Neuro–Linguistic Programming: Volume I. The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience

When a magician in top hat and cape calls for his beautiful assistant to lead an enormous elephant to center stage, we lean back in our chairs and prepare to enjoy the illusion. "Presto!" he shouts, and the giant Jumbo disappears, right on schedule. We smile to ourselves, knowing the "magic" was performed with mirrors, but feeling good just the same in deliberately allowing our perceptions to be fooled by a highly skilled entertainer. Were we to step onstage with the magician and his assistant, we would be entering another world — a world in which the mirrors themselves were visible and the elephant so near that we'd hear its breathing and feel the stage moving slightly as Jumbo shifted from foot to foot. There is something slightly disconcerting about being near the "source" of an illusion, but once we learn precisely how the "elephant disappearing act" is done, our enjoyment is enhanced rather than diminished — we learn to watch for and enjoy the skill with which the magician performs as well as retaining the option of taking pleasure in the illusion itself. We may begin to understand that the ability to make such distinctions is a very special and unique resource, one that extends far beyond the world of stages, mirrors and magicians in its significance.

Neurolinguistic programming is a model about the special world of magic and illusion of human behavior and communication — the study of the components of perception and behavior which makes our experience possible. The name neurolinguistic programming stands for what we maintain to be the basic process used by all human beings to encode, transfer, guide, and modify behavior.

For us behavior is programmed by combining and sequencing neural system representations — sights, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes — whether that behavior involves making a decision, throwing a football, smiling at a member of the opposite sex, visualizing the spelling of a word or teaching physics. A given input stimulus is processed through a sequence of internal representations, and a specific behavioral outcome is generated.

"Neuro" (derived from the Greek neuron for nerve) stands for the fundamental tenet that all behavior is the result of neurological processes. "Linguistic" (derived from the Latin lingua for language) indicates that neural processes are represented, ordered and sequenced into models and strategies through language and communication systems. "Programming" refers to the process of organizing the components of a system (sensory representations in this case) to achieve specific outcomes.

No matter what background or occupation you have, the reader has probably at some time or other had the experience of interacting with someone on the stage on which you perform, in a way that was particularly effective and allowed you to get some specific outcome that was of importance for you, the other person and/or a number of other people. This may have been the communication or learning of some important information, making a sale, solving a problem, or so on. Afterwards, though delighted with yourself, you may have had no real idea of what it was that characterized and distinguished that occasion, and the effectiveness, speed and elegance of your communication, from a normal situation.

Or perhaps you have met a person or had the experience of spending time with an individual who is eminently successful in the particular field they have chosen to accept and you have wondered what characterized the differences in their behavior from yours or from that of other individuals. You may have asked yourself what is it that allows them to do what may seem incredible or magical to others.

Or perhaps you yourself have a particular talent or ability that you would like to offer or teach to others, but have no real idea of what it is that enables you to perform your task with such elegance and sophistication.

This book is about how to unpack and repackage behavior, like that in the examples above, into efficient and communicable sequences that will be available to every member of the species. It will provide the reader with a set of tools that will enable him or her to analyze and incorporate or modify any sequence of behavior that they may observe in another human being.

1. Modeling

Down through the ages human beings have evolved many systems or models for understanding and dealing with the universe we live in. These models for organizing and coding the interactions of people in their environment have been handed such names as culture, religion, art, psychology, philosophy, politics, industry and science. Each model typically overlaps with other models and may include smaller models nested inside itself, just as science includes physics, biology, oceanography, chemistry, etc. and overlaps with industry in the area of research. Each model differs from the others in terms of that portion of human experience it represents and emphasizes and in terms of the way it organizes and uses its selected set of representations. All are similar in their ultimate concern with the outcomes of human behavior.

The purpose of each model is to identify patterns in the interaction between human behavior and the environment, so that the behavior of individual human beings can be systematized within the selected context to achieve desired and adaptive outcomes more efficiently, effectively and consistently. For example, scientists are trained to operate within a specific model to help them organize their behavioral priorities in gathering and interpreting data. They are taught to recognize and work toward specific desired outcomes — as are businessmen, artists, politicians and medical doctors.

1.1 The Map Is Not the Territory

As participant organisms within the universe,[4] we, the model–makers who devise, perpetuate and extend our cultural models, do not operate directly on the world. Rather, we operate through coded interpretations of the environment as received and experienced in our sensory representational systems — through sight, sound, smell, taste and feeling. Information about our external universe (as well as our internal states) is received, organized, consolidated and transmitted through an internal system of neural pathways that culminate in the brain — our central processing biocomputer. This information is then transformed through internal processing strategies that each individual has learned. The result is what we call "behavior." In NLP behavior is defined as all sensory representations experienced and expressed internally and/or externally for which evidence is available from a subject and/or from a human observer of that subject. That is, the act of skiing down a beautiful snow–covered mountainside and the act of imagining oneself doing so are equally to be considered behaviors in the context of neurolinguistic programming.

