Newsletter: This is the Genuine NLP, #10

This page provides the links to the backnumber issues of the newsletter
written in Japanese by Taiten Kitaoka, a Japanese NLP trainer/facilitator.

Note: This "provocative" title of the newsletter is meant to suggest that Taiten
Kitaoka's NLP work is the first attempt for the integrated NLP in the Japanese market.
It is not meant to claim that his NLP work is genuine in a more general sense.

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Issue #10: 2004.1.23
(translated in May 2004)
'This is the Genuine NLP!'

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The author, who has been formally trained by the four most important co-developers of NLP (Grinder, Bandler, Dilts, and DeLozier) will send newsletters containing a variety of information concerning the advanced communication psychology/ pragmatic psychology known as NLP.
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"NLP FAQ, #2"

Hello everybody! I am Taiten Kitaoka, a Japanese NLP trainer/facilitator.

In the 8th issue of this newsletter, entitled "NLP FAQ, #1", I answered the FAQ questions related to NLP. This issue is the sequel of that issue:

Q28: What is "Representational Systems"?
A28: "Representational Systems", which sometimes is abbreviated as "Rep Systems", is one of the fundamental models of NLP, and corresponds with the five sensory channels human beings have, that is Visual (V), Auditory (A), Kinesthetic (K), Olfactory (O), and Gustatory (G) systems.

In the Japanese NLP community, this term has been traditionally translated as "Daihyou-taikei" or "Daihyou-sisutemu", but I think that this is a wrong translation, because "Daihyou" is the translation of "representation" when it is used in the sense that a member of parliament "represents" the people in his/her constituency. In this case, the representing MP and the people represented by him/her are both human beings found on the same logical type, while, for instance, the olfactory representational system in NLP can be said to include all the elements of the olfactory experiences in a person, but is not found on the same logical type as these elements themselves. I also think that another translation of the term often used in Japan, "Hyoushou-taikei", is a quite philosophical word. I therefore would like to use the term coined by myself, "Hyoushutsu-taikei", which may be a simpler term than this philosophically sounding term.

I think that, in the NLP world, a simpler term "Sensory Systems" should have been used instead of the abstruse term "Rep Systems" in the first place, but that it may have been natural for such a new jargon to have had to be coined, so that NLP may assert itself as a new independent system.

Q29 What is the most important technique of NLP?
A29: I think that the most important technique/model of NLP is "Anchoring". With regard to this model, please refer to the 10th issue of this newsletter.

Q30: How is it that the most important technique of NLP is not "Rapport"?
A30: It is true that the most important thing in human communication may be the enhancement of inter-personal communication skills and/or of skills for establishing rapport with other people. On the other hand, however, it is said in NLP that what we can truly control in the ultimate sense is only the internal states of ourselves. From this point of view, the enhancement and control of our inter-personal communication experience is possible only when we can control our own inner states through such techniques as Anchoring.

Q31: Why can the effects of the anchoring technique fade away with time, when it is widely claimed to be established as a once only technique?
A31: This question was asked by one participant of my current NLP Practitioner Course. Through my conversation with the participants of the course, the following possible reasons for this mechanism were identified:

1. When anchoring is first established, noise may be present.
This means that, if "noisy thoughts" are present in a person when he or she establishes anchoring, the Anchoring of the inner experience cannot be carried out in a pure form. Typically, when anchoring is established by a person, he or she needs to fully associate himself or herself with the past experience to be anchored (that is, he or she needs to see, hear and feel the experience himself or herself).

2. It is difficult to trigger the anchoring in other contexts than the initial context where it was established.
Usually, specific anchoring is established in such a context as the room where an NLP workshop is held, and it may be the case that the person in question may experience difficulties in triggering that anchoring in other contexts in the "real" world, or that he or she cannot even remind himself or herself to trigger it. To overcome these problems, one may need to consciously train oneself so that one may trigger any anchoring in any context.

3. The timing to establish anchoring is inappropriate.
When an anchor is initially established, it needs to be associated with the inner experience when it is about to be intensified in a person, and to be maintained until the experience has passed by its peak intensity-wise. It may be the case that this timing may be learnt experientially.

