Is there anything that the teacher can say that will get through to the pupil?
No, but there may be something the teacher can do.
In particular, the teacher could tell the student to take on various tasks or do experiments which might lead to a breakthrough, or possibly work to lower the student's level of background anxiety-- the latter is plausible to me because there might be a reason the student has no trust in his or her own perceptions and thoughts, and that reason might be locked in place by fear. Of course, I'm just guessing about a hypothetical student-- the teacher (if competent) should be able to form hypotheses about why the student is so stuck and what might help.
Today's post, Two Cult Koans was originally published on 21 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Politics and Awful Art, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.