Both macrobehavior and microbehavior are, of course, programmed through our neurological systems. Macrobehavior is overt and easily observable, as in driving a car, speaking, fighting, eating, getting sick or riding a bicycle. Microbehavior involves subtler though equally important phenomena such as heart rate, voice tempo, skin color changes, pupil dilation and such events as seeing in the mind's eye or having an internal dialogue.

Obviously, not all culturally transmitted models for behavior have been incorporated into all members of the human species, but most of us have many of them available in our representational systems.[5] The development, then, of these models—and the behavior generated through them—form a significant statement about the neurological systems of those individuals who have adopted them as organizational strategies for their behavior. That is, the variety and range of human behavior, viewed in the context of the models that generate those behaviors, tells us much about human neurological organization. The state of these models today —the most current point in their development—represents the evolution of ideas, the surviving wisdom of our predecessors. Ultimately, after the uproar of economic, religious and ideological disputes has subsided, models are kept or discarded on the basis of their adaptiveness or usefulness as guides for the behavior of members of the species. The acceptance or rejection, the elaboration and expansion of these models reflects the evolution of human thought and behavior.[6]

1.2. A New Model

Neurolinguistic programming is a natural extension of this evolutionary process—a new model. It is important to realize that models such as those described in Section 1 are not simply "out there" somewhere, external to us as individuals. Rather, politics, religion, psychology and the other models are ways of looking at, talking about and feeling about the same experiential domain: human behavior. NLP differs from other models of behavior in that it is specifically a model of our behavior as model–makers. It is what we call a meta–model, a model of the modeling process itself.

Implicit in NLP as a meta–model is its broad range of practical applications. From individual interactions to group, corporate and system dynamics of any kind, the behavioral parameters can be identified, organized and programmed to obtain specific objectives. When the confusions and complexities of life experience are examined, sorted and untangled, what remains is a set of behavioral elements and rules that aren't so difficult to understand after all. In this book we will describe techniques and applications derived from NLP and designed for use in behavioral interactions in any area of human endeavor.

1.3 The Structure of Models

The construction of all models requires the identification and representation of 1) a set of structural elements and 2) a syntax. The structural elements are the "building blocks" of a model. The syntax is the set of rules or directives that describe how the building blocks may be put together.

In linguistic models, for example, the structural elements are typically words: written and/or spoken vocabularies. The syntax is the set of grammatical rules that dictate how the various words may be fitted together. The English language has a relatively small vocabulary (about 36,000 words), yet throughout the history of English speaking people, millions of different sentences have been uttered and millions of different ideas have been put into words. This is possible because the words may be assembled in different orders, sequences and forms which provide particular contexts in which words can evoke unique meaning and significance. All the books ever written in the English language are composed of the same words used over and over in different orders; the words, in turn, are assembled from the same twenty–six letters of the alphabet.

To be a fluent speaker of the language, one does not have to memorize all possible word combinations accepted as being well–formed sentences. That would be impossible. Yet somehow, we know that certain sequences of words constitute understandable sentences while others do not. For example, consider the previous sentence with the words reversed:

Not do others while sentences understandable constitute words of sequences certain that know we somehow yet.

Although each word may be easily understood, this sequence doesn't impress us as a meaningful sentence. Since the words are precisely the same set presented previously in a different order, we may conclude that the condition of well–formedness must be attributed to the order or sequence in which we see or hear the words. Given a finite vocabulary and a small set of generating principles, a syntax, it is possible to create an infinite number of well–formed sentences by changing the order of the words in an appropriate manner. To learn a language, it is necessary only to learn its vocabulary and syntax.[7]

In particle physics, electrons, protons, neutrons and other subatomic entities make up the set of structural elements; the syntax is the set of rules of possible interactions among various combinations of particles. In a similar manner, models such as banking, government, art, agriculture and film production are constructed of a set of structural elements and a syntax.

Neurolinguistic programming shows us that the complexities of human behavior, like the infinite number of possible well–formed sentences in a language, can be reduced to a finite number of structural elements and a syntax. In the context of the NLP model we maintain that all behavior — from learning, remembering and motivation to making a choice, communication and change —is the result of systematically ordered sequences of sensory representations. Many of the problems and phenomena that have baffled behavioral scientists in the past can be understood, predicted and changed by using the NLP model. To accomplish this, we join the magician on his stage, so to speak, and begin to poke around the mirrors and other apparatus of the thaumaturgical art to gain a

new perspective on what happens before, during and after the waving of that magic wand which generates such a fascinating array of experiences for us all.

