WARNING: The views espoused below are my own. The style of writing may mislead some readers into believing that these views are somewhat authoritative. This particular style of writing was adopted by the author to avoid the unpleasantness of prefacing every sentence with IMO(in my opinion).

As scientists, we are taught to observe empirical phenomenon. The rationale behind this approach is that repeated observations lead to the identification of patterns, that can then be generalized and framed more formally. Undoubtedly, this is a great exploratory strategy. The caveats are that such observations should be reproducible and sufficiently quantifiable/measurable. Reproduciblity entails that a piece of experimental observation should be general enough to not depend on the specific lab  conditions in which it was conducted. Measurability, requires that a quantum be placed on the degree to which an experimental variable has been recorded. So if a lab in Geneva decimates 1gm of Uranium into its equivalent energy, the same energy can be expected to be released in another lab in Tokyo or if the same is performed in Geneva for a second time. So far so good.

The two criteria of measureability and reproducibilty, seem to preclude any serious scientific study of subjective phenomenal experience(aka consciousness). Surely, conscious events are anything but measurable. So for instance, how is an ounce of anger different from a quart of sadness? Similarly, how do I reproduce 16.2 grams of self awareness in a lab setting ? How do I convey to a lab rat(aka grad student) the level of my bliss when I hear a particularly pleasant piece of music, or my anger at the way somebody parks their car in my parking spot. But, however immeasurable and unreproducible these mental states may appear, they always display a pattern. For if there wasn’t a deterministic pattern to these mental states, how would it have been possible to say the following: ‘If I get a bonus from by boss, I’ll feel happy’.  The prospect of a pay raise is so well correlated with a subsequent sense of ‘happiness’ that it can be predicted with near certainty.  In other words, certain external events can faithfully predict the onset of mental states, however ill-defined those mental states may be under the limitations imposed by measurability and reproducibility. Similarly ,when a depression patient gives a ball by ball account of emotional states that precede the gradual spiral into an unmitigated abyss of sadness, how is it any different from a physicist or  a biologist or an engineer, describing the workings of an atom, a cell or a transistor ? It’s as if these mental states follow a deterministic pattern- a nebulous dynamics. The human being who accurately predicts the onset of ‘happiness’ after a pay raise, has intimately understood a ‘phenomenology’ of a certain kind of mental state, in this case an emotional state.

Meditation is the art of mastering this very phenomenology. The logic is that by sustained practice, the practitioner is able to grasp the patterns that underlie thought processes. He/She begins to recognize thought processes in much the same way as an amateur bird watcher ,who begins to recognize bird species and their behavior. In that sense, meditation is a SKILL. The more you do it and the more intensely you do it, the better you get at it.