The Varieties of Transcendent Experience: Empirical Insights from Placebo-Controlled Psychedelic Trials

Abstract

Psychedelics can induce transcendent experiences that go beyond the ordinary sense of self. While research has focused mainly on mysticism, broader transcendent phenomena remain underexplored. Drawing on qualitative data from placebo-controlled trials with LSD and DMT, this talk introduces a novel tripartite framework for characterizing transcendent experience: (1) key themes, identified in 194 interviews with 79 healthy participants; (2) subjective impact, qualitatively assessed as positive or potentially transformative, challenging yet unresolved, or neutral; and (3) metaphysical interpretation, informed by complementary quantitative data examining how experiences are interpreted and whether worldviews (spiritual, materialist, agnostic) may shift. Theoretically, I argue that “transcendent experience” is a more precise and semantically neutral term than “religious” or “spiritual,” making it especially suitable for describing first-order phenomenology. The approach offers a systematic framework for mapping the varieties of transcendent experience across nonordinary states of consciousness.

Biography

PD Dr. phil. Kurt Stocker is a psychologist and cognitive scientist with an academic background in psychology and linguistics, including a specialization in cognitive semantics. He is a project leader for psychedelic science (ETH Zurich) and a research associate in psychopharmacology (University Hospital Basel), where his work focuses on the phenomenology and psychometrics of psychedelic experiences. Stocker’s interdisciplinary approach integrates phenomenological psychology, semantic analysis, and empirical methods. A central aim of his work is the comprehensive psychological mapping of psychedelic experiences, both for scientific understanding and therapeutic application.. His recent research has been featured in PsyPost and The Microdose.