Tulpa (Wylie: sprul-pa; Sanskrit: nirmita and nirmāṇa) is a Vajrayana, Bonpo and Tibetan Buddhist upaya concept, discipline and teaching tool. The term was first rendered into English as 'Thoughtform' by Evans-Wentz (1954: p.29): In this quotation, "Sangsara" is an alternate English orthographic representation of "Saṃsāra", where ṃ denotes a nasalisation in the pronunciation, and therefore rendered "ng". Khorva, Tulku, Milarepa, Marpa and the illusory body are mentioned.

In Buddhist phenomenology, "appearances" and "phenomena" are English renderings of "dharmas" (Sanskrit). The mindstream communion affected by the wife of Marpa in the abovementioned quotation, is an ancient mode of 'mind transmission' (Tibetan: dgongs brgyud) or 'empowerment' (Tibetan: dbang bskur) in the Himalayan traditions, documented in the folklore and anthropological studies of Himalayan and Siberian Shamanism. The Russian Psychiatrist Olga Kharitidi published her direct experience of this phenomenon in the Altay Mountains, where a shaman merged a stream of his consciousness continuum or 'spirit' with hers.

This phenomenon is a variation of the spiritual discipline of 'Phowa' (Tibetetan: 'pho ba) and is often rendered as 'spirit possession' within English anthropological discourse. In mysticism a tulpa is the concept of a being or object which is created through sheer willpower alone. It is a materialized thought that has taken physical form and is usually regarded as synonymous to a thoughtform.

The term comes from the works of Alexandra David-Neel, who claimed to have created a tulpa in the image of a jolly, Friar Tuck-like monk which later developed a life of its own and had to be destroyed.

Similar to 0 things you like: