One of the most powerful tools that I think is useful for you to have as professional communicators is to make the distinction between perception and hallucination. If you can clearly distinguish what portion of your ongoing experience you are creating internally and putting out there, as opposed to what you are actually receiving through your sensory apparatus, you will not hallucinate when it's not useful. Actually there is nothing that you need to hallucinate about. There is no outcome in therapy for which hallucinations are necessary. You can stay strictly with sensory experience and be very powerful, effective, efficient, and creative.

You need only three things to be an absolutely exquisite communicator. We have found that there are three major patterns in the behavior of every therapeutic wizard we've talked to—and executives, and salespeople. The first one is to know what outcome you want. The second is that you need flexibility in your behavior. You need to be able to generate lots and lots of different behaviors to find out what responses you get. The third is you need to have enough sensory experience to notice when you get the responses that you want. If you have those three abilities, then you can just alter your behavior until you get the responses that you want.

That's what we're doing here. We know what outcomes we want, and we put ourselves into what we call "uptime," in which we're completely in sensory experience and have no consciousness at all. We aren't aware of our internal feelings, pictures, voices, or anything else internal. We are in sensory experience in relationship to you and noticing how you respond to us. We keep changing our behavior until you respond the way we want you to.

Right now I know what I'm saying because I'm listening to myself externally. I know how much sense you're making of what I'm saying by your responses to it, both conscious and unconscious. I am seeing those. I'm not commenting on them internally, simply noticing them and adjusting my behavior. I have no idea what I feel like internally. I have tactile kinesthetic awareness. I can feel my hand on my jacket, for instance. It's a particular altered state. It's one trance out of many, and a useful one for leading groups.

Woman: How do you adjust yourself in uptime? You said you keep adjusting until you get the response you want. What adjustments are you making? Do you explain more? Or talk more? Or...

Well, I adjust all the possible parameters. The most obvious one to me is voice tone. You can adjust your facial expression, too. Sometimes you can say the same words and lift your eyebrows and people will suddenly understand. Sometimes you can begin to move your hands. With some people, you can draw a picture. Sometimes I can just explain the same thing over again with a different set of words. Those are some of the logical possibilities that are available. There are lots and lots of possibilities.

Woman: Well, as you're changing your behavior, don't you have to be somewhat aware of what's going on inside you?

No. I think most people try to do it reflexively, with conscious self-awareness, and most of the strategies of reflexive consciousness don't work. That's why most people have such crummy personal relationships. If I want you to act a certain way, and I make you the reference for what I'm doing, then all I have to do is keep acting differently until you look and sound and behave the way I want you to. If I have to check with myself to find out, then I'm going to be paying attention to my feelings and my internal voices, which isn't going to tell me whether I'm getting what I want. Most therapists succeed with their clients a dozen times before they notice it.

Woman: OK. I can see how that would work in therapy, being a therapist. But in an intimate relationship it seems like being in uptime wouldn't be as intimate.

Oh, I disagree. I think it would be much more intimate that way. I don't think intimacy is built on talking to yourself and making pictures internally. I think intimacy is built on eliciting responses. If I'm in uptime when I'm interacting with somebody, then I'm going to be able to elicit responses from them which are pleasurable, and intimate, and anything else I want.

Woman: If I'm talking to someone about something that I'm feeling and thinking is important to me, then I wouldn't be in uptime, would I?

If that is your definition of intimacy, then we have different definitions of intimacy!

Woman: I'm saying that it's part of being intimate; that's one way of being intimate.

OK. I disagree with that.

Woman: How can you do that if you're in uptime?

You can't do that when you're in uptime. You can talk about things that you have thought and felt at other times but then you wouldn't be in uptime. I agree that uptime would be a poor strategy for talking about internal states, but I don't happen to consider that intimacy. For your description, uptime is not a good strategy. Uptime is the only one I know which is a generally effective strategy to interact with people in terms of getting responses.

For what you're talking about, I would design a completely different strategy, because you're going to have to know what you're thinking and feeling in order to talk about it. But I don't think that will produce connectedness with another human being. Because if you do that you're not paying attention to them, you're only paying attention to yourself. I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm just saying that it's not going to make you feel more connected with someone else. You're not going to have more contact with the woman sitting next to you if you're inside making pictures and talking to yourself and having feelings, and then telling her about them. That's not going to put you in contact with her. All that's going to do is tell her conscious mind a lot about what's going on inside you when you're not paying attention to her.