Q32: What is "4 Tuple"?
A32: "4 Tuple (4T)" is an NLP term, and represents (models) the inner experience which an individual has at a given moment of time, and the equation 4T=VAKO is used. This latter means that human beings have at any given moment a set of sensory experiences consisting of the visual sense (V), the auditory sense (A), the kinesthetic (i.e., feeling) sense (K), and the olfactory sense (O) - which includes the gustatory sense (G) for simplification's sake. (In NLP terminology, these senses are called "representational systems".) It is worth noting that human beings are not necessarily conscious of all the elements of VAKO at given moments.

It can be pointed out that a 4T can have either 1)externally generated elements or 2)internally generated elements. (Although it could have a combination of 1) and 2), this case is not discussed here.) In the former case, the 4T consists of only incoming (input) data given from the external world, and therefore, is denoted as 4Te with the superscript "e"; while in the latter case, it consists of only data coming from the internal memory, and is denoted as 4Ti with the superscript "i".

It is worth noticing that the notion of 4T enables us to define the too intangible term, "thinking", or "thought", as "internal behaviour" - and thus to substitute the "external behaviour/ internal behaviour" distinction for the "behaviour/thinking" distinction.

4 Tuple is a window or element which we use when reconstructing our inner reality. That is, the inner experience of an individual at a certain moment of time, always consists of a combination of the elements of VAKO.

When I used to practice meditation quite a long time ago, I once asked my (European) teacher of meditation: "Although I can understand that my consciousness sometimes goes outwards, and sometimes goes inwards, how can I differentiate this interface between them?" The teacher simply told me: "Please experience and check it yourself." I retrospectively think that this teacher in fact was not able to explain the matter to me orally in a logical manner, and it turns out that this interface can now be beautifully and logically explained away through such a simple distinction as that between 4Te and 4Ti. This is one of many examples of the fact that traditional Eastern methodologies which have relied upon the experiential learning alone of the students, and which even their masters have not been able to orally explain, have been made by Western NLP into something which can be elucidated logically in a left-brain oriented way.

Q33: What are the decisive differences between "therapeutic psychologies" after Freud and NLP?
A33: With regard to this question, I have been repeatedly implicitly or explicitly indicating over the issues of this newsletter the differences between all the psychotherapeutic schools after Freud and NLP, but would like to anew point out the three major differences between the two in the following way:

1. "Content Oriented" vs "Content Free"
Although Freud's contribution in discovering the "subconscious" must be appreciated, at the same time the limitation of his methodology to try to find out the cause of psychological traumas in the "no more existing past" was made apparent. Since then, a wide range of psychotherapeutic schools have been started as something which could replace or transcend psychoanalysis, including Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Encounter, Primal, Rebirthing, etc., but they have turned out to have a similar limitation to that of psychoanalysis in the sense that they are content-oriented therapies, and try to make the clients re-experience again and again endlessly their past traumas cognitively (e.g., in Gestalt, transactional analysis, etc.) or emotionally and physically (e.g., in Encounter, Primal, Rebirthing, etc.).

Namely, all of these modern psychotherapeutic schools were unable to go beyond the content level, naively believing that once the causes of the traumas in the (non-existing) past are found and re-experienced, these traumas will be cured for ever.

It was NLP that transcended this content level for the first time in the history of psychology (although the earlier contribution of Milton E. Erickson and of the Palo Alto Group must not be forgotten) to go up to the level of the processes of human behaviour, and began to deal with the patterns and rules governing the unwanted behaviour of the clients, and to change them so that they may feel happier and more satisfied with themselves. Milton H. Erickson, the Palo Alto Group (that is, the "Brief Therapy" school), NLP, all utilise content free methodologies.

Incidentally, that NLP is something on a totally different level to the traditional psychotherapeutic schools, and transcends all of them, can be known also from the simple fact that we have a real difficulty to find out newly established important and influential psychotherapeutic schools after the advent of NLP - there was no reason why new psychotherapeutic schools with the same limitation would need to be created after the transcendence of the content level by NLP. (In this sense, not only psychoanalysis, but also psychotherapy itself are now becoming "dead words".)

