Relation between Psychedelic and Transcendental Experiences

Frederick Travis

International Journal of Psychological Studies, 2022, vol. 14, issue 4, 31

Abstract: Psychedelic use is generally considered safe, and their effects are being equated with those of meditation practices. To assess these conclusions, this paper compares psychedelic and meditation experiences in terms of 1) EEG patterns, 2) brain blood-flow patterns, 3) content of experience, 4) mechanism of action, and 5) therapeutic application. On these five factors, psychedelic and transcendental experiences during meditation practice are completely different- gamma vs alpha EEG; decreased brain blood-flow vs higher frontal blood-flow; intense mental and emotional content vs content-free self-awareness; influenced by the set and setting vs transcending the set and setting. Since brain patterns and inner experiences differ, it is not accurate to equate psychedelic and transcendental experiences or to use effects or mechanism of one to justify the other. Yes, carefully designed research into both psychedelic and transcendental experiences should continue. But the results of these studies should not be superficially combined.

Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijps/article/download/0/0/47981/51543 (application/pdf)
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijps/article/view/0/47981 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ibn:ijpsjl:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:31

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Psychological Studies from Canadian Center of Science and Education Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Canadian Center of Science and Education ().