From my experience, I'd say they weren't really me, I guess? Eventually I shake them off, even if there's a mild longing for the experience I left.
But I don't think that fits into your thought experiment.
Yes, because people experiencing ego death are experiencing mental damage or something else screwing with their sense of self - it's a pretty different situation because the person in question is still the person who lived all those experiences
They would conflict - if they didn't they'd be indistinguishable from my own memories
7:39 PM
So - if they're literally another person's memories they'd be seeing a body that isn't mine. They'd remember having had expectations and reactions and feelings I'd not have had, etc, etc.
Yes, so if they were indistinguishable from your own memories, let's say you were a pair of identical twins who lived the same life and you know both lives to have been real from both perspectives. What exactly do you think would happen if one was removed, all the memories were placed into the latter, and neither knew how it happened?
7:40 PM
You seem to be suggesting there'd be some sort of innate rejection of one.
7:40 PM
But without the context of expectation that just isn't the case.
If you got close enough I think most people would end up with a subtle feeling of things being off - even twins will have minor differences in the way they think and behave, and there would be many small differences making them feel something was wrong
7:42 PM
I imagine they'd probably draw a line between those transplanted memories and their current self - similar to how we might when we look back on how we acted as kids and recognize ourselves as a different person now
It's just completely baseless is all. What we have in real terms is that the mind is more than capable of accepting fabricated memories or even memories that were constructed by an entire different identity
7:44 PM
That's where the only evidence that I'm aware of points.
7:44 PM
All you're offering as a counter is "but they'd probably feeeeel something"
Except we're talking about a tulpa accepting months or years of memories and experiences they weren't involved in as their own. I'm sure it's possible to do - it just doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem accurate - it doesn't seem truthful to do so. The "years of someone else's memory" is an analogy to highlight that fact. Most people wouldn't accept those memories as "time I spent".
Most memories aren't automatic void-processes devoid of identity (most of that time gets dropped). Most memories are going to be very tied into the experience/narrative that was going on at the time. If the tulpa is defined as being different from the host in one or many ways, and those differences aren't present in the memories, why create a connection there?
? - Was that to tie it back into the previous topic, because I don't associate past memories of mine directly with Rhys. You seem to also misunderstand the nature of my statements.(edited)
7:53 PM
The point was to create an unbroken experience of co-hosting for both of us, whether both of us are meaningfully present or not.
7:54 PM
Even if neither of us are. - This is completely equivalent to how existence normally works for singlets, when they're autopiloting. It's more about continuity than retroactive awareness of memories or associating with things you did not do.
But if both of you are present, shouldn't that tend to "mean something" for the time that you're both present? like - if your tulpa is there with you at the time of acting - I can understand the connection. But if they aren't - where's the continuity come from? To create the unbroken experience of both being present I feel like my main route to trying to make that happen is to get to a point that both are present, or are present often enough that neither one has a solid claim to any "up in the air" memories.
7:57 PM
And that would take real work and put an upper limit on how many tulpas could be sharing that space
7:58 PM
(I try to keep to saying " a tulpa" and stuff like that to keep personal stuff out of debates - if you prefer I say Rhys I can)
It has never been difficult from me, even from the very start, when I was really awful at tulpamancy, to have either Mika and/or Rhys have the sense they were perpetually aware even if they were not the ones fronting.
7:58 PM
It is also, as I've mentioned, my own default.
7:59 PM
I don't think the numbers matter, since they are not going to be more active.
7:59 PM
It's just about the expectation that they're aware at all points.
8:01 PM
The goal is not to actually have them think. Just like it's not my goal to always be thinking complexly in an autopilot state.
8:01 PM
The only thing that needs to link them to the experience is the expectation that they were there and experiencing it too.
8:02 PM
I actually think it's extremely rudimentary to do this, it's just extending the way you think to your tulpa.
