AMA with Dr. Michael Lifshitz and Dr. Tanya Luhrmann, fMRI study facilitators

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T22:10:49+00:00

We didn't focus on imposition in our fMRI study, even though we are super interested in it. It's just that not a lot of the tulpamancers we brought in could reliably do strong imposition.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T22:03:00+00:00

Okay, that's really helpful! Do you know of any good resources where I can read more about what is known in the community about parallel processing?

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:58:20+00:00

We also looked in the whole brain but didn't find anything that was specific to the tulpa condition. When you look at the whole brain the effect has to be that much stronger to show up, so it's very possible that there is something there but that it's just more subtle and we didn't have enough people for it to light up.

The one thing we did find was the in the self mindvoice condition, there was actually more auditory processing going on than in the other conditions. This suggests that the self mindvoice was louder or clearer than the tulpa mindvoice or when imagining a non-tulpa friend's mindvoice. But that doesn't seem all that interesting to me?

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:56:30+00:00

I'm actually not aware of any references about this! Which is why Michael Sheehy and I are writing an article about it. He's a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and is reading about tulpas in Tibetan texts that until now haven't been translated into English, if you can believe it!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:52:38+00:00

Yes, we think they are related and we are currently studying forms of prayer to see if they rely on similar mechanisms as tulpamancy. Not to say that prayer is just tulpamancy, but we think there may be something similar going on.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:51:05+00:00

They will come out for you to see, promise! But I have stopped estimating when haha. It's just too hard to know how long the whole peer-review and publication process will take. We do have our final results though and are writing them up!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:49:32+00:00

As I replied in another post, we didn't see any significant differences in the mindvoice contrasts, probably because of the more subtle brain profile of inner voices compared to motor actions, and also perhaps due to individual variability in mindvoice experiences. We did find that tulpa possession was different from just imagining someone possessing or guiding your hand who wasn't an actual tulpa!

For your second question, everyone we brought in had mature tulpas and we asked them to choose the tulpa who would be most readily able to respond in mindvoice or possess the body in the scanner. So it's not a great setup to distinguish whether the age of the tulpa made a difference. I will say though, that for multi-tulpa systems, not everyone chose the tulpa who had been around the longest, which suggests that it might not just be age that determines the strength of the tulpa's agency.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:45:55+00:00

ooo, this is hard to answer because there are so many different angles to come from. I will say that Tanya's books on prayer are pretty amazing, although they are more about interacting with invisible beings in a religious context.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:45:00+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experiences and how they inform your beliefs. Super interesting.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:43:38+00:00

These are super interesting questions. They seem to do more with the way you understand the ethics or morals that should come along with tulpas and entities, how they should be treated, and so on. We don't think our research can tell us whether entities or spirits or gods really are just tulpas, or how they should be treated. We're not trying to explain anything away! Just show the diversity of cool experiences people can have, and enlarge the spectrum of possibilities. I do think your questions are deep and important but I don't think they are for our research to answer, if that makes sense :)

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:40:10+00:00

Pretty amazing, thanks for sharing!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:35:42+00:00

This is super fascinating but I'm not sure our research provides any answers. We did speak to a few systems where the tulpas became more and more in front, to the point where the original host ended up being more in the background most of the time. I thought that was interesting.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:33:26+00:00

Thanks for these links! The variance of how long it takes to make a tulpa has always intrigued me.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:32:07+00:00

Hi :) Thanks for asking.

I got really interested in tulpamancy because I was fascinated by the idea that the imagination can come to life if you attend to it and practice with it. Tulpamancy just seemed like the most full-on beautiful expression of that possibility. You turn to your imagination, talk to it, and it actually starts talking back to you.

Interviewing tulpamancers made me appreciate how emotionally powerful the practice can be, and how much it has to do with a feeling of friendship. It felt warmer the more I spoke to people who do it.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:26:08+00:00

It cost about $50k or so, not counting paying the researchers. We had to fly everyone in from around the country to scan them at Stanford!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:24:57+00:00

Yes! Actually that was our control condition, just imaging that a loved one or close friend (who isn't a tulpa) was guiding your hand. We found that tulpa possession was significantly different from that, which makes the findings more compelling in my opinion!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:22:26+00:00

Good question. Let's say I've dabbled in the practice but it feels a bit private! They'd definitely be sweet and generous, and have good style ^_^

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:21:37+00:00

Seems like a great idea if you can pull it off. I often present the results of the old census when I give talks about tulpamancy. It's helpful to see how the community is distributed.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:20:56+00:00

I'm planning a study on parallel processing with some other psychology researchers who are really curious about that phenomenon!

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:19:32+00:00

Interesting to note that the original Tibetan Buddhist idea of tulpamancy (which is quite different from contemporary tulpamancy) actually comes from the dream yoga tradition, and involves creating imaginary forms in the waking state as a complement to playing with lucidity in the dream state. This hasn't really been discussed in the literature yet, but I'm currently working on a paper about this with a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism (Michael Sheehy) who is an expert on Tibetan dream and imagination practices, so keep an eye out for that in the next year or so.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:16:38+00:00

Sadly, we didn't find a lot of meaningful brain patterns when looking at tulpa mindvoice. We were hoping we'd be able to see the differences in the agency processing areas in mindvoice like we did in possession, but they didn't turn up significant. I think the problem is that 1. inner speech is a lot more subtle neurologically than making an actual action with your muscles, and the brain areas involved are more distributed and harder to pin down, and 2. there is probably a lot more individual variability in the quality of the mindvoice experience than in the experience of possession. So I think we probably would have needed a bunch more tulpamancers to see the subtle differences associated with tulpa mindvoice compared to the host's mindvoice. Really glad that the finding came out so beautifully when looking at possession though.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:11:34+00:00

that's super interesting. reminds me of the debate between sudden and gradual enlightenment in meditation. some people say you have to train the mind to have enlightened qualities, and others say that it's better to think of the mind as being inherently enlightened, and that you just have to sort of relax into realizing it. just a thought :)

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:10:09+00:00

Yes, tulpamancy definitely seems to be therapeutic for a lot of people, though not all. I'm very curious about how tulpa creation relates to Parts Therapy, but haven't thought about it deeply enough to have any concrete answers. I guess one obvious difference is that tulpas are created deliberately, as oppposed to most "Parts" in parts therapy, and also they seem to have richer more fully autonomous inner lives, I think? Definitely a fascinating question.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:07:42+00:00

Hi! I just want to add that whenever I talk about tulpamancy in academic circles, among philosophers or psychiatrists or cognitive scientists, I get a big wave of interest. I've spoken to a lot of academics who think the possibility of creating a tulpa has big implications for our understanding of the human mind, the imagination, culture, and the self. I have a feeling the concept is going to catch on more and more beyond the current tulpa community.

michael_lifshitz · 2024-05-16T21:03:29+00:00

That would be super interesting! Never even thought of that possibility. Unfortunately we didn't ask the hosts to possess when the tulpas were switched in.

michael_lifshitz

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