How Imagination Becomes Reality: Grant Morrison and the Tulpa Effect

Channel: The Observing I Podcast

Grant Morrison had a nervous breakdown in 1988 while writing about insanity. He was channeling madness, writing madness, becoming madness. And then one day the character he created walked into his living room in Glasgow and sat down across from him. King Mob. The bald anarchist revolutionary. They had a conversation. Morrison couldn’t remember who spoke first. That is when he understood. Fiction is not inert. Imagination is not passive. When you imagine something hard enough, with enough detail, with enough belief, it does not stay on the page. It gets up. It walks. It looks at you with your own eyes. The Tibetan monks knew this centuries ago. They called them tulpas. Thought forms. Beings conjured from concentrated imagination, fed by attention until they achieve independence. Alexandra D

Recommended

LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven$18.63A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years• Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author’s systematic

Anathem: The #1 New York Times Bestselling Epic Novel of Ideas about Philosophers, Scientists, and a Crisis of Astronomical Proportions$17.99A #1

Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)$13.69Quicksilver

Far Journeys (Journeys Trilogy)$9.97The sequel to Monroe's

Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition$19.99Now in a gorgeous new hardcover edition featuring never-before-seen material, the “brilliantly realized” (

Deep Self: Consciousness Exploration in the Isolation Tank (Consciousness Classics)$21.02First published more than 20 years ago and now with a new introduction by the author, this classic work presents the methods and conclusions of more than 25 years of experimentation with the isolation

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.