PART 4 OF SESSION 1 OF COURSE 1

We will now focus of FAMILIARITY.: In order to know anything, you must be at least familiar with something -- anything at all -- first. Being familiar with one set of things may be most beneficial for knowing one other thing, while being familiar with another set of things may be more beneficial for knowing yet another thing. This is because one may only know things if one understands them, and understanding is the way the mind takes in information in such a way so as to conceptualize it. In order to conceptualize anything, the mind must envision thoughts and feel the information that they are given. Thus, understanding is a perceptive relation. Understanding thus is best derived by identifying with a given set of information, and putting this given identity of information into a perspective that they can relate to.
If one knows something, then they can be taught anything. If you were to interrelate a person's knowledge of one thing to a separate concept in such a way so as to bring in a position to tinker with the concept by using whatever logic they have. If you were to provide at least three clues of such that would solve the situation that they are trying to solve through the process of elimination, then the student would have a basic understanding of how the concept works. Using three sets of three clues, one may make the original understanding crisper. Using three sets of those clues, one may teach how this knowledge that you conveyed works in the real world.
Remember the movie "Mask?" The blind girl was taught blue and red when the boy said that hot was red and cold was blue. What the boy was doing was making the blind girl begin to understand colors by relating these to heat, which she already knew. Likewise, one may not always be able to convey an exact analogy as to show the basics of a concept, yet, a close analogy may make an important concept better understood.
If I were to tell you that it takes light about one nanosecond to travel one foot, this might not mean much to you. Yet, if I were to tell you that light, via refractors, can circle the earth a number of times in one second, you would see more clearly that light travels at a tremendous rate. Likewise, if I told you that an electron is about 9.11*10^(-31)kilograms in terms of rest mass, this might not mean much to you. Yet, if I told you that it would take over one million trillion trillion electrons at rest mass to weigh one kilogram, you would probably have a better understanding of what I am talking about. This is because most people are accustomed to knowing that the earth is big, what a million is, and what a trillion is. Yet, most people are not so familiar with the import of terms like "nanosecond" or "10^(-31)."
Familiarity draws together sources of experiences that people have in order to better understand a concept that initially appears bleak and abstract. By using familiarity, one may have a better start at being familiar with unknown ground. Through more familiarity with different things, one may be able to multiply one's knowledge and logic base.