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.