Studying HD equals to building a wall or putting one stone upon another one. There's no way to have a real grasp of the bricks or stone laid on the top without having a solid understanding of what lies on the bottom.
The HD knowledge is meant to mutate you. The deeper you delve into it, the deeper it mutates you.
And I'm not talking of mental understanding. I'm talking of experiential understanding, and this takes time, patience, dedication and inner contemplation.
The HD knowledge has no power, in terms of transforming your life, if your own understanding of it is purely mental.
It's what you observe in your daily experiences what allows a correct understanding of what you learn/study/investigate.
Therefore, it's not a matter of how much you know, but of how what you know fits with what you're able to observe in your own life. Because theory is always meant to go hand in hand with practice.