If we stuck a guy in a room with a chair and a table and an endless supply of paper and ink, how long would it take him to deconstruct his universe, his reality, and his self, and come to the place where he knows exactly who and what and where he was and could never be shaken from his view?

Five years.

I just made that number up, but assuming he didn’t fall into the egoic double-ignorance trap — wrong-knowing, ignorance of ignorance, not knowing he doesn’t know — it couldn’t be much more than that. In fact, turning the question back inward and challenging his assumptions might mark the turning point at which years of head-banging struggle turned into surprisingly rapid and easy progress. It might take a thousand years for a dam to burst, but it’s that last two minutes you want to catch on video.