Relation Between the Mind and Entities

This entry taken from a post I made on Astral Society, pasted here for consolidation purposes

French explorer Alexandra David-Neel described her personal experience in a Tibetan meditation to create a tulpa (what I perhaps would call an astral entity,) in her 1929 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

[...] the practice is considered as fraught with danger for every one who has not reached a high mental and spiritual degree of enlightenment and is not full aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the process. Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.

Tibetan magicians also relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfill a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet. The same thing, it is said, may become when the maker of the tulpa dies before having dissolved it. Yet, as a rule, the phantom either disappears suddenly at the death of the magician or gradually vanishes like a body that perishes for want of food. On the other hand, some tulpas are expressly intended to survive their creator and are specially formed for that purpose. These may be considered as

page 314 is not part of this book preview

Phooey! But, anyway, after hearing about all the dangers, Mme. David-Neel decided to create one herself. She succeeded...

I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.

The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder 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 on 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.

Tibetans disagree in their explanations of such phenomena ; some think a material form is really brought into being, others consider the apparition as a mere case of suggestion, the creator's thought impressing others and causing them to see what he himself sees.

Dion Fortune wrote about a similar experience in her Psychic Self-Defense, where she called them "artificial elementals".

The next type of psychic attack which we must consider is that conducted by means of artificial elementals. These are distinguished from thought-forms by the fact that, once formulated by the creative mind of the magician, they possess a distinct and independent life of their own... The life of these creatures is akin to that of an electric battery, it slowly leaks out by means of radiation, and unless recharged periodically, will finally weaken and die out. The whole question of the making, charging, recharging, or destruction of these artificial elementals is an important one in practical occultism.

The artificial elemental is constructed by forming a clear- cut image in the imagination of the creature it is intended to create, ensouling it with something of the corresponding aspect of one's own being, and then invoking into it the appropriate natural force. This method can be used for good as well as evil, and "guardian angels" are formed in this way. It is said that dying women, anxious concerning the welfare of their children, frequently form them unconsciously.

I myself once had an exceedingly nasty experience in which I formulated a were-wolf accidentally. Unpleasant as the incident was, I think it may be just as well to give it publicity, for it shows what may happen when an insufficiently disciplined and purified nature is handling occult forces.

I had received serious injury from someone who, at considerable cost to myself, I had disinterestedly helped, and I was sorely tempted to retaliate. Lying on my bed resting one afternoon, I was brooding over my resentment, and while so brooding, drifted towards the borders of sleep. There came to my mind the thought of casting off all restraints and going berserk.

The ancient Nordic myths rose before me, and I thought of Fenris, the Wolf-horror of the North. Immediately I felt a curious drawing-out sensation from my solar plexus, and there materialised beside me on the bed a large wolf. It was a well-materialised ectoplasmic form. Like Z., it was grey and colourless, and like him, it had weight. I could distinctly feel its back pressing against me as it lay beside me on the bed as a large dog might.

I knew nothing about the art of making elementals at that time, but had accidentally stumbled upon the right method - the brooding highly charged with emotion, the invocation of the appropriate natural force, and the condition between sleeping and waking in which the etheric double readily extrudes.

I was horrified at what I had done, and knew I was in a tight corner and that everything depended upon my keeping my head. I had had enough experience of practical occultism to know that the thing I had called into visible manifestation could be controlled by my will provided I did not panic; but that if I lost my nerve and it got the upper hand, I had a Frankenstein monster to cope with.

The Magus of Strovolos by Kyriacos C. Markides has a short word on it, that I can only paraphrase since I don't have the book with me: we are not molding clay, (when we create an entity) but dealing with the stuff of life.

Of course, if a fledgeling energy-worker could create a Frankenstein monster by means of a mental habit as common and pedestrian as brooding, then... we're all fucked, aren't we? Everybody has brooded and imagined junk at least once in our lives. If it were as difficult a process as Neel described, that would be great! So, entities are only made by people who know what they're doing. But, no, examining these accounts, it does not appear to be that difficult.