Relation between Psychedelic and Transcendental Experiences

Summary

Psychedelic experiences and transcendental meditation are fundamentally different across several dimensions, including EEG patterns, brain blood-flow, content of experience, mechanisms of action, and therapeutic applications. Specifically, psychedelics show gamma EEG patterns and decreased brain blood-flow, while transcendental meditation reveals alpha patterns and increased frontal blood-flow. The inner experiences also differ significantly, with psychedelics leading to intense mental content compared to the content-free self-awareness found in meditation.

Study at a glance

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.

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