Because certain aspects of the structural elements and syntax of every model are experienced (or defined) as being within or beyond human control, every model contains within itself another behavioral model that identifies the possibilities and limitations of human behavior with respect to desired goals or outcomes.

Borrowing a flow chart from decision theory, we can represent this model visually as:

We will assume that the people concerned with the model represented by this diagram agree that environmental variables include all dimensions of experience beyond their control and that decision variables include all dimensions of experience within their control. For example, an executive planning committee would agree that they could decide when and where to build a new manufacturing plant toward achieving the outcome of increased production and sales; they would also agree that production and sales would be affected by inflation, government monetary policy, competition and consumer demand, which lie outside their control.

Again, the magician knows that under the watchful eyes of an attentive audience, on a stage of limited size, he can't possibly "make" an elephant weighing several tons disappear — unless he utilizes those same constraints (environmental variables) effectively in achieving his outcome — the disappearing act. Outcomes depend on contributions from both environmental variables and decision variables.

In fact, one of the major historical trends in the evolution of models of behavior is the transformation or utilization of experiences once regarded as environmental variables into decision variables. This trend is particularly evident in recent technological advances in the computer sciences and in manned space travel — more effective models operating to expand the potentials of human behavior.

Just as the computer and information processing industries have advanced tremendously in the past twenty five years due to the new technology provided by the semiconductor (the processing capacity of what once used to require a machine that filled a large room is now available from a chip no bigger than the head of a pin), so too we intend that the behavioral professions and sciences will advance in the coming decades as the result of the new technology provided by neurolinguistic programming.

1.4 Western Scientific Models

In many ancient traditional cultures, much of the activity of the people was experienced as being determined by forces beyond their control, forces often assumed as originating outside the realm of experience available to the human senses. Decisions such as when to plant, how to cope with disease and when to change living sites were regarded as a function of these forces — the gods, the planets or other entities whose processes were either capricious or at least beyond human comprehension.

Western scientific models, in contrast, are grounded in the realm of sensory experience. By claiming sense phenomena as their structural elements or building blocks, scientific models derive the generalizations they offer as guiding principles for human behavior from a domain of experience that is available, potentially at least, to all members of the human species. Observations and/or experiments are conducted to determine whether aspects of patterning (often required to be measurable or quantifiable) can be discovered. The attitude implicit in the scientific model is that any portion of our experience can be understood and eventually controlled if we are willing to study the processes which underlie that experience. Technology, the systematic application of scientific principles to obtain useful outcomes, evolves as we discover how our behavior affects a particular set of structural elements in the context of each new scientific discovery. Useful applications may be many steps removed or only indirectly related to the immediate frame of reference of a new discovery, but practical uses or outcomes often become evident if the search is undertaken.

As a result of this process, more and more dimensions of experience from the class of environmental variables have been shifted to the class of decision variables. Not long ago in our historical past, waterfalls — though considered awe–inspiring and beautiful— were thought to be a hindrance to the spread and development of industry and commerce because they prevented rivers from being utilized for transportation and communication. Today we have learned to use them as sources of hydroelectric power which, in turn, has paved the way to greatly increased choices with respect to transportation and communication. Again, we once viewed the appearance of mold on bread as a sign that the bread was useless. We learned, however, to use the mold itself by deriving penicillin from it — one of the most brilliant and useful medical discoveries in history. The principle of inoculation in preventive medicine involves the transformation of bacteria and viruses associated with the onset of particular diseases into weakened forms whose introduction into the human body stimulates our immunological systems to protect us from those same diseases.

Such examples could easily be multiplied, and they all share a common pattern: phenomena which at one point in history were considered a nuisance, an obstacle or even a danger have been studied and understood sufficiently to allow us to utilize them in ways that benefit us. We have expanded or changed our models to transform problematic phenomena thought to be outside our control into valuable contributions to human well–being, within our control. Each of the examples in the previous paragraph, taken in its historical context, involved the shift of a portion of our experience from the class of environmental variables into the class of decision variables by reframing or restructuring the way a problematic phenomenon fit into our models. It is the continuation of this process, the shifting of environmental variables into decision variables by sorting and punctuating the way the variables fit into context, that is the goal of neurolinguistic programming. In our modern technologically oriented culture we have developed a large number of machines and devices which we use in our everyday activities. Nearly without exception these machines embody one or more of the forces of gravity, electricity or magnetism as an integral part of their functioning. Yet an adequate theory of these primary forces remains an elusive goal for the scientist. Fortunately effective models which secure the outcomes for which they are designed do not require complete and satisfactory theories. The reader will search in vain for any theory of human perception, communication and experience within these covers. Our goals here are much more modest — a model of a portion of these complex human activities which works.

