Sci Rep
December 16, 2025
Konsta Kallio-Mannila, Rosa Salmela, Jussi Jylkkä
2 citations
Psychedelics and meditation are known for their potential to induce personally meaningful and even transformative experiences. However, it is unclear how similar these experiences are, or how they differ from each other. This explorative study used natural language processing (NLP) methods to compare reports of personally meaningful subjective experiences facilitated by either psychedelic...
Consciousness and Cognition
December 15, 2025
Andreas Krabbe, Pilleriin Sikka, Jussi Jylkkä
Psychedelic substances and meditation can elicit personally meaningful experiences that support well-being, yet their relative and combined contributions remain unclear. Meditation typically produces gradual improvements through sustained practice, whereas psychedelics may induce acute shifts. To examine these dynamics, we re-analysed data from two cross-sectional online surveys using multiple...
Psychopharmacology
August 11, 2025
Jussi Jylkkä, Aila Mustamo
1 citation
RATIONALE: Anecdotal evidence suggests that psychedelic researchers often have personal experiences with psychedelic substances. While such experiences may benefit research, concerns have been raised about potential biases and "excessive enthusiasm." However, the prevalence of personal experiences, their perceived relevance, and their association with opinions about psychedelics remain...
Conscious Cogn
July 7, 2025
Jussi Jylkkä, Hilla Väyrynen, Enyu Lin et al.
3 citations
Meditation and psychedelics facilitate similar types of mystical, psychological, and philosophical-existential insights predictive of wellbeing: a qualitative-quantitative approach.
Sci Rep
October 16, 2024
Andreas Krabbe, Pilleriin Sikka, Jussi Jylkkä
9 citations
Increased psychological flexibility (PF) may underlie the lasting positive effects of psychedelic experiences on mental well-being. The associations between different components of PF, psychological inflexibility (PI), and well-being with psychedelic use are not well understood. We conducted a cross-sectional internet survey of participants (N = 629) with experience of classical psychedelics....
Philosophical Psychology
August 14, 2024
Jussi Jylkkä
8 citations
Psychedelics can facilitate mystical-type insights and beliefs, such as the belief that the fundamental nature of reality is loving consciousness. These belief changes could underlie the positive effects of psychedelics on wellbeing. However, mystical-type beliefs have been criticized of being delusional, as they contradict naturalism. Here I argue that naturalism is one metaphysical position...
Scientific Reports
June 10, 2024
Jussi Jylkkä, Andreas Krabbe, Patrick Jern
11 citations
It has been proposed that psychedelics promote wellbeing through spiritual-type transformations, involving changes in metaphysical beliefs. Past empirical research shows a link between the use of psychedelics and the endorsement of non-physicalist metaphysical beliefs. However, non-physicalist beliefs encompass a wide range of metaphysical ideas, and their links to wellbeing and psychedelics...
Front Psychol
March 15, 2024
Jussi Jylkkä
6 citations
Psychedelic substances are known to facilitate mystical-type experiences which can include metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality. Such insights have been criticized as being incompatible with naturalism and therefore false. This leads to two problems. The easy problem is to elaborate on what is meant by the "fundamental nature of reality," and whether mystical-type...
Journal of Cannabis Research
November 9, 2023
Jussi Jylkkä, Aleksi Hupli, Aleksandra Nikolaeva et al.
Medical cannabis (MC) is increasingly used for chronic pain, but it is unclear how it aids in pain management. Previous literature suggests that MC could holistically alter the pain experience instead of only targeting pain intensity. However, this hypothesis has not been previously systematically tested. A retrospective internet survey was used in a sample of Finnish chronic pain patients (40...
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2019
Jussi Jylkkä, Henry Railo
2 citations
The typical empirical approach to studying consciousness holds that we can only observe the neural correlates of experiences, not the experiences themselves. In this paper we argue, in contrast, that experiences are concrete physical phenomena that can causally interact with other phenomena, including observers. Hence, experiences can be observed and scientifically modelled. We propose that the...