I know a real, live, tenured professor who believes in tulpa. He once told me how a friend wrote a fiction story, only to have an improbable event from the story happen after it was finished. It was not something over which he had any control. Tulpa is a concept from eastern religions that suggests a being of pure thought or imagination might take on reality. Writers, who create characters all the time, are perhaps engaging in tulpa. We are creating, literally, as well as figuratively. I like the concept. Many writers know the sensation of the character who refuses to behave. A person that you make up does not what you want her to do, but what you know she shouldn’t do. It’s like having an adult two-year-old. This same professor friend once told me that ideas may be created by a collective consciousness, and writers are those sensitive enough to capture those ideas that are floating freely in the ether. (To be fair, he didn’t say “ether”.) Writers are the beacons
Blog of a struggling writer.