Compiled by a pseudonymous Internet figure (or collective body) known as “Within,” the Tulpanomicon has no real interest in convincing its readers that tulpas exist. It caters to those who need no convincing. For the believers, the practitioners, this book offers a remarkable variety of tulpic conceptions. For everyone else, if nothing else, it ought to serve as entertainment.
But what is a tulpa? The concept emerged from a Western interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism. Put simply (if that’s possible), a tulpa is an autonomous mental projection, a sentient creation engendered by intense meditation: an entity that falls somewhere between an imaginary friend and a flesh-and-blood one. Such a slew of definitions can’t help but to leave a vague impression of something spectral, vaporous, or insubstantial. Yet tulpas are said to be capable of occupying key roles in their creators’ lives, from emotional companion and muse to philosophical interlocutor. Far from being purely mental phenomena, the authors of this book take great pains to explain that any object in the material world can be turned into a tulpa. One author even offers the unlikely example of a rock. A rock that receives a sufficient quantity of an individual’s mental focus – in a process that tulpamancers call “forcing” – can (they assert) begin to assume the qualities of an entity that really seems alive.
It’s important to note that the Tulpanomicon is not an academic work. Most of its limited references indicate a nearness in sensibility and tone to Wikipedia and Github, its entries having been incubated in all manner of online discussion boards, from 4chan to Reddit. Chapter titles range from “Things to Ask Yourself Before You Make a Tulpa” (“What will I do when I have a serious disagreement with my tulpa?”) and “Bad Reasons to Not Make a Tulpa” (which includes the “golden rule of ethical tulpa creation”) to “Possession: By a Tulpa for Tulpas.” Intentionally nonacademic, this book is the product of a new, crowdsourced, handpicked and pruned kind of publishing venture. (“Compiled” is the right word.) It’s the natural consequence of an online community so fervently dedicated to cultivating its own brand of mysticism that its texts, which are edited and expanded on an ongoing basis, inevitably proliferate as freely downloadable e-books – glossary included: a good-faith effort at broadening accessibility to a traditionally inaccessible practice.
As for the question of pursuing that practice: of course, it’s going to be up to the reader to take the book’s ideas seriously. Many will balk at the very premise. But I do believe that this book can be profitably mined rather than simply mocked. Those who approach it with an open mind may find their meditative or imaginative practice suddenly reinvigorated. Those who engage with it as an artifact of Internet culture – one part mystical instruction manual, one part meme-repository – may realize they’ve discovered a new rabbit hole worth falling down for a couple of weeks (or more). And those with a philosophical bent are bound to find much of the book – its meditations on the mind, its answerless questions – more or less of a piece with the work of thinkers like Descartes and Dennett, to say nothing of the ancient Buddhist sources behind the tulpa’s modern resurgence.
So what are you waiting for? Go check this book out. It’s only a click away.
Anthony David Vernon is an adjunct professor of philosophy at St. Thomas University (Miami Gardens) and Miami-Dade College.
Orange County Review of Books 