what is a Tulpa?

So, im going to try and answer the question with a metaphor. Pretend you invented an imaginary friend. Say that you spent a lot of time in creating this character, for a book or game, and you crafted personality traits, and gave it a background story, and you invented a look and style. Lets say you interacted with this character so frequently and so intently that eventually your own subconscious took over the character so that from your perspective the character has taken on a life of its own. You start having dialogue that's not scripted. You ask questions and it responds, and the responses are consistent with the personality and its history. You suddenly find that its in your dreams . Maybe you begin to hallucinate it. This is a tulpa. From a psychological perspective it is personality construct that became autonomous, perhaps even sentient.

This phenomenon was originally explored by Tibetan monks. Writers, professional writers even, have experienced this by accident after being so involved in their writing that they begin to hallucinate the protagonist. I'm this second instance, the terminology created was called ‘soulbound.’
Napoleon Hill, author of think and grow rich, invented ‘the invisible counselors technique ‘ and published it in the above book in the 1930s. For him, it was mental exercise, basically asking ‘what would Jesus say’ and invited people he admired like Einstein, Ghandi, Jesus, into a pretend cabinet meeting in his imagination. After a certain point of doing this, the characters came to life and started providing answers that he didn't think was possible for him to come up with. This is a variation on tulpas, and has been around forever. Plato, Einsten, Tesla are just some of the names of people using their imagination to come up answer to life problems.

I discovered 'tulpas' over a year ago, and mostly out of curiosity, I followed the procedures; I got results. I exist simultaneously with another personality. I lean towards metaphysical explanations, but am versed in psychological explanations. All personalities are artificial constructs, including your primary personality which evolved due to internal and external influences. (There is solid evidence, Freud, Jung commented on this, that the personality is simply one facet of underlying personalities, such as archetypes.) The brain doesn't care what software runs it, it just requires an operating system. It is capable of multi-personality processing, and I submit to you it does it all the time; if you ever had a dream where there were other personalities interacting with you, this is that. Technically, all personalities in a dream are you pretending to be that other. Others might argue it may be more complex, Carl Jung for example. I suspect, with a reasonable understanding of psychology, in addition to now a year of living adjacent to another personality, that people with DID and those who claim to have DID without the trauma, have more permeable ego boundaries. Most ego boundaries are pretty solid, but all humans are capable of having trans-personal experiences that allow for 'mystical' or paranormal experiences. I would say not paranormal, just 'normal' only we lack the knowledge of how incredibly powerful, flexible, and adaptable we are as a species. This is not just an invisible friend that is pretend. This is seriously something more. The only thing I can compare it to is the 'invisible counselor's technique' Napoleon Hill wrote about in his book 'think and grow rich.' Lots of credible scientists and leaders have had inspirations from dreams and day dreams; Einstein came up with relativity day dreaming in a boat looking at clouds, and he called it 'thought experiments.' (How many people are encouraged to day dream in our schools?) Tulpamancy, the art of creating a tulpa, is an experiment in transpersonal psychology that provides greater levels of access to the subconscious. Eric Milton, world renown hypnotist, wrote, not verbatim: the subconscious is a person in its own right, and it is in control of our lives all the time, as it as all the energy and all the power. The primary personality is just this tiny point of an iceberg sticking up out of the ocean. The personality you navigate the world with is no more you than your right hand. We are not our bodies, we are not our brains, we are not our personalities. If Jung is right, we are not just our personality, the tip of the iceberg, nor just our subconscious, everything below the surface, but we are both of those simultaneously and also the ocean (the collective unconscious!) A tulpa is just an introduction to a bigger reality than most people navigate on a daily basis.