Sentience: What Is It and How to Achieve It

There was once a robot who had a chip that acted exactly as a brain does--meaning that nothing was programmed inside the chip and instead it merely allowed it to think on its own, and like the color brown and enjoy the scent of strawberries, and let it be afraid of jellyfish. The robot also had human emotions. It was easy to make it laugh and hard to make it upset. Finally, the robot was given the capability to love. It had a best friend and felt as strongly for him as we do for our best friends, and there was a lady that it crushed on. Everything about it was human . . . human emotions, human fears, and human thoughts. . . .

At what point did the robot stop being a robot and become human?

That's a story you might hear around the Internet, but it's one I would like you to keep in mind when thinking about tulpas. If they can think and feel things that are different from you, and act very, very human (unless, of course, they happen to be a pony or a Pokemon or something), then what makes them "less" human? Nothing. What makes them "less" existent, when they're so real that they think and feel? You answer that question. Of course, you can theoretically say, "Well, the fact that we created them makes them less," but that wouldn't really be right either. If you create them then surely they exist.

Remember: sentience = real.

With that being said, it brings us to the question of how we can make our tulpas real--because you cannot go throughout the tulpa process without your tulpa being sentient, otherwise you just have a servitor (a tulpa-like thoughtform that is not sentient and only exists to perform a certain job for its creator; for example, in your mindscape you might want a servitor who acts as your neighbor, so it does "neighbor things").

Mark this time in history, readers, because this is the first time I'm going to say this in context, and it won't be the last: what you do and how you do it is up to you, and it will probably work. Pretty much everything about tulpamancy happens within your own mind, and if you imagine your tulpa in a tank that is slowly getting filled with a chemical and that chemical is sentience, so that once the chemical has reached its full capacity in the tube that your tulpa is in that he, she, or it is fully sentient by the time that that is done . . . well, that will probably work. If you want to tell them, repeatedly, that they are sentient until the are, then that's okay as well. If you want to force personality (we'll get to that later) and let sentience happen in its own time--because it will--then that's fine, too.

FOR BEST RESULTS, believe that they are sentient from the start. There are many, many, many people who argue that tulpas aren't sentient at first, and that's okay, but regardless of what you believe act like they are. For first-timers, you'll probably feel a bit silly and as though you're talking to yourself, but I promise that if you try to believe (or even say) that they are sentient then it will come faster.

There are some exemptions where people won't be so sure or even won't believe but the tulpa comes along within the first day. This isn't exactly common, and although it's not "super-duper rare," you should go ahead and prepare to force from anywhere between three days to three weeks, give or take.

Readers, there will be a few more posts about sentience coming your way, such as when you know you've got it and my personal story with James and his sentience. It is so, so important to tulpamancy, and you can be sure to find more information over on tulpa.info.