Throughout the development of western scientific models there has been a major limitation imposed on the possible outcomes of human behavior, a limitation buried deeply in the empirical heart of scientific methodology itself. If we imagine ourselves stepping into the scientist's shoes, slipping into a crisp white lab coat and looking through the scientist's eyes, we may picture a universe of phenomena neatly interconnected by formulas, laws, theories and hypotheses — all "out there," either already discovered and explained or waiting to be discovered and explained. What's missing? To find out we remove the lab coat, step out of the scientist's shoes, take three steps back and look again. The scientist is missing. The model–maker, observer, measurer, mathematician, inventor of laws, theories and hypotheses — gone. According to its own empirical constraint, the syntax of science simultaneously defines an external model of "reality" and banishes the scientist from that model. By definition, the locus of behavioral control is "out there" in the model, not in us.

This pattern is particularly evident in the model of modern medicine. This model postulates that internal disorders such as tumors, infections, diseases and other pathological conditions inside the individual are caused primarily by environmental variables (such as germs, viruses, smog, heat, cold, ultraviolet light, etc.) and necessarily require external remedial treatment to restore the human body to health. Rather than utilize ways in which the biologicial system could be altered, regulated or adapted by the individual himself to change the pathological condition. Simplified, the remedial treatments of choice reduce to adding or subtracting something from the biological system — i.e., chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery or some combination of these. In this model even behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia are thought to originate from causes outside the behavior of the individual and to require external remedial treatment.

On the other hand, phenomena like the placebo effect, statistically important in all clinical drug research, are generally ignored because they can't be adequately explained in the context of the current medical model. When a patient responds to a placebo, a "fake" pill or injection of chemically inactive ingredients, by recovering from an ailment, he or she is considered an oddity who has been fooled by the fake medicine. Such cases are generally filed and forgotten, rather than being taken seriously as pointing in the direction of an alternative model of medicine. If the behavior of those who respond well to placebos can be modeled, their strategies for self–healing might be taught to others, an option for recovery that wouldn't require the ingestion of chemically active drugs with their typically undesirable side–effects. In the current medical model, the patient places the locus of behavioral control in the physician; the physician places it in the model. The placebo effect suggests that "getting sick" and "getting well" are, in fact, behaviors and, further, that the locus of behavioral control is in the individual — that sickness can be a decision variable for the individual.

This pattern of placing behavioral control outside ourselves has undoubtedly evolved from the fact that scientists have always looked outside themselves for variables and for sources of instrumental control that more easily lend themselves to measurement and reproducible results. The original model of behavioral science, like that of modern medicine, adopted the pattern of locating behavioral control outside the individual. Because the internal sensory–motor processes of the organism aren't measurable by the instruments available to the behavioral scientist, they are not considered to be part of the domain of the model.

1.5 Extending the Modern Scientific Model

As we pointed out earlier in this chapter, neurolinguistic programming constitutes the next natural extension in the evolutionary development of cultural models. By understanding that human beings do not operate directly on the world they are experiencing but through sensory transforms of that world, we also understand that "truth" is a metaphor rather than a yardstick calibrated to some absolute standard of external reality. Cultural models, including that of science, do not express "truth," but prescribe domains of experience within which behavior is organized into certain patterns. To the extent that the structural elements, syntax and limits of each model are arbitrarily selected and defined, we might suggest that models, in general, are metaphors for the convenient assumption that experience and reality are the same. Similarly, NLP is not the "truth" either, but another metaphor — a user oriented metaphor designed to generate behavioral options quickly and effectively.

NLP extends the limits of the modern scientific model by placing the locus of behavioral control in the individual. Einstein's relativity theory indicates that time, mass and spatial dimensions change relative to the observer's frame of reference at speeds approaching the speed of light. Although Einstein's theory represents an extension of the limits of preceding scientific models by its inclusion of the observer's perspective, behavioral control in his theory is a function of the relation between the velocity of the system and that of the speed of light, both of which are assumed to be external to the observer. NLP takes one further step and proposes to examine the correlations between what we experience as the external environment and our internal representations of that experience. To accomplish this, NLP draws from many recent advances in the neurosciences, psychophysiology, linguistics, cybernetics, communication theory and the information sciences.

