extending science to mind, heart, and spirit

this kind of science is fundamentally a bit different from classic science, for at least three reasons:
1) observations may be internal rather than external. in science, i do an experiment and i see that the litmus paper turns blue. then you do the same experiment and you see that the paper turns blue. we talk to each other, and we agree that we observed the same thing. but what if the experiment is to meditate for one year, and the observation is whether i feel calm? it's harder to agree on what we mean, because these internal observations are nuanced and deeply coupled to the act of perception itself that looks at them.
2) observations require more practice to see. we can never see the real world, only the inside of our own brains. if we "see" a particular phenomenon, like "a chair" or "an act of bravery", this means we have a predictive model that hasn't yet been shot down by the sensory evidence. but we can only see things that we have predictive models for. if caveman witnesses a traffic jam, he won't see "a traffic jam". at best he might be able to recognize that each "car" is an autonomous unit. likewise, autistic people probably can't see "extracting oneself from an awkward social situation", yet for other people this is as clear as "a chair". in a science of spirituality, observations of things like "mindfulness" would require the observer to actually have the predictive models for the things being observed, which requires a lot of experience and practice.
3) finally, these experiments might require people with strongly developed compassion and mindfulness to perform the manipulations, for example to provide therapy to psychopaths. such people are rare, and it's difficult to identify them.