In traditions of mysticism and the paranormal inspired by Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa is a materialized being or thought-form, typically in human shape, that is created through spiritual practice and intense concentration. The term is borrowed from the Tibetan language. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend whom practitioners consider sentient and relatively independent. Modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas a psychological rather than a paranormal phenomenon. The idea became an important belief in theosophy.
Origins
The word tulpa (sprul pa, སྤྲུལ་པ་) originates from Tibetan, where it may mean "phantom" along with other associated meanings. The western understanding of tulpas was developed by European mystical explorers, who interpreted and developed the idea independently of its uses in old Tibet. Hale claimed in a research paper that tulpamancy can be connected to religious prayer because of similar techniques used. Hale also pointed out that replacing "God" with "Tulpa" in the book "When God Talks Back" would be 80% applicable to tulpamancy.
Theosophy and thought-forms
thumb|Thoughtform of the Music of [[Charles Gounod|Gounod, according to Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater in Thought-Forms (1905)]]
20th-century theosophists associated the Mahayana Buddhist concept of the emanation body (‘tulku’) and the concepts of 'tulpa' and 'thoughtform'. While maintaining a distinction between the terms ‘tulku’ and ‘tulpa’, they simultaneously collapsed the distinctions between a tulpa as a religious emanation, and tulpas as worldly phenomena created by a magician and similar. Their final conception remains distinct from both. In her 1905 book Thought-Forms, the theosophist Annie Besant divides them into three classes: forms in the shape of the person who creates them, forms that resemble objects or people and may become ensouled by nature spirits or by the dead, and forms that represent inherent qualities from the astral or mental planes, such as emotions. The term 'thoughtform' is also used in Evans-Wentz's 1927 translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and in the Western practice of magic. Some have called the Slender Man a tulpa-effect, and attributed it to multiple people's thought processes.
In his book The Human Aura, occultist William Walker Atkinson describes thoughtforms as simple ethereal objects emanating from the auras surrounding people, generated by their thoughts and feelings. In Clairvoyance and Occult Powers, he describes how experienced practitioners of the occult can produce thoughtforms from their auras that serve as astral projections, or as illusions that can only be seen by those with "awakened astral senses".
Alexandra David-Néel
Spiritualist Alexandra David-Néel said she had observed Buddhist tulpa creation practices in 20th-century Tibet. David-Néel believed a tulpa could develop a mind of its own: "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. According to David-Néel, this happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when her body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb." Surveys by Samuel Veissière explored this community's demographic, social, and psychological profiles. These practitioners believe a tulpa is a "real or somewhat-real person". One survey found that 8.5% support a metaphysical explanation of tulpas, 76.5% support a neurological or psychological explanation, and 14% "other" explanations.
Somer et al. (2021) describe the Internet tulpamancer subculture as being used to "overcome loneliness and mental suffering", and noted the close association with reality shifting (RS), a way of deliberately inducing a form of self-hypnosis to escape from reality into a pre-planned desired reality or "wonderland" of chosen fantasy characters.