2. "Why" vs "How"
This is related to the difference pointed out in item 1 above. Content oriented therapies before NLP always focus on "WHY did this problem happen?", and have a strong tendency to try to identify the cause of the problem happening now in the memories (sometimes expelled from the conscious awareness) of the experience related to the traumas of the distant past. On the other hand, NLP only focuses on "HOW is this problem happening now?", and never tries to be engaged in futile endless games destined to be lost, such as seeking the cause in the details of the past, which no longer exists.

3. "Therapist Dependency" vs "Becoming One's Own Therapist"
I wrote the following in the fourth issue of the newsletter:

"According to [Anthony] Robbins' metaphor, the existing psychotherapeutic schools try to open the lid of the kettle (the client) whose pressure is being accumulated. In this case, the client feels better when the pressure is gone, but she/he has to come back to the same therapist in a couple of weeks again and again, each time the lid is automatically closed, and the pressure is accumulated again. On the other hand, what happens with NLP is similar to the mechanism of a juke box. If the button A is pressed, and bad music is heard, and if the button B is pressed, and good music is heard, why cannot we rewire the inner wiring, so that each time the button A is pressed, then good music begins to be heard? Alternatively, the disk with the bad music itself can be removed, and replaced with a new disk with a good music. What NLP can achieve is exactly such a "rewiring" of the programmings of our human brain."

That is, in the case of pre-NLP therapies, even after a client gets a certain feeling of release from the problem tormenting him or her from the therapist, similar problems may persist by taking other different forms, and therefore he or she needs to go back to the therapist again and again, and thus cannot overcome the symptom of "therapist dependency". On the other hand, in the case of NLP, a facilitator (a person who induces new behavioral changes in another person) gives the client NLP exercises which will enable him or her to do the "cerebral rewiring" by himself or herself alone, and thus helps him or her to become his or her own therapist, without depending on other therapists (though the client may need to repeatedly practice these exercises by himself or herself to a certain degree).

Q34: Has "Brief Therapy" which has become more and more known in recent years anything to do with NLP?
A34: "Brief Therapy" is closely related to NLP.

As far as I know, "Brief Therapy" is a term officially started to be used by John Weekland, etc., of the Palo Alto Group. It is a name to describe the typical methodology of the whole Palo Alto Group, including Weekland, Paul Watzlawick, and Jay Haley. (The Palo Alto Group is a group of the researchers working at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, guided by Gregory Bateson in the 50's and 60's.) Of course, the fact cannot be ignored that the techniques used by Milton H. Erickson, who is generally considered to be the most important authority in hypnotherapy, can also be called brief therapy techniques.

Historically, Bateson and Erickson are called the two fathers of NLP, and NLP and the Pal Alto Group are in a sister-brother relationship under Bateson's parenthood. In this sense, methodologically, Erickson, the Palo alto Group and NLP have all the same strong tendency of being "content free", and therefore Brief Therapy and NLP turn out to be very closely related to each other.

Incidentally, I once heard from a person involved in therapy in Japan indicating that one had already seen too much of NLP in Japan, and Brief Therapy would become popular next. But, of course, historically Brief Therapy was born well before NLP, so this gentleman's statement was very interesting to me. I personally think that the "full aspects" of NLP have not yet been introduced to the Japanese market, and that is why I have started my NLP activities in Japan properly last year, and have been writing this newsletter with such a provocative title.

Q35: What are "Altered States of Consciousness"?
A35: I think that "Altered States of Consciousness" include various concepts with very wide implications. For instance, as far as I am concerned, hypnosis, trance, dream, daydream, lucid dream, hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, visual and auditory hallucinations, fantasy, ecstasy, intoxication, relaxation, states evoked by anchoring, "zone", SDMLB, 4Ti, etc. can all be defined as altered states of consciousness in one sense or another.

Charles Tart, a transpersonal psychologist, indicates that one person's usual state of consciousness may turn out to be another person's altered state of consciousness and that their differences are relative. I think that his observation is extremely interesting and is worth deep consideration.

Q36: Please define "hypnosis".
A36: The "hypnotic" state can be defined in its narrowest sense to be a zombie-like somnambulistic state in which a stage hypnotist puts his or her subject. However, I think that all the concepts enumerated in A35 above can be included in the definition of hypnosis in its broader sense. I have been using possibly the simplest definition of hypnosis, that is: "everything which is not 'here and now' is hypnosis".

