What is still interesting is how Allende managed to come up with all the weird info and ideas, unless he was some sort of idiot savant who read a lot.

Even if we look at the 1950s with filters of nostaligia, the people I’ve talked to who lived through that era also seem to think things were a lot less serious and more fun at the time.

Don’t worry Nick, the longevity drugs will be much better and chaper by the time we need them!

See my earlier post for more on Jessup and Allende.

I mention it because the book reveals how David-Neel’s attempt at “tummo” or yogic inner heat was sincere yet a failure: She got a very bad cold, the reverse of the goal to dry several ice cold blankets thrown on the meditator’s body. Her “tulpa” was created based on a process that David-Neel acknowledged commonly created insanity — the confinement of an individual to a very restricted box for what could be over three years. For example in the Catskill Mountains there is a confined Tibetan training — 3 years, 3 months and 3 days — but even then it’s house with outside access and several people together, etc. So it’s hard to say how much David-Neel’s “tulpa” was the result of some sort of group hallucination, as could easily be the case in such scenarios.

I think Milarepa, the acknowledged leader of Tibetan meditation, reveals the true methodology for tulpa creation. Full-lotus was his means and it’s one that can not be hallucinated. I was reading an excellent book on dakinis (a type of tulpa) stating Milarepa would have to eat normal food when he was not in full-lotus samadhi but otherwise he was fed by what could also be called tulpas — spirit-energy channelled through the third eye. As the energy gets stronger then it certainly can take real physical form but in the West it’s much more common to hallucinate such experiences, as is the case with drugs (just an override of the thalamus as the cerebellum directly downloads images to the cerebral cortex). What enables a true tulpa to be created is the same as the conversion of tummo — electrochemical heat — into electromagnetic-light energy that becomes so intense it enables telekinesis. Since David-Neel failed at tummo we can therefore logically conclude that her tulpa was also unreal.