The scope is the qualia of color and what it is to behold color in your mind. With all due respect, you sound like Mary in the Mary's Room thought experiment. [1]
Iridium flares are a really neat night sky phenomenon to look for. The predictions can be found on satellite tracking sites [1]. I caught one by accident when I noticed a satellite passing overhead on my way to my car one night. Over the next few seconds it increased to dazzling brightness, and then it disappeared just as quickly. I couldn't believe my luck.
You are very lucky. I had a script scrape that site (not sure if I broke their TOS) and send me an SMS about 5-10 minutes before a visible pass of something bright including Iridium flares, but I found that even if you know the exact time and direction of where it will happen it is still easy to miss it. It's very nice to see one when you do. If the sky is dark you can often see the satellite before and after it goes bright, but I've seen one shine through a blue sky which must be perplexing to spot by accident by people who don't know about these.
I once saw one accidentally, when I was lying in a garden around 03:00 just watching stars. Checked at HeavensAbove afterwards to confirm I haven't just imagined it.
I used to do a lot of Iridium hunting in high school, sometimes waking up at 04:30 to spot the morning ones (which, given that I also stayed up/was waking up early sometimes to watch Shuttle launches/landings on NASA TV - in my timezones they were often in the middle of the night - pretty much ensured that I was often quite sleepy at school).
Many of these quotes have to do with theories of consciousness. Describing consciousness is still a philosophical problem. I wouldn't call this "mysticism," just scientists trying to grapple with the mind-body problem.
Different people, different definitions. There's also some overlap between abstractions like Philosophy & "Mysticism".
> …I regard consciousness as fundamental
> Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
> Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one.
> The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.
Reading these quotes, it seems like they are all in an abstract, or mind, domain.
This sounds like Functionalism to me. Until we can actually map out the complexity being described in the article, consciousness is still a philosophical problem. I appreciate the scientific approach, but I think Tononi's definition of consciousness is flawed (or just nonexistent). I've seen other attempts to apply science to the mind-body problem, and it yielded flat-out pseudoscience. This was not convincing either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument