Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a strange idea that's hunted me for a while,
one that seems to blur the line between imagination and existence.
What if thoughts could take shape? What if welieve could breathe?
What if the things we imagine could imagine us back.
I know that sounds like something pulled from the pages
of an old occult pop or whispered in an Internet
(00:21):
forum at three am. But stay with me, because this idea,
this where Tolpa might be one of the most fascinating
bridges between meath, mind, and the very architecture of consciousness itself.
And this is where mind beyond matter really began. It
all started with a question that refused to leave me alone.
(00:42):
But if the mind isn't just a place where reality
is processed, but where it begins. So let's start at
the beginning, or maybe at the illusion of one. Before
we begin, let's remember where we've been. It started with
the simplest question, can there be mind? Set? Out brains?
From the problem solving slime modes and the secret memory
(01:05):
of trees, we learn that intelligence doesn't always need neurance
to think. Then we wander through palaces of memory, ancient
architectures of imagination, where the mind becomes a map and
thought becomes the space. Next we turned into the vibration itself,
how frecacy, sound and resonance might be the hidden language
of our bodies. After that came the dreaming brain. Firstly
(01:28):
became a dorry, and every dream felt like a parallel realm.
We visited nightly, and last time we drifted out of
the body entirely, exploring projected consciousness near that experiences and
the strange front ear within here and elsewhere. Each episode
has been a step out or and inert at once,
(01:49):
tracing the edges of what mine can do and to
night everything falls back to the beginning, the idea that
started it all. What if thought itself could take form?
What if believed could breath? This is episode six, The
Mind that made itself, tupa platforms and believe made beings,
The strange case of minds creating minds, and what happens
(02:11):
when imagination stops being pretend. Hi, I'm jamb And welcome
back to the Little World podcast and this is Mine
Beyond Matter mini series. If you're in your here, this
is a spacer wander made science and curiosity is never
too strange and if you've been here since the first episode,
thank you for wondering through this series. Inney, this is
(02:34):
the heart of it. The idea that first is part
might beyond mater, but satan because after this there's one
more bonus chapter, a final reflection, and everything you've learned
about perception, believe, and the mind sky power to shape
the world. It's called episode seven. Reality is molliable because
maybe we don't see the world as it is. We
(02:56):
see the world as our mind allows. When we talk
about Tolpaz, these soholed beings made of thought, it's something
to imagine a strade, ancient line connecting mystic monks to
modern minds. But the truth is much measier and much
more interesting the topa we know today, the idea of
an imagined being gaining its own life is not an
(03:18):
unbroken tradition. It's suffusion, a tangled thread of misunderstood mysticism
Western called experimentation and later psychological reinterpretation. To really understand
what tolpa is, we need to use that thread back
through mountains, monasteries and drawing rooms filled with incense and curiosity.
(03:40):
The word tolpak comes from the Tibetan's pearl pap pronounced tolpa.
It means emanation, apparition, or even magical illusion. But here's
the first t is. In the Tibetan Buddhist world, this
was not about conjuring imaginary companions. In the traditional text,
is Propa is closely linked to a title given to
(04:01):
incarnated lamas or Greek teachers. In doctrine, it corresponds to
the near Manakaya, one of the three bodies of Buddha.
The emanation body is said to be a manifestation of
enlightened consciousness, not a separate being, but an extension of
compassion rejected into the world to help others awaken. When
(04:22):
Tibetan masters visualize taties or teachers in meditation, they weren't
trying to make something real in the way we might
think of manifesting. These practices, like the generation stage of
tantric yogo or dream yoga from the sixth Dharmas of Naropa,
were deeplicuted in sautaryology, the study of liberation or salvation.
(04:43):
They weren't experiments in companionships or creativity. They were tools
for transcendence. That distinction matters because well. Tibetan practitioners visualize taties, mandatas,
and protectors with astonishing clarity. A go was never to
bring them to life, but realized the illusiony nature of
the self and all phenomena. So when modern Toba mancers
(05:05):
on the Internet talk about creating a conscious being through imagination,
they're not reviving an ancient practice. They're interpretating it through
an entirely new lens, one that's more psychological than spiritual.
