Faculties Faculty

     And so the explanation that begins to emerge is very clear. There are other realms of being that run parallel with our own, and the nodal points of ley lines can create some kind of bridge between the realms. Jenkins' teacher added the astonishing piece of information that Shambhala, the legendary island of bliss of Eastern mythology, is not — as is generally believed — situated in the Gobi Desert, but in the Island of Britain, at Glastonbury. Glastonbury is, of course, the nodal point of a record number of leys.
— Colin Wilson, Mysteries, p. 473.

     The answer was self-evident to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle states it in his treatise On the Soul: 'Memory belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination.' Think of a scholar surrounded by a library of books. He may be merely a dull pedant who knows how to find information. But if he had the contents of all the books inside his head, that would be a different matter. He would know the books, be able to compare Plato's views on the soul with those of St. Augustine, or Alexander the Great's military strategy with Julius Caesar's. Such a man would possess wisdom rather than knowledge; he would be a genius, a kind of god.
     The argument will strike some readers as a sophistry. Surely a man is none the wiser for having his head crammed with information? But that, again, is a typical modern misconception. The basic problem of human consciousness is its narrowness. From the moment I get up in the morning, my chief occupation is observing what goes on at the end of my nose. That is not really consciousness. A dog could say the same. My real glimpses of consciousness — of the potentialities of consciousness — occur in these moments of sudden intensity, or deep relaxation, when these limitations are suddenly transcended.
     It is difficult to describe what happens in such moments, except to say that the world seems to become a deeper and a richer place. If you read poetry in such a mood, it is a sensual pleasure, as if it caused vibrations in the senses of smell and touch. If you listen to music, it seems to reach into every corner of your being. If you read a travel book, the places described seem to be real.
     Clearly, what we are talking about is 'Faculty X'. the strange ability suddenly to grasp the reality of other times and places. But here I must make a point of central importance. There is no good reason why a baby should not experience flashes of Faculty X. But they would mean far less to a baby than to an adult. All children experience Faculty X, particularly at holiday times and at Christmas; there is a sense of excitement and multiplicity, of endless horizons. But the child's actual horizons are limited by experience; so the insight is also limited. On the other hand, a scientist who experienced Faculty X might glimpse the immense complexity of the universe. A historian who experienced Faculty X might grasp the reality of remote epochs of time. You could compare Faculty X to the power of distant vision. Obviously, it will mean more to a person standing on a hilltop than to someone in the valley.
     It should be obvious, then, that the meaning-content of such an experience depends on the amount we know. For an ignoramous, Faculty X would be merely a pleasant sense that 'all is well', that the world is a marvelous and complex place. For a philosopher, it could be an insight into the meaning of human existence.
— Colin Wilson, Ibid., pp. 250-251.