Q37: Is the "Eye Scanning Pattern" universal all over the world?
A37: The NLP co-founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, discovered that the Eye Scanning Patterns of a person indicate which type of representational system (sensory channel) that person is accessing at that moment of time.

Namely, when we internally remember some images from our visual memory, our eyeballs move up to the left, and, when we create new visual images assembled from the visual data which have been stored in our memory, our eyeballs move up to the right. When we look horizontally to the left, we are remembering auditorily some sounds from our memory, and when we look horizontally to the right, we are constructing new sounds assembled from the auditory data which have been stored in our memory.

When our eyeballs move down to the left, we are accessing "auditory digital" information, that is, words. In this case, we are talking to ourselves. Finally, in order to access kinesthetic or tactile information, our eyeballs need to move down to the right.

While these patterns may be horizontally reversed for some of left-handed people, the regular patterns are applicable for Japanese people. It is said that the only nation whose eye scanning patterns don't match these universal patterns are Basque people. This seems to happen because Basque children are raised as ambidextrous persons. (I have been indicating in my recent workshops that the exceptional people were Catalonians, but this was my misunderstanding.)

Q38: What is "Double Bind"?

A38: The concept of "Double Bind" is widely known as a term proposed by Gregory Bateson, who is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, and who also is a "father of NLP". A double bind is defined as falling into a vicious circle without any escape, or a "Game without End", so long as one remains on a single logical level (e.g., the level of the content or the details of a given problem).

A simple example of a Double Bind is found when a mother says to her child: "Be spontaneous!" In order to follow this command, the child has to become "spontaneous" on the basis of the command, and therefore is not spontaneous; in this sense, whether he or she chooses to be spontaneous or not, the child is put in a situation without any escape in which he or she can never fulfil the mother's intent. Similarly, a mother is imposing a Double Bind on her too dependent child, when she gives him or her the command: "Don't be so obedient!", in the sense that the child is required to disobey the mother in order to follow the order. (Cf. "Pragmatics of Human Communication" (1967) and other books by Watzlawick.)

The researchers of the Mental Research Institute under the guidance of Bateson (i.e., the Palo Alto Group) elucidated the main cause of schizophrenia, claiming that children who are caught in such a Double Bind (they feel usually, "I would be damned if I did it, and I would be damned if I didn't") often begin to exhibit schizophrenic behaviour as an escape from it, for example by shutting all communication with the outer world, etc. (Cf. "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia" (1956), a paper written by Bateson et al.)

Q39: I understand that a double bind is involved in a so-called "vicious circle". Please explain this more in detail.
A39: When someone is in a vicious circle, he or she recursively cycles the endless circle in which he or she feels, "if I did this I would be dammed, and if I didn't, I would be dammed". Such a person can be defined as falling into a double-bind situation.

Incidentally, when Grinder and Bandler were dealing with patients suffering from severe phobias, they were more than amazed to find that they were like geniuses, in the sense that they had been continually able to achieve or exhibit a consistent performance level of mental and physical behaviour, whatever the outer environment was, just like a pitcher of the baseball game who can achieve constant excellent results on the mound of whichever playground. (This way of looking at the same reality from another point of view is called "Reframing" in NLP.) They then were able to help these patients, who had been "sequencing" and "contextualising" (i.e., using the three universal human modelling processes) in an "inappropriate" way, to use those very same modelling processes in an "appropriate" way to overcome their phobias, become more creative and get what they wanted to have in their life. That is, they were able to transform a vicious circle into a "virtuous circle" by using exactly the same mental or behavioural patterns.

This method doesn't need at all to divulge into the possible causes in the past of the traumas in a Freudian way, and is a brief therapy method, which enables the problems to be solved in a matter of minutes. And the fact that the same mental patterns can produce totally opposite results when they are applied differently, is very closely related to the difference between the standard syllogism and the Syllogism in Grass proposed by Bateson. (Please refer to the third issue of the newsletter for this syllogism in grass.)

