Sorry, your browser doesn’t support embedded videos. Stories Project Stories 10.06.2026 “The Lights Are On in the Universe” – Psychedelic Research Challenges the Naturalistic View of Science Jussi Jylkkä photographed at the St. Michael's Church in Turku. Photo: Emilia Anundi TEXT Maaret Launis Share: The word psychedelic literally means “mind-revealing”. If anything, the work of postdoctoral researcher Jussi Jylkkä aims to be psychedelic in precisely that sense: to reveal something essential about human consciousness. His three-year research project, funded by Kone Foundation, has now come to an end. Along the way, it brought Jylkkä not only close to burnout, but also closer to God. Scientific research, it seems, can have that kind of effect too. What is It About? The Kone Foundation-funded research project Comforting Delusions or Life-Transforming Insights? The Role of Mystical Experiences in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy was conducted at Åbo Akademi University between 2021 and 2023. Led by postdoctoral researcher Jussi Jylkkä, the project brought together philosophers and psychologists. During the three-year project, Jylkkä himself published around a dozen scientific papers. The material collected through the project has been utilised by several research groups, and the first doctoral dissertation on psychedelics supervised by Jylkkä is due to be examined in 2026. Jylkkä comes from a strongly atheistic family. He grew up believing that a scientific worldview logically entails the non-existence of God or any form of divinity. Then he grew up and started studying philosophy. There he encountered the hard problem of consciousness: science cannot fully capture subjective experience. We may know everything there is to know about the physiology of a dog or a bat, yet we cannot know what it feels like to be a dog or a bat. A blind person may possess every possible fact about colour and still not understand what colours look like. If science cannot explain subjective experience, what exactly is it, and why does it resist explanation? Jylkkä describes having an epiphany: the world exists independently of human beings, or, as he puts it, “the lights are on in the universe”. Matter must possess some intrinsic nature that science does not reveal to us. Human beings can observe the world, but they always do so from their own perspective.“It just hit me. Reality isn’t merely dead matter – everything is consciousness. At the philosophy department, my ideas were considered either trivial or mad,” Jylkkä explains. The insight was transformative. He became a vegan, left philosophy – “the juggling of concepts”, as he describes it – and moved into psychology to study consciousness. Through his own experiences with psilocybin, Jylkkä became increasingly interested in whether psychedelic users were simply deluded, or whether their experiences might in fact be compatible with a scientific worldview. To investigate this question, he applied for and received funding from Kone Foundation. “I don’t know what is causing the mental health crisis. Human psychology is extraordinarily complex, and psychedelics alone will not solve its problems.” Psychedelics – a Silver Bullet for Mental Health? If someone reports travelling to the far side of the Andromeda galaxy and conversing with aliens after taking psychedelics, as has been documented in previous studies, the experience is probably a delusion. But if someone feels, under the influence of psychedelics, that they become part of the same consciousness as the chocolate they are eating, Jylkkä argues that the experience is genuine. “Chocolate is metabolised in the human body and becomes energy used by the brain. In that sense, the chocolate literally becomes part of a person’s consciousness. It is largely a matter of how we choose to describe the experience.” Jylkkä has personal experience of psychedelic use as well. He has also studied how many psychedelic researchers have experimented with psychedelics themselves.“As many as 85 per cent. Even more have tried cannabis – around 95 per cent – which can also be classified as a psychedelic. Researchers and journalists should be aware of this, so that attitudes towards psychedelics do not become unrealistically positive.” According to Jylkkä, a few years ago psychedelics were often discussed as though they were a silver bullet capable of solving the mental health crisis. He believes that psychedelic-assisted treatment may be one useful tool among many. “I don’t know what is causing the mental health crisis. Human psychology is extraordinarily complex, and psychedelics alone will not solve its problems.” When it comes to the non-medical use of psychedelics, Jylkkä describes himself as fairly liberal. If a person is not harming others, why should they not be allowed to do what they wish with their own consciousness? At the same time, he stresses that all psychoactive substances carry risks and side effects, and psychedelics are no exception. Another issue is that psychedelic use remains a criminal offence in Finland. This has implications for research. Jylkkä compares the situation to researching homosexuality at a time when homosexual acts were criminalised and many researchers studying the subject were themselves gay. “Researching illegal activities, such as psychedelic use, is not inherently unethical. We emphasised to participants that we were not encouraging anyone to use psychedelics and that such use carries risks.” Jylkkä notes that the the National Committee on Research Ethics reviewed and approved all sub-projects within the study. “We paid particular attention to participant anonymity and ensuring that nobody would be harmed by taking part in the research. We do not know whether the illegality of psychedelics influenced who chose to participate, or whether it may have biased the results.” Photo: Emilia Anundi “The project seeks to answer some of the biggest questions of all: what cognition is, and how well we can truly know ourselves. The answer to the latter, it seems, is: not very well.” Over the course of three years, Jylkkä published around a dozen scientific papers on psychedelics. The controversial nature of the topic was compelling, but it also increased the pressure. “After all that publishing, burnout definitely started creeping closer. Five months of unemployment came at exactly the right time,” Jylkkä laughs. Jylkkä is currently working on the interdisciplinary research project Transforming AI, which seeks to understand why Finland’s economy is not growing despite its abundant intellectual capital. Within the project, he continues to explore the workings of human consciousness, which plays a major role in areas such as the effective use of artificial intelligence. “The project seeks to answer some of the biggest questions of all: what cognition is, and how well we can truly know ourselves. The answer to the latter, it seems, is: not very well.” Contact Postdoctoral researcher Jussi Jylkkä, jussi.jylkka@abo.fi The word psychedelic literally means “mind-revealing” and refers to a group of consciousness-altering substances, including LSD and psilocybin. According to contemporary neuroscience, the reality we experience is a model created by the brain that enables us to navigate and survive in the world. Psychedelics loosen these “models of reality”, making them more open to change. In recent years, psychedelics have been studied as potential treatments for mental health disorders. They are also used in various subcultures for self-exploration and in spiritual contexts. Research has identified both beneficial and harmful effects on wellbeing, depending on how and in what context they are used. In Finland, psychedelics are classified as illegal drugs.