There are three stages leading to the realization: you learn; you discover; you invent.

You begin by studying what others with your interest have said,
and enough has been said to keep a person reading the rest of their life,
but what would seem more appropriate than to learn what others know about a matter which is of interest to you  --   indeed  --  how else to ever get started?!
The more central to your temperament be thinking  --  the more fun is learning,
plus there are the periodic, mini Eurekas wherein you have the sensation that something you have just read/learned has radically expanded your understanding;
there is nothing more natural and attractive to mind than learning,
and it is with apparent learning that any man with that certain interest begins
                                                                                                        (and most, any further, never get).
 
 

A few, somehow stumble through the learning phase (+/-),
and privately enter the discovery era whereby,
completely apart from anything they have read or heard about the realization,
they find personal views of things --  quite original to them
whose impact is singular and whose significance strikes as distinctly superior to anything previously learned;
and what would be more natural than for what a person “discovers” for their self
to seem more meaningful to them than something they are  told about.
It is only in this period that a certain man begins to accumulate the
non standard neural connections needed to ever see outside the collective paradigm.
This time can be so fascinating that many go no further,
but offer themselves as a source from which others can learn,
thus unwittingly tying themselves back again to the initial stage
(for teaching is but the complimentary facet of the mental pastime of learning).
 
 

The third possibility is  --  inventing –
the one never talked about (which is just as well --  since no one wants to hear about it  --
--  [okay  --   few minds can deal with it]).
The use of the word, invent to symbolize this phenomenon could be argued,
but there is none adequate, and, invent comes just close enough to be
fruitfully disturbing to the certain man who has gotten this far.
What collects in such a man’s mind in the era and area, just outside and
surrounding the realization is not stuff he has learned from anybody or any source,
and it is not even “discoveries” he has individually made –
no, what brings his mental toes right to the edge of the moat around the castle of the: Great Gawd A'Mighty Goober Grabbers  --   Is THAT Really It?!  --
are things, facts, discoveries, revealing & insightful views that (here it comes) --

Yes, you are right of course (O  ye of normal minds)  --  that is ridiculous --  it is insane;
a man cannot  make-up stuff that is actually useful;
things that his mind has made up & imagined are in fact
what surely stands between him and a clear, objective sight of what life is really about;
the idea that the ultimate step in achieving the realization is through a man’s own mental inventions is crazy.