Q40: Is it possible to overcome a double-binding situation by means of cognitive power (so-called will power) alone?
A40: This sounds to be a very interesting question, and an example in which this was possible happened to me in the past. Some 12 years ago, I had succeeded in stopping smoking cigarettes several times, but sooner or later had begun to smoke again. I then was living in London, England, and watching a debate in a late night TV program. It was about pro and con smoking cigarettes, and young people were divided into two camps seriously arguing with each other. When I continued to watch the debate, I gradually became truly fed up with the nonsensical discussions made by both the camps, and my disgust became so strong that I began to want to vomit. I then seriously began to ponder over how I could possibly transcend these two camps all together. A little later, I came to an epistemological and logical conclusion that if I continued smoking I would necessarily and logically remain on the part of the pro-smoking camp, but if I stopped smoking, there would be a possibility that I either would remain on the part of the con-smoking camp, or would stand on the position transcending both the camps; it was at least absolutely impossible that I would take such an ambiguous position, if I continued to smoke. When I arrived at the cognitive conclusion I did decide to stop smoking then and there. I have not smoked cigarettes since.

Q41: Please explain what Reframing is.
A41: "Reframing" is an NLP concept, which, simply put, means "placing a content into another context, so that it may have a completely different meaning". A typical example of this is that "this glass of water is half empty" can be "reframed" as "this glass of water is half full", without changing the real situation in any way.

Reframing in a broad sense can be found everywhere in our daily life. Salesmen may be said to be using this technique when they are persuading their customers; politicians seem to be very good at reframing as a way to get more votes from electorates; the key word in marketing, "positioning", is nothing but reframing; indeed the whole purpose of marketing activities can be reduced to this one word; further, our human communication in general may intrinsically consist in two communicators trying to make each other accept their respective "reframed" versions of a reality which is one and the same.

The principles of reframing can be best understood from the point of view of "Chunk Up vs Chunk Down" (see the fifth issue of this newsletter, Section 2).

Q42: How can NLP enhance sports people's performance?
A42: The main NLP technique for enhancing sports people's performance is the "Anchoring" technique, which can lead them to a kind of altered state of consciousness called "zone". This "zone" is almost equivalent to "SDMLB" (State-Depending Memory and Learning and Behaviour) proposed by Ernest L. Rossi, and is the mechanism where the entirety of the memories, learning and behaviour related to the peak performance a given sports person has acquired in his or her past, are all associated with each other in a specific state of consciousness. Sports people therefore have only to access that specific state, in order to instantaneously access the past memories, learning and behaviour en mass required to exhibit their own peak performance. Because these past memories, learning and behaviour are usually what have been already learnt and have been made unconscious, the person who accesses the related state doesn't need to consciously think of his or her own peak performance, to exhibit it.

Moreover, the Submodality technique is the technique most appropriate for improving sports people's "image training" capabilities.
Incidentally, in the recent history of professional tennis, Andre Agassi seemed to have become below the 100th in the world ranking, and have thought of retirement, but came to win the championship of grand-slam tournaments again, thanks to the help of Anthony Robbins, an NLP trainer who is a charisma-like figure for businessmen in the States and Europe. I once watched a promotion video of Robbins, in which Agassi was strongly recommending him.

Q43: How can improve the performance of visual artists?
A43: I think that the Submodality technique is the most appropriate to improve the performance of such people as visual artists, film directors, photographers, or advertisement creators. For the details of the Submodality technique, please refer to the ninth issue of this newsletter, Section 3.

Q44: I am interested in lucid dream, as a form of the altered states of consciousness. What is the most effective NLP technique to intensify my experience of the lucid dream?
A44: I think that here also, the Submodality technique is the most appropriate. For the details of this technique, please refer to the ninth issue of this newsletter, Section 3.

Incidentally, it seems that Taraka, a toy company, has developed a device which enables you to control which dreams you want to have. You go to bed after fixing the photo of what you want to dream to the device and recording the sounds related to what you want to hear in the dreams. These recorded sounds and the fragrance facilitating dreaming will then be inputted in you while sleeping as stimulus during the REM state, supposedly leading you to the dreams you wanted to have. It appears that this device is quite rudimentary to achieve this outcome, but I think that it has a potential to be developed in the future as a training device to have lucid dreams.

Q45: Please explain the "Peripheral Vision". A45: It seems that we are usually only aware of the "central vision", but can sometimes become aware of the "peripheral vision". In NLP, through various exercise techniques, the "peripheral vision" is also developed in a natural way. Especially, in "Calibration" of NLP, the abilities to pick up other people's unconscious and subtle gestures, movements, or facial expressions can be developed, thus improving the peripheral vision. It is very interesting that the contrast of the central vision and the peripheral vision seems to be closely related to the "Content vs Context" contrast of NLP.

