Tulpas - the imaginary sentient friend inside your own brain.

Has anyone encountered Tulpas before as a concept?

A Tulpa is a sort of intentionally cultivated imaginary friend that becomes a resident sub-process, a personality that resides within the brain alongside one's own self (somewhat reminiscent of Multiple Personality Disorder /Dissociative Identity Disorder).

A tulpa is believed to be an autonomous consciousness co-inhabiting a brain with their creator, often with a form of their creator's initial choice and design. A tulpa is entirely sentient and in control of their opinions, feelings, form and movement. They are willingly created via a number of techniques to act as companions, muses, and advisers. Tulpa forms can either be visualised in the mind's eye, or, with practice, seen as a hallucinatory figure using a technique called imposition.

I find this completely fascinating, and rather unsettling. It's very strange to recognise selves as multi-agent threaded sub-systems of selfish neurons competing for resources and dopamine. The self is an emergent property of these sub-agencies, that we apply for the purpose of 'public relations' and primary executive function - like a Prime Minister who is nominally in charge but still has to herd cats at times to get things done.

Another analogy would be a company that has agency and continuous existence, though its individual sub agents evolve over time.

Tulpas start off like a child, there is a learning process, but they learn very quickly because they have an immediate command of language etc. I find this property is rather reminiscent of some forms of AI...

Brains are weird. Very, very weird.