NLP is all about learning. Basically what NLP does is find someone who is capable of something that is interesting to learn, map out what he is doing and learn it yourself to test whether it also works for you. And if it turns out to work for you as well, then you can pass it on to others. What is learned within NLP is called a NLP strategy. If a strategy is very useful, very versatile and often used, the NLP strategy is generalized into a NLP technique.
Grades of traveller. – We can distinguish five grades of traveller: those of the first and lowest grade are those who travel and, instead of seeing, are themselves seen – they are as though blind; next come those who actually see the world; the third experience something as a consequence of what they have seen; the fourth absorb into themselves what they have experienced and bear it away with them; lastly there are a few men of the highest energy who, after they have experienced and absorbed all they have seen, necessarily have to body it forth again out of themselves in works and actions as soon as they have returned home. – It is like these five species of traveller that all men travel through the whole journey of life, the lowest purely passive, the highest those who transform into action and exhaust everything they experience.
Human, All Too Human, book 2, paragraph 228