As you completed the simple tasks listed here, you may have been aware that you had an easier time accessing certain representational systems, in terms of speed and clarity. Similarly, many people are more adept at making specific synesthetic transitions from one representational system to another. This results largely from the accessing cues you have set up for yourself. If you experienced difficulties in accessing the experiences called for in this exercise, try the task again, using the behavioral processes we described following each task. You may find that using them will assist you in getting better results.[12]
One important aspect of accessing cues is that by carefully observing them you can gather a great deal of information about the steps to an individual's strategy. This aspect will be treated in detail in the next section of this book.
2.7 Denning the Strategy.
A strategy, then, is a series of overlapping 4–tuples in which, at each step, each 4–tuple is acted upon by the R–operator through accessing cues and synesthesia patterns, giving one representational system more behavioral significance than the others. The results of this process determine which 4–tuple will be triggered or anchored next, the sequence of 4–tuples and, ultimately, what behavioral outcome will result. We can show this in the following way:
How finely we tune or calibrate our neural and physiological systems to accept the information from a particular representational system, as we go through the steps of a strategy, will determine the amount of overlap or interference we get from our other representational systems.[13]
Sometimes, of course, it is useful and important to overlap the information from our different representational systems, as in multi–representational testing. Many people overlap accessing cues to contribute to the synesthetic combination of two representational systems, or to assist the process of changing synesthetically from one representational system to another. At other times, however, this kind of overlap will cause interference with, or the overriding of, important information from one particular representational system.
2.8 Strategies and "Consciousness”.
It is probably obvious to most of you readers that all of the steps in a particular strategy need not be conscious in order for them to be operative. In fact, generally just the opposite is true: the more habitual and less conscious a behavior becomes, the more we can be guaranteed that we have completely incorporated it.
In neurolinguistic programming, consciousness is simply considered to be the result of the relative intensities of the activity within our representational systems. It is an indication of how much a particular representational system is being used rather than an entity in itself (as many others conceive it). In NLP consciousness is treated as an emergent property of neural system activity, not an initiator of that activity. To say that our consciousness or awareness controlled or affected our behavior would be like saying that the properties of "wetness" or "iciness" controlled or affected the structural combinations of the H20 molecules from which these properties are derived. Consciousness is rather a side effect, an indicator of a portion of what is going on during representational processing.
We have pointed out that the behavioral significance of a particular representation will be determined by the intensity of the representation with respect to the intensity of all other ongoing representations. Our claim is that a representation becomes conscious only when it reaches a certain level of intensity. This, however, says relatively little about its behavioral significance. Consider the following graph:[14]
This is a graph of hypothetical fluctuations in intensity of the three basic representational systems over time. These fluctuations are contributed to by accessing cues & synesthetic neural interconnections. The center line indicates the threshold of consciousness. Representations only become conscious when their intensity rises above that value. The graph indicates that at point 1 the auditory representational system has the highest relative signal value and is conscious. At point 2, the visual representational system has the highest relative intensity and is conscious. At point 3, the kinesthetic representational system has the highest intensity and is conscious. At point 4, the auditory representational system again has the highest relative intensity, and thus the most behavioral significance, but it has not reached the level of consciousness. Similarly, at point 5, the kinesthetic system takes prime control at that particular time but is below the conscious level. At point 6 both the visual and auditory representational systems are in consciousness, but since the visual system has a slightly higher signal, it will be most highly valued for that step. At point 7, the visual system again assumes prime control but this time is out of consciousness. At point 8 the visual and kinesthetic representational systems overlap out of consciousness, perhaps performing some multi–representational test.
The graph essentially plots a portion of a strategy, which we have chosen to divide or punctuate into eight steps:
Four of the steps, however, are below conscious awareness; 4, 5, 7, & 8. Yet this does not detract from the behavioral significance of these steps.
It is important to point out here that behavioral significance is determined by relative intensity of the representations and the interaction of the system as a whole. A subliminal representation of low intensity at one point in time will still contribute to the overall conditions of the system and may cause changes in the system making it or some other representational system rise to the highest relative intensity at the next point in time. If the signal values are close enough, it is possible for a multiple response to occur. This would happen in the case of the individual who says "Yes", but whose head is at the same time unconsciously shaking "No." It is also possible for two strategies to take place simultaneously, causing split responses and behavioral incongruencies if neither strategy is strong enough. This is where the importance of calibration enters in.
It is also possible, since behavioral significance is a function of relative values of intensity, that the activity of one representational system, even though it reaches consciousness, may be relatively insignificant. This is illustrated in the following graph:
This graph shows that, even though the kinesthetic representational system has reached an intensity level high enough to enter consciousness, it has stabilized, changing very little with respect to other representational systems. Because the visual and auditory representational system signals show larger variations in amplitude with respect to one another and with respect to the kinesthetic system in this case, it is their activity which will have the most relative behavioral effect.
A person in this kind of state would be very conscious of his/her feelings. Most of their important internal processes, however, would take place below the level of awareness.
Strategies and representations which typically occur below an individual's level of awareness make up what is often called or referred to as the "unconscious mind."
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7. The process of tuning one's body to help access or adjust a particular representational system to the appropriate degree is called "calibration" in NLP.
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8. We are here ignoring the input channel/representational system distinction. This distinction is non–trivial — consider the power of synesthesia patterns between input and representational systems (e.g., see/feel and hear/feel, such as those discussed in The Structure of Magic, Vol. II, parts II and III).
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9. Obviously, each representational system has its own threshold independently of the others. For illustration purposes we have combined and represented them as a single threshold.