Modern Scientist is trapped in a dilemma. While he wants to leave aside 'the subjective' or even deny its reality altogether, he also wants to create a notion that his 'science' basket actually includes everything 'real'. So whenever he talks of 'this is not science', he can manage to fool a good number of people into thinking that a scientist thinks that there is another valid kind of knowledge that only is 'not science'. In reality, he doesn't think so! He could have just gone ahead and deny the claim as 'not true' or simply say that he doesn't know if it is true. The 'new ager' on the other hand failed to 'read between the lines' to notice the indirect swipe against his claim when they are dragged into 'this is not science' folder. He ends up boasting about the kind of things that they were actually created to ridicule them! Non illustrates such mistakeness of both the 'scientist' and the 'new ager' than consciousness. While it is subjective and as such should be 'not science' in their narrow definition of 'science', no one can deny its reality. To avoid any legitimacy in 'this is a valid, non-scientific knowledge' rhetoric the modern scientists ended up accepting to take the bitter pill and hammerd 'consciousness studies' to accommodate 'science'!
By definition, or by the nature of consciousness, you cannot see something else getting conscious. You can only experience your own consciousness. So if we are going to study consciousness using the scientific method, we are going to encounter a problem. In order to verify that a given event is the one that generates consciousness, we must see the event generating the consciousness, which is impossible as consciousness is a state that is experienced only by being the thing that has it! This means that any hypothesis claiming that a given activity generates consciousness will not be scientifically verified. What are we going to study as 'consciousness'?
Perhaps the best thing we might do is only to rely on the testimony of the persons under study. As part of such 'testimony', one can also study one's own consciousness and then assumes that such is how everyone experiences it. So in theorizing the cause of consciousness, we might begin by noting the kind of substances that turns off consciousness, e.g. those used to induce 'deep sleep' by doctors. The 'consciousness' here will be what we get by the testimony, and we must tend tovignore things that we might observe from without! The study of consciousness must be a unique study in that we must not, as usual, tend to ignore testimonies as 'subjective'. In consciousness study, the 'subjective' is precisely the thing we are trying to study.
The new age's idea that 'going within' is a way of obtaining knowledge that might potentially be in conflict with knowledge from 'without' is also problematic! With this, we will arrive at a conclusion that is, perhaps, daunting at first: If there is a soul, then it is discoverable also via the scientific method! So the new age's idea that such an entity is discoverable only by 'going within' is problematic. New agers should just stop at offering the 'going within' as another alternative or as a way of learning some aspect of 'the soul' and not as a sole way of ascertaining soul's existence.
If you experience something 'within you', then it might at first seems that you are experiencing something that is totally out of reach of scientific method. This is because in science, we tend to study the objective world. However, since the whatever you experienced does affect your behaviour, a scientist can, in principle, observe that your behaviour is being affected by things that he cannot account for, by only considering 'the objective'. So the scientist will thus ascertain the existence of the 'things that can only be observed within'! So even if the soul is what causes consciousness, there can be no signal that somehow allows you to experience a consciousness but which, itself, cannot be 'observed' from without! You cannot, for instance 'see a giraffe' which cannot, in some way, be 'seen' by carefully examining your brain, even if such a 'giraffe' is in 'astral world' experienced by your soul! This is because your brain, when it offers the testimony, will be seen to be influenced by 'unseen forces' as it attempts to relay the testimony into the seen world! Scientists must see how information is being added to your brain from 'thin air' as it creates a potential for you to 'offer the testimony' or even 'influence your behaviour'.
This realization leads to the understanding that the only way you can experience a world 'within' that cannot be studied scientifically is if or when your soul has discarnated from the body. In such a state, you will try to consciously move your body but finds that you can't. This will be a scenario closely similar to the paralysis you experience when you are dreaming. You try to run but you find that your legs seems tied in some way! Then in case the soul again incarnates to the body, the scientists will immediately notice some changes to your body. Your soul now have ability to move your body, and feed some information to your brain.So the scientist must be able to see what appears like a 'fifth force' that is now at work in the body. Then in such a state, you are now capable of talking to the people in the visible world, give them testimony and even pretend that you are privy to an entirely out world dubbed 'the fifth dimension'!
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