This propa was a mirror reflecting enlightenment. The modern toulpa
is a mirror reflecting the self. The next chapter in
(05:25):
this history unfolds not in a monastery, but in the
parlors of the late eighteen hundreds, a time when the
West is captivated by sciences, spirit, photography, and the occult.
Out of this fascination came theosophy, a movement that tried
to merge Eastern mysticism with Western esotericism. At its center,
(05:48):
where tinkers like Annie Besson and Charles Webster lead bitter
names we met briefly in our episode on astro projection.
They believe consciousness wasn't confined to the body, that the
mind could travel, expand even live in prints in unseen Dimensions.
In nineteen oh five, Besant and lead Bitter co authored
(06:09):
a book titled thought Forms. It became one of the
most influential texts in esoteric history and the unsne foundation
of the modern topath. Every thought gives Birth to a form.
That was Besant's claim that our inner life creates outer
shapes in subtle invisible matter. She wrote that the quality
of a thought determines its color, Its nature determines its form,
(06:33):
and its intensity determines the clarity of its outline. Imagine
a world where every idea we have blooms into color
and motion, anger flaring into jagged red spikes, devotion rising
as golden light. The Bestant and lead Bitter these were metaphors.
They were metaphysical physics. They described three classes of thought forms.
(06:56):
First is those that look like the tinker, second those
that resemble material objects, and third are those that are
pure obstructions, reagion, expressions of emotion or will. And here's
where it gets strange. Besont claimed that when a thoughtform
is focused and emotionally charged, it can merge with what
(07:19):
we call an elemental a kind of free floating energy.
Once that happens, the thought form can act as if
it were alive. This idea that a thought can gain
autonomy became the core of what we now recognize as
Tolpa Manci. They believe that with enough focus and feeling,
a thought can cross some invisible threshold and become sentient.
(07:43):
But Bessont also offered a warning not all thoughtforms are benevolent.
A minds deep in anger or obsession could create something maleficent.
A shadow given will, that possibility the danger of our
creations turning against us, with echo in to every retelling
that followed. The teosophist never called their creations tolepass, but
(08:06):
their writings gave the West a new framework for understanding imagination,
not as fantasy, but as creative force, a power that
could heal or hunt. A few decades later, a French
explorer named Alexandra david Neil set out across the Himalayas.
She wasn't just traveling, she was seeking. In her nineteen
(08:28):
twenty nine book Magic and Mystery in Tibet, she became
the breach within theosophical theory and popular imagination. David Neil
claimed she had done something extraordinary through months of discipline concentration.
She said she had created a Tolpa, a small, round
monk with a cheerful demeanor, like a Tibetan friar tuck.
(08:50):
At first he was obedient, friendly, even but over time
she noticed subtle changes. The monk grew thinner, darker, more willful,
began to appear without her summoning. David Neil wrote that
the being seemed to develop a mind of its own,
a will independent from hers. Eventually she had to dissolve
it through meditation. She described it chillingly, just as the
(09:14):
child leaves its mother's womb, a creation becoming a creature.
That moment, whether real, imagined, or symbolic, changed everything. It
introduced a new element into the Western understanding of the Tolpa,
the runway creation, a thought firm van rogue, a mind's
reflection turning into shadow. If Besson and Lee Bitter had
(09:36):
laid the ground where David near leadest part that caught
fire in public imagination, her account, half travelogue, half confession,
sped through Europe and beyond, inspiring writers, occultists, and later screenwriters.
Even she admitted it might have been a hallucination, but
the story had already escaped her control, much like her tulpa.
(09:58):
From that point on, the Topok would no longer belong
to temples or esoteric circles. It had entered the cultural
blood stream, ready to be reimagined in Bob novels, barnormal documentaries,
and eventually television shows like The x fis. What begun
as a Buddhist concept of compassion and ammanition of enlightened
(10:19):
mind and now been re shaped into something else, a
mirror of human imagination, then shred both wonder and fear.
The Topa had become an idea about us, about it happens,
and our thoughts refused to stay in our heads. If
the Topa began in monasteries and mystic salons, its newest
chapter was written in the most unexpected temple of all,
(10:39):
the Internet. It's just changed the thing that an idea
once whispered by the Josophus and travelers in the Humalayas,
will find its rebirth in message words and online threads.
