

Mine speaks to me in a thick new jersey accent so it's definitely not me, I live in Canada.

That's the thing, it really isn't that different. It's just that the practice involves learning to split off your internal monologue until it's done unconsciously. In a way you are literally giving yourself schizophrenia. 4chan didn't get me to put magnets on hard drives but they did get me to do it to my brain.

I hadn't heard of this, but it sounds like it comes from the Theosophist's misunderstanding of an emanation body (nirmanakaya) in Vajrayana Buddhism. There's a reason why many of the practices in Vajrayana are taught progressively and under guidance, and that's mainly because confusion and misunderstanding can arise when not grounded in proper view (samyagdrishti), which can have a very real and direct impact on a person's mind. But from what I can tell this western practice is completely divergent from anything found in the kangyur or tengyur.

Have you considered talking to a Vajrayana teacher to help understand what's going on? Tergar has an ongoing teaching this year on Buddhist psychology [1]. Also, a teacher I practice with posts most of our sessions online for free as well [2].

[1] https://vajrayana.tergar.org/buddhist-psychology [2] https://www.youtube.com/@ThuptenPhuntsok

If I'm not really with strong determination for cultivating a Vajrayana practice, do you think I can still benefit much? It's just these "introjects" that bother me or maybe what you called it.

I think it'd be perfectly fine to engage with a Vajrayana teacher to see if it helps with what you're experiencing, there's no requirement to be initiated into a lineage and take practice vows or anything like that.

The only reason I mentioned a Vajrayana teacher rather than a western psychologist or even a teacher from other Buddhist schools is that these advanced visualization practices are something most Vajrayana teachers will have experience guiding students through. Which also means they'll be well versed in what to do when things go wrong.

This is fascinating, thank you for sharing.

I googled it and there seems to be an entire community of people doing or attempting to do that ?

Surely a symptom of the industrio/tech induced epidemic of loneliness.

A very interesting question on the ethical side as well.

My knee-jerk reaction is that the promotion and propagation of such methods should not be allowed, as it can risk nudging vulnerable individuals the wrong way.

But if this is not allowed, why would meditation be ?

What makes it different ? Only the outcomes ?

I cannot help but to be overwhelmed by the human condition sometimes.

I recall finding them as a teen myself on the internet, there were books and stuff on the subject but it was treated like something that might be risky, in the best of cases you would end un with a benign tulpa worse case you end up similar to OP or worse

It was certainly treated as "underground" knowledge, less something like you would share and more something you would find on a chan

>My knee-jerk reaction is that the promotion and propagation of such methods should not be allowed

Both you and the rest of the world would be better off not worrying about/trying to stop other people from doing things that don't harm anyone else.

I do believe that there is collective societal harm in some actions that on a first glance appear only self inflicting.

We are all parts of an interconnected whole.

Your freedom ends where the freedom of the next person's begins.

Are you really saying that you want to make thinking the wrong things a crime?

I specifically said propagation.

Which has of course clear precedent, the easy example to point out being Strafgesetzbuch section 86a.

Wow, that sounds literally crazy. I fear people use it as an excuse for taking antisocial actions based on intrusive thoughts.

Glad you're doing better. Crazy how the gut and mind are connected.

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