Laughter

Laughter plays an important part in NLP.

The Olympian vice. – In spite of that philosopher who, being a true Englishman, tried to give laughter a bad reputation among all thoughtful people –, “laughter is a terrible infirmity of human nature, and one that every thinking mind will endeavor to overcome” (Hobbes) –, I would go so far as to allow myself a rank order of philosophers based on the rank of their laughter – right up to those who are capable of golden laughter. And given that even gods philosophize (a conclusion I have been drawn to many times –), I do not doubt that they know a new and super-human way of laughing – at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to make fun of things: it seems as if they cannot stop laughing, even during holy rites.

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 294

 

Linguistic

NLP stands for Neur-Linguistic Programming. For that reason language is very important in NLP. Everything that you have learned from experience is somehow coded in the brain. The complete set of this code in NLP is called the world model. Whatever you say is coming from this world model. For that reason a NLP practitioner is very good at listening for in the way you phrase stuff, you can hear where the world model of a person is rich, poor or too poor or too rich. The idea of NLP is enrich someone’s world model so that he gets more options in life and more freedom to chose between these options. If someone has a problem, this only means that his world model is not rich enough to find the solution. So NLP solves problems by enriching world models. For that reason if a NLP practitioner gets someone to speak differently about his problems a first step towards a solution has been made.

At long last, let us contrast the very different manner in which we conceive the problem of error and appearance. (I say “we” for politeness’ sake.) In the past, alteration, change, any becoming at all, were taken as proof of mere appearance, as an indication that there must be something which led us astray. Today, in contrast, precisely insofar as the prejudice of reason forces us to posit unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, thinghood, being, we see ourselves somehow caught in error, compelled into error — so certain are we, on the basis of rigorous examination, that this is where the error lies. It is no different in this case than with the movement of the sun: there our eye is the constant advocate of error, here it is our language. In its origin language belongs to the age of the most rudimentary psychology. We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language — in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere reason sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of “thing.” Everywhere “being” is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word. Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical — for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived? And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: “We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, because we have reason!” Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. “Reason” in language — oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

Twilight of the Idols, ‘Reason’ In Philosophy, paragraph 5

Love

One of Richard Bandler’s favorite sayings is: “Freedom is everything and love is all the rest.” These are the two values of NLP: freedom and love.

Love. Is the most astonishing proof wanted of how far the transfigurative force of intoxication can go? ‘Love’ is that proof, what’s called love in all the languages and mutenesses of the world. Intoxication here gets the better of reality in such a way that, in the consciousness of the lover, the cause seems obliterated and something else located in its place – a quivering and a sudden gleam of all the magic mirrors of Circe. Here man or animal makes no difference; even less do spirit, goodness, probity … One is made a fine fool of if one is fine, a gross fool of if one is gross; but love, and even love of God, the saintly love of ‘saved souls’, at root remains one thing: a fever that has reasons to transfigure itself, an intoxication that does well to lie about itself. And anyway, when one loves one is a good liar, to oneself and about oneself: one strikes oneself as transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect, one is more perfect … Here we find art as an organic function: we find it embedded in life’s most angelic instinct: we find it as life’s greatest stimulus – art, thus, sublimely expedient even in its lying … But it would be a mistake to stop at love’s power to lie: it does more than just imagine, and actually alters the ranking of values. And not only does it change the feeling of values … The lover is more valuable, is stronger. With the animals, this state produces new substances, pigments, colors and forms: especially new movements, new rhythms, new calls and seductions. With man it’s no different. The economy of a man is richer than ever, more powerful, more whole than the non-lover’s. The lover becomes a spendthrift: he’s rich enough for it. He now dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes a donkey of generosity and innocence; he believes in God again, he believes in virtue because he believes in love. On the other hand this idiot of happiness grows wings and new capacities, and even the doors of art open up to him. Discount from poetry in sounds and words the suggestion of that intestinal fever – and what remains of poetry and music? … L’art pour l’art, perhaps: the virtuoso croaking of abandoned frogs despairing in their swamp … All the rest was created by love …

Notebook 14, spring 1888 paragraph 120