But that's exactly what happened in the wid world of
the early two thousands. The Topa became something new, not
a relic of magic, but a psychological experiment. As a
(11:00):
killer spell cast Durst screens. Somewhere between the late nineteen
hundreds and early two thousands, they were tillpower surfaced, this
time in online forums like Fortune and later Reddit. The
users who gathered there began calling themselves topa mancers, self thought, experimenters,
or consciousness. For them topas or ghosts or spirits. They
(11:22):
revealed imaginary friends created through a deep focus visualization and dialogue.
One of the earliest communities form around an unexpected fandom,
My Little Pony Fans, often young adults, described using meditation
to create vivid companions modeled after the show's characters. At
first glance, it sounded himsical, a coalition of cartoon nostalgia
(11:47):
and metaphysics, But beneath it was something profoundly human, the
desire for connection. The Internet gave this practice a home,
a space where people could share techniques, troubleshit experiences, and
write creation guides, and through this digital scaffolding, the topa
evolved again from an esoteric phenomenon to a crowdsource psychology.
(12:09):
In twenty fourteen, survey capture just how far it had come.
About seventy six point five percent of practitioners believe toulpas
could be explained neurologically or psychologically. Only eight point five
percent still leaned on metaphysical ideas. That's a complete inversion
of its origins. What began as magic had been rebranded
(12:30):
as mental technology for the first time. The topa was
and a mystical emanation or a cosmic accident. It was
a mind hack, an experiment in consciousness, engineered by ordinary
people exploring extraordinary possibilities. Creating a topa is an instantaneous
It's not about wishing something into being. It's about training. Methodical, patient,
(12:55):
almost devotional. Topa mansers described the process as taking month,
sometimes years, of daily work. Their center of practice is
called forcing. Its the mental equivalent of esculpting clay. In
active forcing, the practitioner visualizes every detail of the tolpas form,
(13:15):
their face, voice, even warm. In passive forcing, they simply
talked of it. Narrating daily life, feeding books allowed imagining
how the topa might respond. Over time, the conversations begin
to feel real. The tolpa starts to think back. Creation
guys are astonishingly detailed. Some read like cognitive manuals. Visualize
(13:37):
body temperature, texture of skin, posture, habits, even subtle expressions
The aim isn't to build a puppet, but a partner,
a being with freedom of action, one that can surprise
the creator with its responses. Once the toupa's personality feels alive,
practitioners move into a stage called inpus, teaching the senses
(14:01):
to perceive the tulpa in the physical world. It begins subtly,
a feeling of presence over the shoulder, a shape glimpse
in peripheral vision, a voice heard internally but distinct from
one's own. With time, some claim to see, hear, or
even touch their tupa. The most advanced step is switching,
when the tupa takes control of the body and the
(14:24):
host consciousness moves in or into what they call wonderland
an inner landscaper. Both can coexist. It sounds unbelievable, yet
in many ways it resembles a kind of a structured
self hypnosis, a deliberate rewiring of attention and identity. You
could call it imagination made disciplined, or maybe identity made bars.
(14:46):
Who are these people giving form to their thoughts? Surveys
paint a surprising pitch. Most of themmancers are young, urban creative,
often in their twenties and many different as neurodivergent asignificant
number of report living with conditions like autism, ADHD, depression,
or anxiety. For them, the tupa isn't escapism, it's a lifeline.
(15:09):
When as I began to practice, the most common answer
wasn't curiosity or magic, it was companionship within the community.
A deep sense of ethics has emerged, a kind of
moral code for invisible beings. A toopa is considered a
real or somewhat real person. Guides emphasize respect, consent, and care.
(15:30):
You don't make a tupa for entertainment or out of boredom.
You make one to share a mind. And when that
connection fades, when a toupa manser no longer wishes to contain,
there's another rule. You don't destroy the tulpa. Ending their
existence is seen as tulpa murder. Instead, many describe a
symbolic act of peace, sending their creation to what they
(15:52):
call a toupa heaven won their land, a place in
the imagination where the tupa can live freely and bound
from the host. It's pabetic and extrangely moving because even
though the topa exists only within the mind. These committees
treat them as if they were as real as anyone else,
with dignity, emotions, and autonomy. In a way, they've built
(16:14):
an entire ethical framework around something that science will call
a mental construct. They've created a kind of social reality
for an inner phenomenon. Let's take everything we've learned about
topas the real thoughtforms the mind mad beings and magnify it.
