Tulpas and Father Christmas/Santa Claus

[Nick Matkin]

If tulpas are generated out of the human imagination, how come it hasn't worked with Father Christmas/Santa Clause?

Surely the powerful influence of the imagination of millions of children for hundreds of years should have some effect by now?

This question occurred to me after hearing a discussion in a recent episode of Mysterious Universe.

[DeDukshyn]

Many possible reasons. Perhaps merely the distinction between a concept placed into your mind vs creating something from your mind and willing it to exist.

[Mike]

It's interesting - Dolan was just discussing his childhood fear of Santa Clause in one of his recent shows. As a kid, that really might be quite horrifying to see a Santa figure emerge from a fire place. The idea of strange people and things emerging from closets and underneath beds is archetypal, and often involves boogie men or ghosts or grey aliens. Santa is hardly different.

My current fear involves Tom Cruise as my butler, emerging from my closet to high five me at 3 o'clock in the morning.

It could be that kids harbor a fear of Santa Clause that's hindering their creative, imaginary abilities...hence the lack of tulpas . Think of all the hysterical, crying kids at the shopping mall, waiting to see Santa. There's a similar phenomenon with the Easter Bunny. The enormous fuzzy thing ambles over in a hokey sort of way, pats the kid on the head with those enormous paws, and within seconds the terrified little kids' lower lip is trembling, and soon he's wailing like a fire siren.

[Bill Ryan]

Richard Dolan talks about tulpas (thought-forms becoming physically real) in his recent interview with author Nick Redfern, here:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7GykT_uGyE

Nick Redfern talked about his research on the 'Slenderman', starting at 1:05:00. This started off as a fictional fantasy figure, which became quite a popular meme among many younger people.

THEN — people started actually seeing the thing, for real. Nick Redfern speculates that maybe this was a tulpa... inasmuch as it was a thoughtform, a cultural concept, that somehow sytarted to manifest physically in the real world simply because so many people had attention on it and were kind of holding as 'real' in their minds.

Tulpas can definitely exist. Author and explorer Alexandra David-Neel reports in her marvelous, classic book Magic and Mystery in Tibet how she herself created one, and then spent months trying to get rid of it again.

It's a funny and also rather disturbing story: she really had to work very hard indeed to get the thing to disappear. (p.336 of the PDF, p.308 of the book)

• Alexandra David-Neel - Magic and Mystery in Tibet
  http://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Alex...in%20Tibet.pdf

Here's just a small extract from the REALLY interesting account:

The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control.

Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a live lama.

I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare." Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.

There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.

In Buddhist magical tradition, the creation of a tulpa (or tulku) isn't at all easy, and it takes an adept to accomplish it. It's not going to happen accidentally.

If it did happen unconsciously and easily, just through kind of a mass, popular, casual wishful-thinking 'vote', not only would we be seeing Santa Claus all over the place, but also the Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny, Barbie and Ken (please, no!), and maybe also Mickey Mouse and Snoopy the Dog.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Just speculating, as I don't know too much about this phenomenon, or it's history, but I did check out Slenderman at the time. It seemed to me that fear of the thing fuelled that whole escapade. It spread like a virus, and that's not surprising - fear is a very powerful emotion. Powerful enough (and negative enough) for negative entities to latch onto. Fear is their native vibration.

It's precisely such astral entities, I suspect, that are at the heart of these 'things'. They assume projected human fears until it's strong enough to actually take physical form (all matter is just congealed energy after all). It becomes one these tulpas, or a golem. After all, what we focus on we do attract.

Slenderman was just one example of all manner of tales of monsters/ghosts/demons/cryptids. Might it be that some of these may have actually been conjured by human fear alone, and summoned into physicality?

It might be possible to 'manifest' a Santa Claus if one tried hard enough, for long enough, but a child lacks that focus, that intent, particularly if it's true that fear is a factor in feeding the process. Being a symbol of joy, positivity, and compassion Santa is representative of anything but fear.

[Nick Matkin]

Posted by Mike (here)

My current fear involves Tom Cruise as my butler, emerging from my closet to high five me at 3 o'clock in the morning.

I chuckled when I read of Tom Cruise 'emerging from the closet'! How juvenile on me, and I of all people should know better...

Thanks Bill for the heads-up on the Richard Dolan interview. As it happens I just started listening yesterday to that very episode, although not reached the relevant section yet. Hearing those two heavyweights have an informed discussion is enlightening and refreshing. Have you been interviewed by either of those two, or interviewed them? Surely you have?

(Incidentally Bill, some time ago I think I suggested to Howard Hughes from The Unexplained that he should interview you. Please consider it if you haven't already. He's a sound chap and for some time worked in the same building for the same organisation as me, although I didn't know that at the time - he as a journalist and me as an engineer/media researcher - and our paths never crossed. Something I truly regret.)

Nick

[shaberon]

I am not sure about a Christmas one. I would maintain that the people who were involved with what we call the Taxil Hoax were doing it. That's more or less how they put you off the scent.

Although it is a real magical art, you'd be more likely to encounter an illusionist showing you the rope trick or something to that effect. In other words, there is someone who could "make you see" Santa Claus, but it would not go off to a life of its own.

[AutumnW]

Posted by Mike (here)
It's interesting - Dolan was just discussing his childhood fear of Santa Clause in one of his recent shows. As a kid, that really might be quite horrifying to see a Santa figure emerge from a fire place. The idea of strange people and things emerging from closets and underneath beds is archetypal, and often involves boogie men or ghosts or grey aliens. Santa is hardly different.

My current fear involves Tom Cruise as my butler, emerging from my closet to high five me at 3 o'clock in the morning.

It could be that kids harbor a fear of Santa Clause that's hindering their creative, imaginary abilities...hence the lack of tulpas . Think of all the hysterical, crying kids at the shopping mall, waiting to see Santa. There's a similar phenomenon with the Easter Bunny. The enormous fuzzy thing ambles over in a hokey sort of way, pats the kid on the head with those enormous paws, and within seconds the terrified little kids' lower lip is trembling, and soon he's wailing like a fire siren.

I was just going to post pretty much identical thoughts! I quit believing in Santa Claus when I was 5 years old. How could he possibly cram all those toys into his sleigh, and how was he getting into our house? There was no fireplace!

I think the motivation to look at it logically was because it scared me. One of my first memories was thinking that I really liked the gifts but not the whole breaking and entering thing.

But tulpas are intriguing. Maybe we are self willed tulpas, of sorts, sprung from the imagination of the universal mind. Or the mind of something that isn't easily repulsed or scared!