To: K-list
Recieved: 2004/12/12 02:03
Subject: [K-list] more tulpas
From: MC Eleven
On 2004/12/12 02:03, MC Eleven posted thus to the K-list:
Writer and anthropologist Carlos Castaneda tells the story of how he and his
sorcerer teacher Don Juan Matus were sitting on a bench in downtown Mexico
City in the early 1970's. Don Juan was attempting to explain the ancient
Mexican shamanic idea that true creativity originates in the magical realm
of the 'nagual'. Castaneda was finding it all hard to grasp, and asked Don
Juan to define exactly what he meant by creativity.
Curious Creation.
'Creativity is this,' replied Don Juan, cupping his right palm and bringing
it up to the level of Castaneda's eyes. Castaneda found it extremely
difficult to focus on Don Juan's hand and struggled until beads of sweat ran
into his eyes. Finally there was a 'pop' and Castaneda's eyes and head
jerked free. On Don Juan's palm was a strange-looking rodent, resembling a
squirrel, but with quills on its tail. like a porcupine. 'Touch it,' said
Don Juan softly.
Castaneda ran his finger over the rodent's furry back and, as he did so, he
noticed something that threw him into nervous spasms; the 'squirrel' was
wearing spectacles! It was so unbelievable that Castaneda began to laugh
hysterically. The rodent started to grow in Don Juan's palm, until
eventually it got so huge that it went completely out of Castaneda's field
of vision and disappeared.
According to Castaneda, Don Juan had created a real live, flesh and blood
creature using only the power of thought and imagination. This may appear
far-fetched, but sorcerers the world over claim they can do just this.
Tibetan yogis, for instance, claim that they can create physical objects and
even living beings, known as tulpas, by imagining them in their mind's eye.
The 'reality' of tulpas is, however, far from cut and dried, even for those
who create them. Tibetan mystics believe that all the phenomena we perceive,
including the apparently solid world around us, are products of our
imagination. To the Tibetan adept, the reality or unreality of the tulpa is
simply not an issue: 'solid' matter and thought forms both exist on the
imaginal plane, so neither can be considered 'real' or 'unreal'.
To prove their understanding of this, initiates of Tibetan dream yoga
subject themselves to a ritual known as the 'Dance of Chid', which involves
conjuring up, or visualizing, a horde of grotesque tulpa demons, along with
a tulpa double of themselves. The magician then has to will the demons to
attack his double, and remain completely calm and composed as the hideous
thought forms rip it apart and eat it. If the magician succeeds in staying
calm, then the demons can not harm him, because he has truly accepted the
dream-like nature of reality, and accordingly, has no fear of such
creatures. If, though, he still sees reality in 'nuts and bolts' terms, then
he empowers the demons and risks insanity or death from fright.
The Dubthab Rite.
One of the most famous examples of the creation of a tulpa concerned the
redoubtable French traveler Alexandra David-Neel. She spent 14 years in
Tibet and, out of curiosity, set about performing the Dubthab rite, which
reputedly ends with the tangible manifestation of a thought form. In Magic
and Mystery in Tibet, she recounts how she chose to create a monk who was
'short and fat, [and] of an innocent type'.
After a few months performing the rite, which consisted mainly of
disciplined visualizations, she started to catch glimpses of the phantom
monk. 'His form grew gradually fixed and life-like looking,' she remembered.
'He became a kind of guest in my apartment.' It got to the point that even
when she was not consciously thinking of the monk, he would appear anyway.
'The illusion was mostly visual,' she claimed, 'but sometimes I felt as if a
robe was lightly rubbing against me and once hand seemed to touch my
shoulder.'
In the end, the monk's presence became troublesome; it took on a life of its
own and became sly and malignant. David-Neel had lost control of the tulpa.
To her dismay, it took about as long to dissolve the phantom creation as it
had to create it.
Some occultists claim that thought forms can be created inadvertently, by a
combination of thought and emotion. In Psychic Self-Defence, the English
occultist Dion Fortune describes how she was thinking negative thoughts
about someone who had wronged her. Laying in bed in a semi-dozing state, she
thought of the Fenris wolf-demon from Nordic mythology, whle at the same
time contemplating revenge.
'Immediately I felt a curious drawing-out sensation from my solar plexus,'
she reported, 'and there materialized beside me in bed a large wolf. I knew
nothing of the art of making [artificial] elementals at that time, but had
accidentally stumbled upon the right method - a brooding state, highly
charged with emotion... and the condition between sleeping and waking.'
Although she was very frightened, Fortune managed not to panic, and
forcefully ordered the beast out of the house.
She would have dismissed the experience as a nightmare, except that, that
same night, someone else in the house reported dreaming of wolves, and
seeing the eyes of a wild animal shining in the darkness. The realization
that her creation had been in some sense tangible, and the fact that she did
not wish to follow what she described as the 'left hand path' of magic, led
Fortune to 'reabsorb' the creature back into herself.
The idea that you can simply think something into existence is dismissed as
impossible by most rational people, yet 20th century theoretical physics
suggests it may well be possible. As far back as 1932, the English
astronomer Sir James Jeans asserted that: 'Mind no longer appears as an
accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect
that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of
matter.' Today, the majority of quantum physicists accept this as a basic
truism.
Creating Universes.
Theoretical physicists Werner Heisenberg and John A. Wheeler, for example,
speak of an 'observer-created universe', admitting that the act of
observation and so the consciousness of the observer determines the
behaviour of the sub-atomic world observed.
Many psychologists have also taken such notions on board. Professor
Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of Transpersonal Psychology, goes as far
as saying that 'if one makes an honest assessment of quantum physics,
consciousness research, Oriental spiritual philosophies and shamanism, one
cannot help but come to the conclusion that consciousness can modify
phenomena in the material world.'
In short, many eminent thinkers believe that matter as least to some degree
can be molded by thought and consciousness, and that it may be possible to
create tulpas or thought forms with the power of the mind. Ultimately,
though, whether such creations have a tangible existence independent of
their creator's imagination is open to debate. Much of the evidence that
this is the case is anecdotal and therefore hard to verify.
Chaos Magic.
The practice of creating tulpas and thought forms is still very much alive
today among contemporary practitioners of magic. The British chaos magician
Dave Lee claimed to have created a 'healing servitor' (or thought form) that
could be used by anybody who knew of its existence.
'One particular group started working with it and they specialized in
working healing magic in rave clubs,' explained Lee, 'At the beginning of
the evening they'd, do an invocation, and leave a sigil [magical symbol] on
the dance floor which would get dance off as the night wore on. Then, using
the collected energy of the dancing to develop magical focus, the group
would direct the power, via the servitor, against the retro-virus HIV,
hepatitis C, and so forth.'
Apparently, this magical group has reported a spectacular number of
remissions from AIDS-related conditions. 'One guy's face was covered in
Kaposi's sarcoma [malignant skin tumors] and that's gone,' said Lee, 'and a
whole bunch of people's T-lymphocyte [cells central to the body's immune
response] levels have gone through the roof since this work.'
If the claims of Lee are to be believed, it would appear that the creation
of thought forms which have tangible effects in physical reality, is indeed,
a possibility. The fact that theoretical physics is also coming round to
this idea is another reason why these unlikely entities should not be
dismissed lightly.
Sources: The X Factor
By: John Shreeve
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