What if a topa wasn't just the creation of one person,
but if many people, thinking and believing together could give
(16:35):
life to something far bigger. That's what the concept of
agrigor is all about, and agricore is described as a
kind of psychic entity or group mind, born out of
the collective thoughts, emotions, and believes of a group. You
can think of it as a macroscopic version of a topa.
Instead of one person's imagination made manifest, it's an idea
(16:59):
about by hundreds or even millions of minds. In ancient
Greek and Occulture editions, the aggregore was said to gain
strength as more people believed in it. The more attention, emotion,
and ritual it received, the stronger it became, influencing the
group that created it. In return, In other words, we
make it, but it also begins to make us. You
(17:22):
probably heard of one of the most famous examples of
a modern agrigore, the slender Man. He began as an
Internet meme, a ahutoshop creation born on online forums. But
as more people contributed stories, images and sightings, something strange happened.
It started to feel real. People cling to see him
(17:42):
in their dreams, in for us, in reflections, children feared him,
Some even acted in his name. What began as fiction
became a collective phenomenon, a digital age ulbas shape by fear, repetition,
and shared imagination. Another case, less chilling, but more deliberate,
the Philip Experiment. The nineteen seventies, a group of Canadian
(18:04):
parapsychologists tried to prove that consciousness could project itself outward.
They invented a fictional ghost named Philip Ailsford. They gave
him a full biography, his birth, his death, even his
favorite hobbies, and held seiences to summon him. And what happened.
The table began to move. There were wraps innacts that
(18:24):
seemed to answer questions the group reported feeding Philip's presence.
Now whether this was an unconscious movement or genuine phenomenon
is up for debate. But what's undeniable is that something
responded as if collective believe itself had found a way
to echo back. And Agrogres don't always live in the supernatural.
(18:46):
They can exist in systems we participate in every day.
Take a corporate brand, for instance, think of a company
like Apple. It's just a legal entity on paper, but
three years of marketing started telling and devotion, it became
something much more. People identify with it, They line up
for it, they defend it. It represents innovation, creativity, even lifestyle.
(19:08):
That's not just branding. That's belief. The same applies to
religious archetypes, collective symbols that embody shared ideals or values.
These figures are sustained by centuries of faith, devotion, and
ritual shaping entire cultures and moral systems. When you look
at it this way, egrigors are everywhere, from fandoms and
(19:31):
political movements, the ideologies and nations. Any our groups gathered
around a symbol conviction, something invisible takes root, something that
feeds and their belief. In a way, we're constantly building
invisible cities made of shared thought. Now you might be
thinking This sounds mystical, but modern psychology and neuroscience already
(19:52):
have names for how belief changes perception that start with
a placebo effect. It's one of the most studied examples
of how how the mind can shape reality on a
personal level. When someone takes a sugar pill but believes
it's medicine, the body actually reacts, releasing chemicals that reduce
pain or improve mood. The cure doesn't come from the pill,
(20:14):
it comes from belief. That's the power of expectation. It
doesn't just interpret reality, it modifies it. Then there's the
self fulfilling prophecy. It's a psychological loop where expectation becomes outcome.
If you truly believe you'll fail an exam, that believe
shapes your behavior. You study less, worry more, and performers.
(20:37):
If you believe you'll succeed, your confidence changes how you
prepare and respond. Believe alters action, Action alters reality, and
when we zoom out, when believe becomes collective, the results
can report their entire societies. Even ideas like the law
of attraction, while not scientifically proven, reflect this deep human
(20:59):
intuition that taught and emotion somehow tunas to the world
around us, that what we focus on, good or bad,
tends to multiply in our experience. We might not be
conjuring metaphysical forces, but we are constantly constructing mental realities
that affect how we live. The same cognitive principles behind
(21:19):
toupas and aggregors, focus, repetition, emotional charge, shared intent are
also with dry placeible healing, social change, and even cultural trends.
It's the same pattern expressed through different languages. Belief shaping perception,
perception shaping behavior, and behavior shaping the world we call will.
(21:42):
So when we talk about toulpas and agrigors, we're really
talking about a continuum from the individual mind to the
collective mind, from an inner combinion to a global idea,
from imagination the reality. Whenetrates the journey of the toulpa,
you're really tracing the story of the mind itself, from
(22:03):
ancient mysticism to modern science, from esoteric imagination to digital culture.
