Тульпа: Ментальные конструкции и феномен воображаемых друзей

Entity manifesting from mental powers
Tulpa is a concept originally from Tibetan Buddhism and found in later traditions of mysticism and the paranormal of a materialized being or thought form, typically in human form, that is created through spiritual practice and intense concentration. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent. Modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas to be a psychological rather than a paranormal concept. The idea became an important belief in Theosophy.

The concept of tulpas has origins in the Buddhist nirmāṇakāya, translated in Tibetan as sprul pa (སྤྲུལ་པ་): the earthly bodies that a buddha manifests in order to teach those who have not attained nirvana. The western understanding of tulpas was developed by twentieth century European mystical explorers, who interpreted the idea independently of buddhahood.

20th century Theosophists adapted the Vajrayana concept of the emanation body into the concepts of 'tulpa' and 'thoughtform'. The Theosophist Annie Besant, in the 1905 book Thought Forms, 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. The concept is also used in the Western practice of magic. The Slender Man has been described by some people as a tulpa effect, and attributed to multiple people's thought processes. Occultist William Walker Atkinson in his book The Human Aura described thoughtforms as simple ethereal objects emanating from the auras surrounding people, generating from their thoughts and feelings. He further elaborated in Clairvoyance and Occult Powers how experienced practitioners of the occult can produce thoughtforms from their auras that serve as astral projections which may or may not look like the person who is projecting them, or as illusions that can only be seen by those with "awakened astral senses".

Spiritualist Alexandra David Néel stated that she had observed Buddhist tulpa creation practices in 20th century Tibet. David Néel believed that 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 Veissière explored this community's demographic, social, and psychological profiles. These practitioners believe a tulpa is a "real or somewhat real person". Somer et al. (2021) described 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 in order to escape from current reality into a pre planned desired reality or "wonderland" of chosen fantasy characters.