There are two types of learning: aided and unaided. Aided is learning with a teacher with whom we discover new things and gain knowledge with an external help and with someone who's here (in terms of synchronicity) Unaided is more about reading. To make discoveries, we're delivered to ourselves to discerne what's interesting and what isn't. With books, we're develop knowledge from someone who's not here, who's even dead, maybe. However, book don't have answers to questions like teachers would. If we have one, we need to answer it ourselves. In these terms, reading is learning from an absent teacher.