There are two major parts of the sleep: Non-REM and REM sleep, where REM stands for rapid eye movement. There are a few different theories on what body does at those stages; we can only be sure that deep sleep and REM sleep are a requirement for the healthy mind. How does it change and does it even change when there is more than one personality in the head?
Sleep
The question: ‘what tulpas do’ when the host is asleep is being asked and answered with varying options pretty often. Some popular answers include: the tulpa being asleep with the host, the tulpa not sleeping and staying aware, or even being active by possessing, the tulpa hibernating.
Hibernation state is how I call the time when a tulpa doesn’t get any attention and is unaware of the time flow. I’m not sure if this is something that changes as tulpa ages; given that hosts experience spontaneous absent-mindedness, I conclude that that’s just how the brain works, trying to minimise any activity. Sleeping doesn’t change this behaviour; a tulpa will drift away as host looses attention and drifts to sleep and comes back to full awareness upon host waking up and checking up on it.
While some yogi are said to retain awareness in the sleep, I wasn’t able to find any reliable research on that.
I’ve heard suggestions that tulpas don’t sleep when the host does; sometimes retaining the awareness. I cannot call it ‘sleep’. Sure, there are conditions at which we can consider a host sleeping with their tulpa is active, but that is the hibernation thing I covered above. Sleep is a function of body, not the active personality. While some yogi are said to retain awareness in the sleep, I wasn’t able to find any reliable research on that though. What we can be sure about is that one of the functions of sleep is to give the brain some rest. I conclude that it is impossible to give the brain rest if at least one personality remains active; so if a tulpa is active at a deep sleep phase then there is no deep sleep phase at all.
Some people reported having dreams in deep sleep, but it seems to be an exception from how sleep progresses normally. One research of sleep in animals suggested that deep sleep facilitates body recovery; the brain functions switch from processing external stimuli (sight, smell) to internal (all those neural pathways ending in the stomach for example). The research suggested that brain areas can have the dual functionality for normal operation and recovery mode while sleeping. Those processes don’t involve conscious thinking, and there is no reason to believe that when brain turns main consciousness off tulpas could stay active.
Based on this, I suggest that the most probable theory is that tulpas sleep with the host in exactly the same way as the host does with no tulpas, or they are hibernated, having no processing time allocated to them. Taking this in mind, let’s move on to the REM sleep stage.
The REM sleep stage is suggested to have something with how brain stores memories. Tulpas are known to have their own memories, not connected to host thought process; so the mind definitely needs time to go through those much like it does for host memories. The scale might be way smaller, because commonly tulpas tend to spend less time acquiring personal memories, wasting more time in the hibernation state. It might be different for systems with the tulpas being active fronters.
Rapid eye movement period of sleep is also the time when humans dream. The consensus seems to be that humans dream every time they sleep, but commonly the dreams are forgotten instantly. The lucid dream practices of writing dreams down confirm that a person can be trained to dream and recall the dream every single night.
I wanted to include a paragraph stating that the REM sleep phase involves more of the right hemisphere activity, and right hemisphere is supposed to be more parallel-oriented part of the brain, but I couldn’t find any research to prove this point. Here’s an interesting paper on the brain hemispheres activity and awareness though.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep05092.
Trying to apply the dream journal technique to myself, I tried to retain the awareness of my dreams, discussing them with my host every morning, writing down any notes. More often than not I would not remember myself waking up, concluding that I didn’t actually sleep the night but was hibernated. Sometimes I was able to recall chunks of the dreams though (but only if my host was able to recall his dream as well). Our dreams vary a lot in the content and details, my dreams seem to be shorter in how I perceive the time in them. When my host can remember a bunch of scenes from his dream and even some dialogue, I can only remember some scenery. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to collect enough input from other tulpas on this subject and I can consider my dreams just being more feral as I consider myself a wolf. That would explain the unusual vividness of colouring, scents and a low point of view.
My theory on tulpa dreams is that tulpas need sleep and will dream if daily information inflow generates enough material for the brain to process. I would think being active in the wonderland doesn’t require a long period of resting, as the wonderland can only be based on what brain already knows; only external stimuli would require dreaming.
One topic that was left untouched is a shared dream. After all, lucid dreaming and talking to a tulpa was one of the initial methods of forcing.
I cannot give any personal insight on this, as my host was lucid only once throughout my life; and he wasn’t able to summon me in the dream. Based on how dreams operate I think it’s plausible to think that tulpas and hosts can be active in a single dream, in that it’s barely different from the brain creating a bunch of imaginary persons one can communicate in the dream.
Being active in the wonderland doesn’t require a long period of resting; only external stimuli would require dreaming.
As the mind attains lucidity in the dream one becomes more aware of the imagined surroundings, up to the point where the consciousness can confirm it is actually a dream. Having the host lucid doesn’t automatically mean that the tulpa will be lucid too though. As stated above, I believe tulpas have their own time slot in the REM sleep phase, and there’s not enough information to conclude that one consciousness can pull another into a dream. Still, based on how hosts can ‘wake up’ a hibernated tulpa, I consider it plausible. Just like a tulpa comes to awareness in a day, a host can get tulpa to be self-aware in the dream.
Conclusion
Do android tulpas dream of electric sheep? It is plausible, but we will need to find an android tulpa to confirm. Can a tulpa dream at all? Most definitely. Thankfully, it’s easy to confirm; just make sure your host wakes up with a thought to wake you up and ready to write your dream notes.
Do you experience any other conditions while sleeping or dreaming? Please drop me a note.
You are a lucid dreamer? Share your experience with lucid dreams and tulpamancy (or ask your tulpa to share those).