To understand how our neurological processes are related to behavioral models, it is useful to represent mathematical equations from the scientific model as metaphors for those processes. Each mathematical equation defines a pattern in which a sequence of operations performed on specific variables results in a given outcome. For example, Newton's equation F = ma defines force as a function of (and equivalent to) the product of mass and acceleration. Each appropriate set of numerical values plugged into m and a, when multiplied together, expresses a specific outcome — force. The form of the equation remains the same, no matter what quantitative values are substituted for m and a, just as the form of a neurological pattern or sequence of operations remains the same, no matter what content is processed through it. It isn't important whether F = ma describes a real physical law; what's important about this formula is its demonstration of the human capacity to develop neural patterns that allow us to organize our representations of physical phenomena to obtain desired outcomes. Just as we have invented complex neural patterns that allow us to tie our shoelaces, play golf or read a book, we can develop neural patterns that fulfill other objectives.

All behavioral models — from complex governmental and business operations involving thousands of people to individual activities like eating an apple and jogging — exist and function through laws, rules and assumptions incorporated into individuals in the form of neural patterns. If the neural pattern is absent, the behavior is absent; if the behavior is ineffective or inappropriate, the neural pattern is not adequately organized to elicit an effective or appropriate behavior. The overt and implied laws, rules and assumptions of any model function as codes or metaphors for different patterns of neurological organization aimed at producing a particular set of behavioral outcomes.

Since NLP is concerned with form, not content, strategies for effective and appropriate behaviors may be drawn from any model and applied to any other model of our choice. For example, the creative strategy of an artist may be appropriately transferred to an uninspired aerodynamic engineer faced with a challenging design problem. Or, the operational motivation strategy of a highly efficient business organization may be adapted to a sluggish government department. Because NLP is ultimately concerned with representations of experience at the neurological level, it is unnecessary to refer to the names or contents of the models from which particular forms, structural interrelationships and outcomes have been derived, except for illustration purposes. It is not important to us whether an individual claims the source of an inspiration to be God, a delicious chocolate mousse or the beauty of a mountain lake — if the same neural strategy sequence in each case produces identical behavioral outcomes.

Just as behavioral strategies may be transferred from one person to another, the same person may apply a successful strategy from one aspect of his or her experience (skill at bridge playing, for example) to another aspect (difficulty in decision–making, for example). Typically, each person has a rich endowment of experiential assets to draw from and may choose to adapt strategies from strong areas of experience to weak or impoverished areas by using methods we will describe in forthcoming chapters.

Neurolinguistic programming is a model designed to increase the possible outcomes of behavior — that is, a model for transforming more environmental variables to the class of decision variables.

The process of modifying behavior, whether applied to an individual, group or organization in order to achieve new outcomes can be described in its most general form as a three–point process:

1. Representation of the present state

2. Representation of the outcome or target state

3. Representation of resources

Resources are accessed and applied to the problematic or present state of affairs to help the individual, group or organization move to the outcome or desired state:

The remainder of this book will essentially deal with the nature of each of these three steps. It will involve, more specifically, such issues as:

a) the nature of maladapted behavior—what constitutes a problematic response;

b) the nature of growth, choice and generative behavior;

c) how to identify, in sensory specific terms, a specific outcome, set or class of outcomes;

d) how to identify and represent, in the appropriate sensory modalities, the elements (resources, external and behavioral) involved in achieving that outcome;

e) the representation of the forms and rules of interaction between these elements that identify, generate and predict the desired outcomes; and

f) how to identify and represent the present state of progress or development so that it may be used to provide the individual, family or organization with feedback on where they are with respect to their outcomes.

Our claim is that if any individual or group displays any sequence of behavior which others find useful, we — employing the tools and principles of NLP — can chunk and punctuate that sequence into units that can be practiced and readily learned by any other member of the species.

—

NLP is a new way of thinking — a new model — which involves the use of changing patterns dependent on contextual conditions and upon feedback within and between behaviors observable in your ongoing experience. While both formal and systematic, the NLP process is held rigorously accountable to the evidence of sensory experience—yours and that of others who use the process. As a model of the modeling process, it is constantly changing and growing on the basis of feedback from its own discoveries. (For a further elaboration of this discussion, see our forthcoming book Modeling.)

1.6 Modeling Elegance

In the modeling and reproduction of strategies for eliciting outcomes, we are also extending another evolutionary trend in the development of behavioral models with NLP. This is the trend toward increasingly elegant models. The term "elegance" here refers to the number of rules and distinctions a particular model requires to be able to account for all of the outcomes for which it has been designed. The most elegant model would be the one which employs the fewest number of distinctions and which is still able to secure a domain of outcomes equal to or greater than that of more complex models. For people and organizations, this means a significant saving of time and energy in the development and implementation of behavioral outcomes necessary to achieve their goals.

