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Tulpa

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 of literature.



The idea of tulpa is creepy and empowering at the same time.  I don’t want to cause my characters pain or suffering.  I am a nice guy, really.  Still, nice guys hanging out in copacetic harmony a story does not make.

Every ejaculation contains millions of spermatozoa destined for a very early death.  It’s like walking under a maple tree during propeller season, millions of drying, dying helicopters at my feet.  The characters we create only to make them suffer.

Writing is like your brain on sex.  Only, unlike sex, I get to do writing every day.  It is conceiving characters, loving them, parenting them, and then letting them go.  Sometimes it is hard to distance yourself from them.


Out there, mostly on the internet, are the people I’ve created.  I hope, in due course, they will afford me the same courtesy.
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