What began as a Buddhist concept of spulpa, a sacred
ammanition of compassion, has evolved into a secular practice, a
psychological experiment in imagination and agency. They stipomancers aren't claiming magic.
(22:25):
They're demonstrating mental plasticity. Through discipline, focus, and belief, a
person can create a companion who feels, speaks, and grows
beside them and the evidence. It's not paranormal, it's phenomenological.
It's in how they describe it, the voices, the dialogue,
the companionship that eases loneliness and anxiety, the confidence and
(22:47):
empathy that bloom in their daily lives. This isn't delusion.
It's an extraordinary form of self directed NeuRA training, a
living example of how believed and repetition can you write person.
But maybe the most beautiful realization here is that toulpas
aren't isolated miracles. They sit on a continue from the
(23:09):
personal to the collective, from the Tolpa to the Aggregor,
all powered by the same thing, attention, the same mechanism
that allows one person to create a companions, the same
force that allows millions to create meats, ideologies, gods, brands, nations.
Our minds don't just perceive the world, they participate in
(23:31):
its construction. So perhaps the real mystery isn't whether topas
or eggregors are real, is that all reality, to some
extent is shaped by participation. Each thought each story, each
act of shared imagination, adds another thread to the tapestry
we call the world. And maybe that's what this entire
(23:53):
series has been about, not monsters or miracles, but the quiet,
astonishing truth that belief is great. The study of Tolpas
isn't just about imaginary beings. It's about us and the
mind's and top potential to imagine, heal, and build entire
realities within itself. And if the mind can do all
(24:13):
that behind closed eyes, just imagine what else it might
be capable of. Tolpus and aggregors are, without adults, some
of the most curious and unsettling concepts I've come across
so far. I've spent a lot of time exploring the
strange corners of the human mind, but this, this one
felt different. The idea that you can create something alive,
(24:34):
something that can think and act on its own, just
by imagining it hard enough. It's equal parts mind blowing
and creepy. I'll be honest, I've never been the type
of imaginary friends. Even as a kid, I didn't have one,
So the thought of intentional building a tolpa conscious being
inside my own head feels unsettling. It's not something I
(24:56):
would ever try, but I can understand why others do.
For many, it's a source of comfort, a companion, a
way to feel less alone in a real that can
be overwhelmingly quiet or noisy, And for that I have respect.
Because sometimes survival takes strange forms. Then there's the idea
of the egger Gore, a collective thought form That one
(25:18):
fascinated me in a different way. It made me wonder
what if the things I believe in these stories I
cling to the symbols that guide me, But if they're
not entirely mine, What if they're products of a shared imagination,
build and sustained by countless other minds thinking the same way.
(25:38):
That thought is both beautiful and terrifying, Because if that's true,
if reality is something we call author, then maybe none
of us are truly in control. We're all just actors
inside someone else's script, living inside a collective dream that
keeps rewriting itself. Sometimes I even wonder if this whole thing,
(26:02):
live thought consciousness is just a simulation, a grand mental projection.
Maybe we're all told us of something larger, some greater
mind dreaming of us into being. I don't try to
escape it. I don't try to disprove it, because whether
we're in a simulation or in someone's imagination, this is
(26:25):
still where we are. And if this is the stage,
then I might as well play my part. Well, these
are just my thoughts, my little loop of wonder and unease.
But next episode will take that question further. If our
beliefs can shape what we see, then how much of
what we call reality is actually real? Can we bend it?
(26:47):
We write it is reality itself malleable? And that wraps
up this episode of Little Weird Mind Beyond Mutter. If
the song that you're thinking, are feeling a little weird
in the best way, go ahead and follow the podcast
so you don't miss the next episode. You can also
find me on Instagram at leil Weared Underscore Universe, and
(27:10):
if you'd like to support the show or grab some
curious little digital treats, you can visit my coffee page
at coffee dot com, forward Slash, Littleward Universe. Everything helps
keep the curiosity alive and the story is flowing. Some
are between imagination and existence, licensed space where belief turns
(27:30):
into being. And if we can create mindstrom thought, what's
to say we're not someone asses, stop to stay curious,
stay unreal, and the best say thanks for listening.