1. The transition of models toward increased elegance occurs in two ways:The elements identified as having casual importance become more basic to the particular interactions involved in achieving outcomes. In NLP, for instance, we begin by showing how the five classes of sensory experience (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting) are the basis for the strategies people have for generating and guiding behavior, rather than more complex and abstract concepts such as "ego," "mind," "human nature," mechanisms," "morals," "reason," etc., employed by other behavioral models.

2. The orientation of the model turns much more toward form than content. By "form" we mean the principles or rules of interaction between structural elements that generate the possible states or interactions of the system. The basic equations or physical "laws" developed by Newton, for instance, are simple and elegant statements of the relationships between physical elements (at a certain level of experience) that can be used to describe, predict and prescribe the changing events that make up the content of a large portion of our physical universe. These same formal rules hold for the motions and interactions of many different objects: springs, billiard balls, pendulums, cars, projectiles and so on.

The reduction of the syntax of a model to that set of rules necessary and sufficient to describe interactions among its structural elements increases rather than diminishes the power and effectiveness of the model. For example, chemists don't need to test all possible chemical combinations to discover which outcomes will be successful. A knowledge of the basic properties of atomic elements and molecular structures allows them to predict, in many cases, which chemical interactions will work and which will not. The elegance of the model of modern chemistry enhances efficiency and streamlines the operational strategies for predicting and generating outcomes.

Modeling elegance serves a similar function in NLP, cutting through the complexities of human behavior to reveal the underlying rules that govern behavioral interactions. NLP is concerned with the generative principles of behavior rather than the content, which in its infinite variety may become infinitely complicated and confusing. Because it concentrates on form, NLP is freed from attachment to a particular behavioral content. In this perspective the evolution of behavior offers us an alternative to "specialization," which is often just familiarity with content.

By knowing the basic elements and generative rules of a particular model of behavior, whether that of science, technology, business, law, therapy, medicine, politics or education, it isn't necessary to spend years studying the particulars of behavior within each model in order to master it. Indeed, progress in the efficiency and potential of education has always occurred as more elegant models have developed.

1.7 Representational Systems: The Building Blocks of Behavior

The basic elements from which the patterns of human behavior are formed are the perceptual systems through which the members of the species operate on their environment: vision (sight), audition (hearing), kinesthesis (body sensations) and olfaction/gustation (smell/taste). The neurolinguistic programming model presupposes that all of the distinctions we as human beings are able to make concerning our environment (internal and external) and our behavior can be usefully represented in terms of these systems. These perceptual classes constitute the structural parameters of human knowledge.

We postulate that all of our ongoing experience can usefully be coded as consisting of some combination of these sensory classes. In our previous work (see Patterns II) we have chosen to represent and abbreviate the expression of our ongoing sensory experience as a 4–tuple. The 4–tuple is shown visually as:

< A^e,i, V^e,i, K^e,i, O^e,i >

Here, the capital letters are abbreviations for the major sensory classes or representational systems that we use to make our models of the world:

A = Auditory/Hearing

V = Visual/Sight

K = Kinesthetic/Body Sensations

O = Olfactory/Gustatory—Smell/Taste

The superscripts "e" and "i" indicate whether the representations are coming from sources external, "e", to us, as when we are looking at, listening to, feeling, smelling or tasting something that is outside of us, or whether they are internally generated, "i", as when we are remembering or imagining some image, sound, feeling, smell or taste. We can also show the 4–tuple iconically as:

The following excerpt from Patterns II will further assist the reader in understanding the 4–tuple:

"Assuming that you are a reader who at this point in time is sitting comfortably in a quiet place and that you are reading alone, the 4–tuple can be used to represent your present experience of the world as follows:

The specific 4–tuple which represents the reader's experience where i is the referential index of the reader and the blankspace Ø indicates no experience in that mode.

