Fourth Day of the Zenith, 21 of Spring, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Imagine a group of climate scientists trying to verify the record of Earth's temperatures, snowfall, and precipitation for the past 1,000 years. Climate records exist for the past 150 or so years, but I doubt I'm the only one who questions the accuracy and precision of global temperature measurements in the 1870s. So climate scientists examine ice cores from Greenland, tree rings, lake-bottom sediments, and other indirect indicators of climate and temperature.

Now, imagine that those scientists learned that a monastery in Tibet had not only been keeping detailed and meticulous rain- and snowfall records for the past 1,000 years, but also documenting their methods for taking the measurements. I think it's safe to say the scientists would be very interested in examining that record.

But Western scientists, at least, who are studying consciousness seem very unwilling to consider the observations and findings of Buddhist monks in meditation. The remote monasteries of Tibet, China, and Japan have been directly observing human consciousness since the time of the Buddha (roughly 500 B.C.E.) and recording their observations and conclusions, but that's considered "religion" or at the very least "subjective data," and off limits to modern science.

This isn't an "anti-science" screed by any means, but part of the reason that science works and works so well is that it's based on objective and impartial observations, and experiments that are reproducible and findings that can be confirmed by other, independent scientists. But consciousness, by its very definition, is subjective and personal. It's what a person experiences and what it's like to have that experience, and that kind of touchy-feely, intangible, and irreproducible phenomena is complete anathema to science. 

So instead, scientists study neurons and the biological functioning of the brain and learn amazing things about neurology and neuroscience, but don't learn a thing about actual consciousness. They perform psychological studies and experiments on humans, but their observations and findings are reduced to behaviorism, and they miss the boat entirely on consciousness. 

Most of what the West knows about consciousness has come from philosophers, artists, and a handful of renegade psychiatrists. But in Tibet, Kyoto, and elsewhere, there are many monasteries that have functioned like observatories for centuries. Their records are every bit as detailed and precise as astronomical observatories as they study consciousness and the mind, recording their findings and developing theories on their results. 

Scientists have studied the monks, hooking them up to EEGs to record brainwaves and neural activity, etc., but they are missing what it is the monks are observing. It's like an astronomer showing up at any ancient celestial observatory and studying the telescope, not the recorded observations.

Personally, I don't agree with all of the theories that the Tibetans have derived from their observations and study. I think their conclusions are too steeped in Tibetan culture and mysticism, but I'm still intensely interested in what they've observed and even if I find some of their theories implausible, those theories still speak to the experience of their observations.