Q46: What is "Calibration"? A46: In NLP, "Calibration" is a method of reading the other person's reactions in the on-going communication. Those who are good at communication are those who can read the other person's subtle reactions in the on-going situation, instead of being deeply engaged in preconceptions or assumptions about the other person's inner reactions.

For instance, a teacher may notice that, each time a certain student talks about his own feeling of "confusion", he makes a grimace, strains the muscles of his shoulders, and slightly clenches his teeth. When later on the same student is observed to exhibit the same behavioural signals in class, the teacher can ascertain that he or she has obtained the evidence that the boy is experiencing at that very moment the same inner confusion, and can take appropriate measures. It is paramount in the inter-personal communication skills to make sensory awareness more and more acute to be able to observe such subtle reactions in other people.

In NLP, there are a number of exercise techniques to improve the calibration skills.

Q47: Please explain "Unconscious Competency". A47: According to NLP, there are four stages of competency in any human skills; these concepts are very helpful to the understanding of the process of learning.

Using the example of car driving, these four stages of competency are 1) Unconscious Incompetency, the stage where we just don't know how to drive a car, 2) Conscious Incompetency , the stage where we come to know that we cannot drive a car well, 3) Conscious Competency, the stage where we need to pay conscious attention continuously to drive a car well, and finally 4) Unconscious Competency, the stage where we can drive a car without having any problems even while talking to our friend beside us, namely, the whole process of driving a car becomes unconscious (or mechanical).

So-called geniuses are those who have arrived at the final stage of competency, i.e. the level of Unconscious Competency, in their respective professional area.

These concepts are universally applicable to different human physio-psychological activities, including breathing, eating, digesting, walking, thinking, speaking a language, studying scientific disciplines, acquiring new professional skills, and even coping with daily activities after spiritual enlightenment.

Q48: How is a "Genius" defined in NLP?
A48: In NLP, especially from the point of view of "Unconscious Competency", geniuses (not only in an ordinary sense but also "geniuses" in speaking their native language, driving a car, even tying a shoe lace, etc.) are people who are successful in arriving at the stage of Unconscious Competency (which means nothing but "making the habitual psycho-physical patterns required for the purposes in question unconscious or automatic"). Thus, you have a possibility of becoming a "Personal Genius", by becoming aware of whatever habits are preventing you from achieving what you want, and by subsequently adopting the very psycho-physical processes which are bound to make geniuses out of any human beings. (Personal Editing techniques of NLP will prove to be extremely powerful for this purpose.)

It seems that, if the full range of human activities including heartbeat, breathing, digestion, walking, speaking a language, writing, etc. is borne in mind, then the difference between so-called geniuses and ordinary people may amount to no more than a tiny fraction (say, less than 1%) of the whole gamut of human activity.

Q49: What is "Three-Step Procedure for Success" in NLP?
A49: The "Three-Step Procedure for Success" consists of (1) determining your "outcome" (what you want to achieve), (2) enhancing your sensory acuity, and (3) being flexible.

In a personal interaction, for instance, you need first to define what you want to get from the other person or what you want to get across to him or her; here, because human brains function just like a man-made heat-seeking missile, you have to have first your own clear target in your own mind. (See "Psycho-Cybernetics" by M. Maltz.) This goal must be set in sensory-based terms; in other words, it consists of what you would see, hear, feel, etc. if you would have achieved your outcome.

Next, you use your own perceptions (sensory channels) in your communication with your interlocutor to know whether you are achieving your outcome. (You can for instance train yourself to be able to detect, or calibrate, the "micro-muscle movements" on other people's face, neck, hands or legs, the depth and location of their breathing, the size of their pupils, etc.)

Notice here that your sensory acuity will be the highest while you are in "Uptime" and the lowest or possibly non-existing while you are in "Downtime".

Lastly, you need to be able to change your behaviour flexibly until you get what you want.

As for the third step of the above procedure, namely, flexibility, the notion of the "Law of Requisite Variety" is relevant. Also, if you have only one choice in a given situation, you will be stuck; if you have two, then you will be in dilemma; it is only when you have three (or more) choices that you will be said to be "free".