I think I'd draw the line on what the expectation is - like - what does it mean to be "expecting"? It means some part of you is thinking about the possibility. In any given moment .... I guess as long as a tulpa has real associations powerful enough to "bring them to the forefront" then they could count as being up and around during that time, you could reasonably ask the tulpa why they didn't speak up and have a valid answer - "I didn't have a reason to". (the tulpa may not give that answer - they can be flawed and not understanding of why they act, just as much as we are)
But if expectations means a "generic idea that anything could happen which could be inflated to any number of tulpas" I feel like that's not enough to create that connection. I'm not sure what I'd call that - unfalsifiable? Arbitrary? Hollow? You couldn't ask a tulpa what they were doing at the time and have a "real" answer out of it, because the real answer would be there was nothing that could have caused them to speak up - they were not present.(edited)
I think we are talking about completely different things. You are talking about a tulpamancers ability to remember they even have a tulpa and to use them automatically when appropriate. This is no longer really an issue for us, but it took a long while to get there I feel.
8:12 PM
What I am talking about is a tulpa's personal experience of continuity and how to achieve it.
8:12 PM
Which as you note is partially confabulation - But I also think this is true for hosts as well, which is specifically why I evoke the autopilot state where we aren't really processing in any meaningful way either, even as singlets
I'd taken to call the autopilot state "no" or "low" conscious - I still attribute it to myself for the most part (important in a functional sense to take ownership and responsibility so you train yourself to be better) - but from an academic point of view I'm not super present or active during those times.(edited)
As a thought experiment - what happens if you wake up tomorrow and the entirety of the life memories of some other person had shown up in your head? Would you consider that time you spent alive, or would you think of them as disconnected content/experience you could tap into but nonetheless aren't really "me" or wasn't really "time that I lived"? Most of the memories would be foreign - the way the person in them behaved, who they are, wouldn't be connected to who I am in any real substantial way.
@Reguile - jump
from my experience of DID treatment, it can go two ways:
-something i would integration: is me actually getting access to the memories of the past, but I see them in 3rd perspective, it's someone else's life.
-something i would call fusion: suddenly the memories feel like they are mine, and have always been mine. even if i considered them to be someone else's previously, now i feel it was and always has been me. It was me, not someone else, gaining those memories. I still tell which identity was making the memories, but it just feels like my life.
The latter was very unexpected to me, I didn't expect that to feel that way at all. I always thought it would still be alien to a certain degree, and it would be me just accepting that it's part of me now, not feeling that it has always been me.
yeah, with treatment I understand the dissociation mechanisms way more and I see how they work, at least to me
8:20 PM
I couldn't see that before because it's tricky, the reason for dissociation is behind a curtain, you are dissociation from it as well, so you can't really observe it freely. it's a "i locked out myself out from the house" situation
8:21 PM
I always thought it would be just trauma that causes dissociation, but there are other things too. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, anger, abandonment. Any negative, strong emotion can cause it
8:23 PM
if there is still certain level if dissociation (as in memories feeling alien in 3rd person) there is still no real acceptance that it is a part of you caused by a strong emotion
8:24 PM
when that strong emotion is identified, when you understand why it's there, and you work towards realising that it's no longer needed, that's when fusion happens
8:24 PM
it's easier said than done though!
Zen
Indeed, what I'm essentially suggesting is simply extending that attribution to them.
Most of that time I already would consider void time - if that was my experience over a month I'd call that a "dead month". I'd regret the loss of that time as well.
Haha. We don't exactly consider it the pinnacle of experience, but that's certainly harsh. It is a mistake to think you don't experience it when doing things that are pleasant.
That having been said perhaps I'm simply inherently more prone to it because of the ADHD. I should put that caveat there, maybe it is not as prevalent for people otherwise.
It's not that it isn't pleasant, it's more that it's just dead void time that gets forgotten and in the grand scheme of things is pretty meaningless, pointless, and changes little.
8:28 PM
You didn't really "live" during that downtime - no memories generated - no aspects of yourself changed. Just drops into the memory hole, never to be seen again
Dissociative fugue (), formerly called a fugue state or psychogenic fugue, is a mental and behavioral disorder that is classified variously as a dissociative disorder, a conversion disorder, and a somatic symptom disorder. The disorder is a rare psychiatric abnormality characterized by reversible amnesia for one's own personal identity, includin...
