Mark Vernon contemplates it using Abraham Maslow's notion of D-cognition and B-cognition:
D-cognition – D for deficiency – is the kind of knowledge required in the daily business of striving and surviving, which is largely a process of finding what we lack. B-cognition – B for being – is the felt or intuited sense of participating in the world at a deeper level than the humdrum. It's a different kind of knowing that can be linked to a sense of the transcendent.
Maslow has an example, from when he was once participating in a graduation ceremony. Apparently, he tended to think of such occasions as 'silly rituals'. However, on this day he suddenly perceived a tremendous procession, beginning with the great figures at the origins of his discipline and reaching into the future with the generations not yet born. It was not a hallucination. Rather, the ritual conveyed a vivid and I would say transcendent representation of the deep meaning of university life.
The Dish 