It is obvious that when you are aware of more things than other people in a given situation, you will have more choices and be more flexible than they and, therefore, will be able to control the situation.

Q50: Please explain the "Law of Requisite Variety" in NLP.
A50: The law of requisite variety is a law stating that in any system (whether humans or machines), all other things being equal, the individual (human or machine) with the widest range of responses will control the system.

That is to say, it is the individual who has the most choices and is the most flexible that tends to control the situation where he or she is found.

Also, this law is closely related to a statement made by John Grinder, one of the co-founders of NLP, in one of his training courses: "If you have only one choice, you are stuck; if you have two, you are in dilemma; it is only when you have three choices or more that you can become free".

Further, it is related to the "Three-Step Procedure for Success" explained in the FAQ 49 above.

Q51: What are "Uptime" and Downtime"?
A51: It can be pointed out that our internal experience (a 4T in the NLP terminology) can consist either of incoming data from the world, i.e., sensory-based information, or of synthesised data, i.e., combination of elements stored in our memory. (Although there may also exist a 4T which has both "externally generated elements" and "internally generated elements", this case is not discussed here.) In the former case, we can be said to be experiencing the world of "here and now", while in the latter case, we are certainly having "hallucinations" in our head.

When one's sensory channels are clean and open, one is said to be in Uptime; that is, one's 4T at that moment consists only of sensory-based data. A person is said to be in Downtime, when his or her 4T at the moment is made only of internally generated elements. (The former 4T can be denoted with a subscript "e" as 4Te and the latter 4T with a subscript "i" as 4Ti.)

It is interesting to note that the same distinction has been made by spiritual people in quite different terms; specifically, genuine spiritual masters down the ages have been unanimously suggesting that we should "respond" to "here and now" (i.e., be in Uptime) instead of "reacting" to the projections from the past (i.e., being in Downtime) or that we should drop our mind (internal hallucinations) in order to see the reality as it is.

Q52: Please explain "Congruity" in NLP.
A52: NLP uses the term "congruity", meaning alignment or co-ordination among different parts of a given system. It is easily understandable that any system can function at its highest performance level when all its parts are congruent, namely, aligned with each other.

Typical examples of incongruity in a person can be observed for instance when he or she says "Yes, I totally agree with you", while shaking his or her head from side to side, or when he or she says "I am very confident" in a nearly inaudible voice. People who encounter such an incongruity in another person typically either feel confused or begin to decide (consciously and/or unconsciously) not to trust him or her.

We need to be congruent in our communication with others if we want to be effective and influential.

Interestingly, this communication term "congruity" has a spiritual meaning as well. Namely, the congruity exemplified above is defined as "simultaneous congruity", and this kind of congruity is usually one of the very prominent aspects of great spiritual gurus. But, these gurus also tend to show "sequential incongruity"; that is to say, they are living so intensively in "here and now" that what they say today may radically contradict what they said yesterday. On the other hand, "ordinary people" who may be missing "here and now" altogether may, ironically, be too obsessed with trying to maintain "sequential congruity".

Q53: Please define "Learning" from the point of view of NLP.
A53: "Learning" may be defined as the "process of making unconscious and automatic the specific physio-psychological habits that have been established consciously through trial and error". (Note that these habits are equivalent to a process of "TOTE" in NLP terminology.)

The beauty of learning is that once we have learnt something, we don't need to repeat the same trial and error again and again any more, and this aspect of learning is closely related to the metaphor of "Columbus' eggs".

In "Steps to an Ecology of Mind", Gregory Bateson discusses different levels of learning, such as "learning to learn (something)", "learning to learn to learn (something)", etc., using the "Theory of Logical Types".

Interestingly, it seems that making a huge progress in learning (of any thing) on a lower (or grosser) level is rather easy - if not very easy - while making an infinitesimal progress on a higher (or subtler) level is very difficult; in other words, the same amount of effort and energy which a beginner tennis player may need to achieve an impressive progress - say, from 0% to 60% of the learning ratio - seem to be needed for him or her to make a very small progress - say, from 99% to 99.9% - later on, when he or she has become a top tennis player. This correlation of learning levels may be explained from a point of view of the extremely interesting modern concept of "Fractals".