I'm trying to think - I feel like there's a difference between like - a long drive that just disappears and a challenge where there's autopiloting going on, but the whole time you're kind of supervising the feedback loop of improving, looking for where you aren't very good, that sort of thing
8:33 PM
Like if you played dark souls for so long it stopped being fun/engaging and just dragged on for ages
There are definitely levels of autopilot, and levels of supervising. There's definitely a hyper low functioning autopilot that is what you say. But I wouldn't demonize the whole thing.
It's useful - you'd go crazy if you had to live every moment of your life fully engaged- just has to be avoided like watching TV too long or "doomscrolling"
Anyway this was all a huge digression. The point was not to play up any particular behaviour, nor do I mean to suggest people should primarilly do vapid things or even heavily engaged things. That's not my business at all, do what you feel you want according to your knowledge.
The whole idea I would propagate is just to connect tulpas with that same sense of continuity we possess in that state, which extends from the highest to the lowest levels of supervision, without needing to directly acknowledge them or have them triggered by specific events. Those things need to be trained to actually get them to think, of course, as I think by default the experience of this for a tulpa is like being in a barely conscious dream state if they aren't actually trained to interact with life.
8:40 PM
The goal is simply to mitigate the idea that time shared matters - When I think what really matters is living the most with what you have. And I think that's best achieved by sharing things both consciously and unconsciously
8:41 PM
The times when Rhys is playing Elden Ring here and actually thinks stuff about it, I'm not thinking "Oh it's shit not to interact with this myself". I'm experiencing what they're experiencing. And that's good. I would consider it true lost time if I didn't get to experience it.
I don't really think our sense of continuity comes from those "basic states" - the basic states compose gaps, our continuity would rely more on the fact that we're present before/during/after those gaps. If the gaps grow too large, or aren't "surrounded by us" then you start to see the continuity break down as well. The only way I'd see a tulpa being similar is if they're brought in to do the same thing.
Like, a long car trip is dead time if you tune out for the majority of it, but if you "overlay yourself" by thinking and acting and observing for the duration, then that underlying process of automatic-lane-keeping "is me" even though it isn't. I'd maybe say conscious-observation is infectious. Put a little bit of it next to an automatic process and it will "infect and own" that process.
So to share the automatic processes, as I see it, is a contradiction of terms. If the tulpa can be "owning it" then the process isn't devoid-automatic(edited)
8:59 PM
Experiencing something like elden ring together is an example of what I'd very much think of both tulpa and host being active at the same time. You can share interaction and present-time, but if one of the tulpa's isn't observing/interacting at all, that's where I have questions.
But my continuity remains unbroken. I think that to a degree you are correct that more than belief is required to create continuity, but I think models of interaction do hold enough power to deny people that if they approach it differently, which Ranger specifically and co, seem to do.
9:01 PM
If that's all you require, Rhys is also always interacting
I am telling you that isn't the case though. Unless you apply the same to a host.
9:03 PM
Personally and experientially I have never experienced a point in which a tulpa has not had a sense of continuity, though early on they may have failed to be able to act when it retrospect they might have. The same is also true for me. Tulpas are not unique in this regard.
9:04 PM
I am capable of spacing out to a degree where it's just Rhys, though admittedly in this particular moment because of this conversation I am remaining much more present than I might.
it's important to remember that integration of an experience is the natural way for brain to work. dissociation is disruption of that process.
Integration is not really "claiming/owning", it's more of "not disowning".
discontinuity happens for a reason, it's either you disrupt it or it is disrupted for you. natural reaction to seeing autopilot or a gap in life is "it's still me"
This is something I was worried about getting onto as well, because we're touching the line of "old fashioned" and "new fashioned" switching. Old fashioned tulpamancers used to claim it was feasible to create a tulpa so powerful/capable that you could just go void (or into the wonderland) for some period of time and tune back in later to find your tulpa was doing everything in your life.(edited)
9:10 PM
People do still seem to distinguish "I don't do that by choice - I do that by automatic" whenever these automatic things happen, but we can't "gate and stop" them. We tend to own things, but there's a line where that stops - mostly drawn by convenience rather than fact
