PT 663 - Jackie Tileston - Penn Psychedelic Collaborative

Jackie Tileston, a painter and Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, brings decades of nondual practice and a working artist's eye to the question of what psychedelics, mysticism, and art have to teach each other.

In this episode, Joe talks with Jackie about the Penn Psychedelics Collaborative and the course she co-teaches, Psychedelic Paradigms and Practices, why the mystical experience keeps showing up in clinical trials, the differences between nondual traditions and why they matter for integration, how 5-MeO-DMT is likely to fare in a clinical setting, what a good landing space after a session might look like, and why she thinks most psychedelic art is a postcard from the trip rather than an invitation into one.

If a psychedelic experience can leave someone convinced that the world is an illusion, who in the room is prepared to help them come back?

Enjoy the show.

Recorded October 6, 2026 at Jackie's office at Penn

In This Episode

• The origins of the Penn Psychedelics Collaborative and the PhilaDelic conferences
• Teaching Psychedelic Paradigms and Practices, supported by the SNF Paideia Program
• Thirty years of meditation and nondual study before her first psychedelic experience
• How David Yaden first came through her classroom
• The debate over dropping the word mysticism from research
• Why mystical experience scores predict better outcomes, and why researchers dislike that
• A shift from materialism-first to consciousness-first thinking
• How nondual lineages differ, and Abhinavagupta's critique of Advaita
• Ontological trauma after high-dose nondual experiences
• Meditation-related harms and Cheetah House
• Should facilitators have their own psychedelic experience? The Sherpa analogy
• Clinical 5-MeO-DMT and the case for low-dose, stepwise protocols
• Designing landing spaces after a session without setting too many priors
• Psychedelic art as a postcard from the trip, and abstraction as an invitation
• Bruce Damer, the Center for MINDS, and James Fadiman's creative problem-solving studies
• Christof Koch's 5-MeO-DMT experience and conversation with Bernardo Kastrup
• David Eagleman's Possibilianism and Christopher Timmermann's neurophenomenology
• Why worldview change may be the most political act

Links

• Jackie Tileston: https://jackietileston.com
• Penn Psychedelics Collaborative: https://www.pennpsychedelicscollaborative.org
• Psychedelic Paradigms and Practices: https://snfpaideia.upenn.edu/course/spring/2027/psychedelic-paradigms-and-practices-2/
• The Pattern Project: https://patternproject.substack.com/p/start-here-the-pattern-project
• Cheetah House: https://www.cheetahhouse.org
• Then I Am Myself the World by Christof Koch: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/christof-koch/then-i-am-myself-the-world/9781541602809/