Incidentally, it was once said that the late Ayrton Senna, one of the very best Formula One drivers, was very great in the sense that, whenever he drove into a corner of a circuit, he was able to fire automatically one of his learnt processes (i.e., programmings) of driving that seemed to be the most suitable for that specific cornering, but that he was still greater in the sense that, whenever he found that the already fired automatic process (i.e., programming) was not working as well as it should for one reason or another, he was able to immediately consciously stop that process and switch to another automatic learnt process which was more suitable for that corner, in the middle of his cornering. (This mechanism of learning may be best understood, if looked at from the point of view of the metaphor of a CD-ROM that I used in the fourth issue of this newsletter.)

Q54: Are there any other methods for accelerated learning other than NLP?
A54: Although I am very sceptic about psychological methodologies, as well as hardware devices for developing hidden potential powers - by the way, it is NLP that has withstood my 15 year long testing! - something interesting happened from the point of view of accelerated learning in my experimenting with a device called "DiGiVo", which is a device for accelerated listening, despite my strong scepticism. The following opinion is just my preliminary report about this device:

DiGiVo is a device with which we can listen to the lectures, theses, English conversation, etc., recorded on smart media at a speed of up to four times quicker than the real time, and which is designed to enhance our fast listening abilities, fasten our speed of brain, and activate our potential abilities. Traditional technology has not been able to eliminate the high pitch noise when the sound is heard at a high speed, but this device has succeeded in solving that technical problem.

Theoretically, the use of DiGiVo is said to stimulate and activate the "Wernicke center" in the brain, which manages the function of "repeated inner monologue", and accelerate this ability. I personally think that it perfectly makes sense that we cannot make sense at all out of what other people said or the content of English conversation, unless we repeat what we have heard in our own brain, either consciously or unconsciously (probably almost always unconsciously). It further makes sense to me that the enhancement of this faculty of repeated internal monologue will enable us to better understand what other people say in the business meetings, enhance our English speaking abilities, or make our own appropriate decisions in an instantaneous way.

In this way, I have been experimenting for a while with DiGiVo with a lecture text in Japanese with a speed of three times more than the real time, and have noticed that, when I was on a train, my ability of gathering visual information was enhanced, and what was happening around me slowed down (that is, I entered an altered state of consciousness). I also noticed that, when I was listening to DiGiVo while having a walk, I had profound meditative states. What was the most interesting was that the speed of my reading English books was accelerated. I was surprised to know that I was able to read a quite difficult book in English, as if I had been reading a book written in Japanese.

As I said above, this opining of mine is only preliminary, but if DiGiVo proves to withstand my scepticism, then I would like to combine this device with my CD-ROM software project for accelerating English learning (this future project is for enhancing the reading, speaking, writing and hearing abilities, by means of developing the syntactical understanding of the English language).

The information related to DiGiVo can be obtained from the Web site of the Selsyne Aim Institute, which is the publisher of this newsletter.

Incidentally, something interesting is known, if the common points between NLP and the DiGiVo fast listening device from the point of accelerated learning are considered. That is, we, as human beings living in this modern society abundant with global communication information, are exposed to the repletion of information incomparable with human beings living in the middle age, and it is almost impossible for us to live normally if we continue the speed of thinking of the people of the old age. We therefore need to intentionally make our own brains accustomed to the so-called "information overload", in order to keep our mental state normal. Typically, we do this "cerebral climatisation" visually, when we watch TV for a few hours every day (especially watching an endless series of consecutive TV commercials which can be almost described as "schizophrenic"). Likewise, when we learn NLP, we need to overload our brain because we need to continually acquire a number of new behavioural and thinking patterns through NLP concepts, models and exercises, and thus sometimes feel as if our brains were about to "explode". This process of learning NLP may be considered to be a training for establishing new and swift thinking patterns in ourselves so that we may transcend the very slow thinking patterns (traditionally established at the age not of cars or airplanes but horse carriages), and start to comfortably live in this new age of global communication information. Probably DiGiVo enables us to auditorily do this cerebral climatisation for living in modern society. The new learning patterns established in any of these three areas mentioned above can have repercussions in the other two areas. (One such example is that enhancing the fast listening abilities with DiGiVo can improve the visual processing abilities as suggested above.)

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