"In words, the reader's present experience of the world is represented by a description of the visual input from the words, his present kinesthetic sensations and the olfactory sensation available. Since, by our assumption, the reader is in a place where he is presently receiving no auditory input from the external world, the value of the variable A_t (the auditory tonal portion of his experience) is Ø. The values of the V, K and O variables are specified by a description of the input from the world that is impinging on the reader at this point in time. Notice that in specifying the 4–tuple for the reader's present experience, we restricted ourselves to representing experience originating in the world external to the reader. The 4–tuple can also be used to represent the reader's total experience — that is, his present ongoing experience independently of whether it originates in the world external to the reader or not. We have found it useful in our work to identify the origin of the portion of the experience described in the 4–tuple — that is to distinguish between which portion of the experience represented by the 4–tuple originates in the world external to the person whose experience is represented by the 4–tuple and which portion is generated by the person's own internal processes. One easy way of representing this distinction is by simply attaching a superscript to each component of the 4–tuple — either an i (internally generated) or an e (externally generated). Thus assuming that the reader is reading with internal dialogue at this point in time and using the superscripts which distinguish the internally generated from externally originated components of the 4–tuple, the reader's 4–tuple would look like:

“As with all the distinctions in the model, this superscript distinction between internally and externally generated experience will be employed only when it is useful for the task for which it is to be used.”

In NLP, sensory systems have much more functional significance than is attributed to them by classical models in which the senses are regarded as passive input mechanisms. The sensory information or distinctions received through each of these systems initiate and/or modulate, via neural interconnections, an individual's behavioral processes and output. Each perceptual class forms a sensory–motor complex that becomes "response–able" for certain classes of behavior. These sensory–motor complexes are called representational systems in NLP.[8]

Each representational system forms a three part network: 1) input, 2) representation/processing and 3) output. The first stage, input, involves gathering information and getting feedback from the environment (both internal and external). Representation/processing includes the mapping of the environment and the establishment of behavioral strategies such as learning, decisionmaking, information storage, etc. Output is the casual transform of the representational mapping process.

"Behavior" in neurolinguistic programming refers to activity within any representational system complex at any of these stages. The acts of seeing, listening or feeling are behavior. So is "thinking," which, if broken down to its constituent parts, would include sensory specific processes like seeing in the mind's eye, listening to internal dialogue, hawing feelings about something and so on. All output, of course, is behavior—ranging from micro–behavioral outputs such as lateral eye movements, tonal shifts in the voice and breathing rates to macro–behavioral outputs such as arguing, disease and kicking a football.

Our representational systems form the structural elements of our own behavioral models. The behavioral "vocabulary" of human beings consists of all the experiential content generated, either internally or from external sources, through the sensory channels during our lives. The maps or models that we use to guide our behavior are developed from the ordering of this experience into patterned sequences or "behavioral phrases," so to speak. The formal patterns of these sequences of representations are called strategies in neurolinguistic programming.

The way we sequence representations through our strategies will dictate the significance that a particular representation will have in our behavior, just as the sequencing of words in a sentence will determine the meaning of particular words. A specific representation in itself is relatively meaningless. What is important is how that representation functions in the context of a strategy in an individual's behavior.

Imagine a young man wearing a white smock, sitting in a comfortable position, sunlight streaming through a high window to his right and behind him. To his left is a red book with silver lettering on its cover. As we look closer, we see him staring at a large white sheet of paper, the pupils of his eyes dilated, his facial muscles slack and unmoving, his shoulder muscles slightly tense while the rest of his body is at rest. His breathing is shallow, high in his chest and regular. Who is this person?

From the description he could be a physicist, visualizing a series of complex mathematical expressions which describe the physical phenomena he wishes to understand. Equally consistent with the above, the young man could be an artist, creating vivid visual fantasies in preparation for executing an oil painting. Or, the man could be a schizophrenic, consumed in a world of inner imagery so completely that he has lost his connection with the outside world.

What links these three men is that each is employing the same representational system — attending to internal visual images. What distinguishes them from one another is how each utilizes his rich inner experience of imagery. The physicist may in a moment look up to a fellow scientist and translate his images into words, . communicating through his colleague's auditory system some new pattern he's discovered through his visualizations. The artist may in a moment seize the white sheet of paper and begin to rough in shapes and colors with a brush — many of them drawn directly from his inner imagery — translating inner experience into external experience. The schizophrenic may continue his internal visual reverie with such complete absorption that the images he creates within will distract him from responding to sensory information arriving from the outside world.

The physicist and the artist differ from the schizophrenic in terms of the function of their visualizations in the context of the sequence of representational system activities that affect the outcome of their behavior: in how their visualizations are utilized. The physicist and the artist can choose to attend visually to the world outside or to their own inner visual experience. The process of creating inner visual experience is the same, neurologically, for all three men. A visual representation in itself — like the waterfall or the mold on the bread previously discussed — may serve as a limitation or a resource to human potential depending on how it fits into context and how it is used. The physicist and the artist control the process; the process controls the schizophrenic. For the physicist and the artist, the natural phenomenon of visualization belongs to the class of decision variables; for the schizophrenic it belongs to the class of environmental variables.

