Bill: Confusion is a slide, and it's small. Understanding is a movie, and it's large.

Are there any other differences? If the picture of confusion is smaller, it's probably also farther away.

Bill: Yes, it's farther away.

Do either of them have sound?

Bill: Yes, understanding has a voice describing what I see. Confusion is silent.

How do you know that you're confused about one, but you understand the other one?

Bill: I have different feelings when I look at those two pictures,

OK. How do your feelings know to feel that when you look at those pictures.

Bill: I suppose because I taught it that.

I want you all to notice something. I asked a "How?" question, asking about process, and he answered a "Why?" question. "Because" always answers "Why?" All you'll get out of "Because" is a bunch of historical theory. I only have one theory: that the reason people have so much trouble running their brains is because the Earth is tilted on its axis. So actually you have someone else's brain, and it's mad. That's as much theorizing as I do.

Let's try again. Bill, how do you know to have different feelings when you look at those two different pictures? . . .

Bill: I don't know.

I like that answer.

Bill: After I thought about it, I decided I didn't know.

That happens sometimes. Pretend you know. Talk. The worst thing that can happen is that you can be wrong. Years ago I realized I had been wrong so many times, I decided I'd just go ahead and be wrong in the ways that were more interesting.

Bill: When I look at the understanding picture, I can see how things work. That gives me a soft feeling of relaxation. When I look at the other one, I can't see what's going to happen next; I feel a little tense.

Those certainly sound like quite different experiences. Does anyone have any questions about what I've been doing?

Man: You make it look so easy. How do you know what questions to ask?

All I want to know is, "How are these two experiences different?" The answers to that are specific differences in the person's visual, auditory, and feeling experience. My questions are often directed at what the person is not noticing, and they are always directed toward helping that person make distinctions that he wasn't making before. For instance, when I asked Bill if it was a slide or a movie, he could answer easily. But he probably never even noticed that difference before, because no one ever asked him about it.

Woman: Is there any particular order to the questions you ask? You asked about whether it was a slide or a movie before you asked about color or black and white.

There's a certain efficiency in asking about things first and qualities later; you'll go astray less often. If you ask "How fast is it moving?" and it turns out to be a slide, that may be a little confusing to the person you're doing this with. Go for the basics first, and then ask about what other finer distinctions might be

there.

The questions you ask are also a function of familiarity. I've explored confusion and understanding a few times before, so I already know what kinds of differences are likely to be there. It's like anything else you learn to do. When you do it the first time, you stumble around a bit. Later, when you're more familiar with what you're doing, you get more streamlined and systematic. You can also just make a long list of all the possibilities and go through them one by one. But it's easier if you first mention a few of the main distinctions to get that person's mind going in the right direction, and then ask, "How are the two different?"

Now let's go on to the more interesting part. Bill, I want you to take "confusion" and change it until it's the same as "understanding." I don't want you to change the content. I only want you to change the process that you use to represent the same content. First I want you to take that slide and make it into a movie. . . .

Bill: I can't seem to do that.

Do it this way. First make a series of slides at different times. When you have enough of them, look at them in rapid succession. Speed that up a little, and you'll have a movie. A movie is only a sequence of still pictures shown in a fast sequence.

Bill: OK. I've got a movie.

Good. Now add a narrative sound track that describes the movie. . . . (Bill nods.)

Now make that movie larger and closer until it's the same size and distance as your picture of understanding. . . . What happens when you do that? Do you understand it now?

Bill: Yes. I can see what's going on now; I feel much more comfortable. I have the same feeling with both pictures.

It makes sense that if you have a large movie with a narrative sound track, you'll understand something better than if all you have is a small, silent, still picture. You have much more information, and it's organized in a way that you can comprehend it. This is Bill's natural way of learning how to understand something.

Woman: Don't you have to have more information to be unconfused?

Sometimes that's the case. But often the person actually has the information; it just hasn't been accessed in a way that allows understanding. It's not that something is missing; it's just that what you have is poorly organized. You all know much more than you think you do. Usually it's not too little information that creates confusion, it's having too much information. Often a person's confusion is an enormous collage of data, or a lot of pictures flipping in rapid succession. In contrast, most people's pictures of understanding are well–organized, and very economical. They're like an elegant mathematical equation, or a good poem. They distill a lot of data down to a very simple representation. What I did with Bill just made it possible for him to collect the data that he already had, in a way that he could understand it. Being able to use your mind means being able to access, organize and use what you already have.

Most of you have seen what happens when a fire burns down in a fireplace. If you rearrange the logs a little bit, it will blaze up again. You haven't added anything. The only thing you've changed is the arrangement, but it makes a huge difference.

If you think that you need more data, you'll probably ask lots of questions. If the answers just contain raw data, they won't help you much, and you'll have to keep asking. The more answers you have, the less you will examine the questions you are asking. But if the answers help you organize the data you already have, it may help you to understand. That is what's often called "passive learning," someone who's always going, "Spoon–feed me." Other people can take in a large amount of data and organize it themselves without much help from outside. That's what's often called "active learning."

Now, Bill, I want you to try it the other way. Take what you originally understood and make it into a smaller, more distant, still picture and erase the sound track. . . . Bill: Now I'm tense and confused.

So now we could take anything you're sure of, and confuse the hell out of you. You're all laughing; you don't realize how useful that can be! Don't you know someone who is sure they understand something, and they don't? . . . and that false confidence gets them into a lot of trouble? A good dose of confusion could get them motivated to listen to people around them and gather some very useful information. Confusion and understanding are internal experiences. They don't necessarily have anything to do with the outside world. In fact, if you look around, there usually isn't much connection.

In order for Bill to have the experience he calls "understanding," he has to go through a process in which the information he has is represented as a large movie with a sound track. This happens randomly sometimes, and at other times other people may induce it. However, now that he knows how it works, he can deliberately engage that process whenever he is confused about something. If he hasn't got enough data, he may not come to full understanding; his movie may have gaps in it, or the sound track may fade out from time to time. But it will be the best representation for him of what he knows. Those gaps in the movie will indicate precisely where he needs to have more information. And whenever he's bored with what he already understands too well, he can confuse himself as a prelude to coming to some new and different understanding.