Each of you reading this sentence has a strategy for taking the peculiar patterns of black ink on this white page and making meaning out of them for yourself. These sequences of letters, like the other visualization phenomena just described, are meaningless outside of the sensory experiences from your own personal history that you apply to them. Words, both written and spoken, are simply codes that trigger primary sensory representations in us. A word that we have never seen or heard before will have no meaning to us because we have no sensory experience to apply to it. (For a further discussion of language as secondary experience see Patterns II.)

As you read these words you may, for example, be hearing your own voice inside your head saying the words as your eye reports the visual patterns formed by letters in this sentence. Perhaps you are remembering words that someone else has spoken to you before that sounded similar to those printed here. Perhaps these visual patterns have accessed some feelings of delight or recognition within you. You may have noticed, when you first read the description of the young man in the white smock, that you made images of what you were reading—you were using the same representational strategy for making meaning that the young man in our description was using.

The ability to transform printed symbols into internal images, into auditory representations, into feelings, tastes or smells, allows us to use strategies for making meaning that are available to each of us as human beings. Certain strategies are highly effective for creating meaning in certain contexts while others are more effective for other tasks. The strategy of taking external visual symbols and translating them into internal auditory dialogue would not be appropriate if you were listening to a record, doing therapy or playing football.

This book presents what we call meta–strategies: strategies about strategies. More specifically, this book describes how to elicit, identify, utilize, design and install strategies that allow us to operate within and upon our environment. NLP is an explicit meta–strategy designed for you — to shift dimensions of your experience from the class of environmental variables to the class of decision variables and, when appropriate, to assist others to do so. NLP is an explicit meta–strategy by means of which you may gain control over portions of your experience which you desire to control, an explicit meta–strategy for you to use to create choices that you presently don't have and to assist others in securing the choices they need or want.

The principles of NLP are equally applicable in assisting business executives to reorganize their priorities and generate new options; in helping scientists and engineers get the most from their research and upgrade their teaching ability; in showing educators new and remarkably effective educational system design principles; in extending to lawyers and judges features of communication that greatly facilitate settlements; in aiding therapists to more effectively and quickly aid their clients. NLP is for people interested in getting things done and enjoying themselves in the process.

An important aspect of NLP is its versatility. Its methods of pattern identification and sequencing may be generalized from individual human beings to larger order systems, from contexts involving remedial change (problem solving) to those involving . evolutionary change (extending the domain of decision variables beyond the present state for an individual or system now functioning effectively). NLP may be applied as profitably to the internal organization of a bureaucratic hierarchy as to the representational systems of an individual. In all cases the formal sequencing and scheduling of activity between the structural components of a system will determine the possible outcomes of that system and the effectiveness of that system in securing those outcomes.

In an organization, its departments or employees take the place of representational systems within a single human being. Each is responsible for a certain set of inputs, processing and outputs that contribute to one or more other sets of inputs, processing and outputs of the other members of the system and of that system as a whole. By understanding the functional characteristics of the components (employees, departments, sections, divisions, etc.) of an organization and the desired outcomes of that organization, the neurolinguistic programmer can assist in sequencing or rese–quencing the interactions between components to achieve the desired outcome in the most elegant and effective manner.

1.8 Synesthesia

The existence of the ordered sequences of representation that we call strategies presupposes interconnected networks of activity at the neurological level. Crossover connections between representational system complexes, such that the activity in one representational system initiates activity in another system called synesthesia in NLP.

Hearing a harsh tone of voice and feeling uncomfortable is an example of auditory–kinesthetic synesthesia. Seeing blood and feeling nauseous would be a visual–kinesthetic synesthesia. Feeling angry and blaming someone verbally inside your head would be a kinesthetic–auditory synesthesia. Hearing music and imagining a beautiful scene would constitute an auditory–visual synesthesia.

Synesthesia patterns constitute a large portion of the human meaning making process. Correlations between representational system activities are at the root of such complex processes as knowledge, choice and communication. The skills and abilities that humans develop in all areas, fields and disciplines are the direct result of the establishment of crossover connections between neural representational complexes. The major differences among individuals possessing different skills, talents and abilities are derived from the synesthesia correlations within their particular domains of experience.

By making these correlative patterns explicit, neurolinguistic programming provides a working model, an applied technology for the strategic utilization of correlative patterns to secure any behavioral outcome. By identifying synesthetic sequences that lead to specific outcomes and by making them available to those who desire to achieve those outcomes we can, in essence, replicate any behavior — whether that of a businessman, scientist, healer, athlete, musician or anyone that does something well. With the tools provided by NLP, we believe anyone can be transformed into a modern "renaissance" person.