Statement of Purpose

The Council on Spiritual Practices is a collaboration among spiritual guides, experts in the behavioral and biomedical sciences, and scholars of religion, dedicated to making direct experience of the sacred more available to more people. There is evidence that such encounters can have profound benefits for those who experience them, for their neighbors, and for the world.

CSP has a twofold mission: to identify and develop approaches to primary religious experience that can be used safely and effectively, and to help individuals and spiritual communities bring the insights, grace, and joy that arise from direct perception of the divine into their daily lives.

The Council on Spiritual Practices has no doctrine or liturgy of its own.

History

CSP was covened in 1994 by Bob Jesse, who continues to serve as its chairman. Its directors and advisors, past and present, include Ken Barnes, M.Div, Brad Bunnin, J.D., M.Div., Craig Comstock, Willis Harman, Ph.D., Chris-Ellyn Johanson, Ph.D., Robert King, M.Div, Ph.D., Victoria MacDonald, M.Div, Thomas Roberts, Ph.D., Charles Schuster, Ph.D., Huston Smith, Ph.D., Kenneth Smith, M.Div, D.D., David Steindl-Rast, Ph.D., O.S.B., Charles Tart, Ph.D., and David Wilson, J.D., M.D.

CSP's Williams James Awards Committee, chaired by Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D. (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), has also included William A. Richards, Ph.D. (Council on Spiritual Practices), Michael Winkelman, Ph.D. (Arizona State University), and David M. Wulff, Ph.D. (Wheaton College).

Since its inception, CSP has organized several conferences and working meetings with scholars and researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California San Francisco, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, the University of Tennessee, Wayne State University, and the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Results

CSP's efforts and those of Prof. Roland Griffiths at the Johns Hopkins Medical School lead to the formation of a major study, conducted by Hopkins and CSP staff, of the psychological and spiritual effects of psilocybin in healthy volunteers. In July 2006, a report of that research was published in the journal Psychopharmacology, titled "Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance." It was accompanied by an editorial titled "Towards a Science of Spiritual Experience" and four additional expert commentaries. The work received media coverage around the world.

CSP has granted 14 CSP William James Awards to graduate students conducting master's- and doctoral-level research into primary religious experience at universities across the U.S. and abroad.

CSP has developed and published a Code of Ethics for Spiritual Guides. The CSP Entheogen Project Series includes several books and the Entheogen Chrestomathy.

Occasionally, CSP has been asked to enter its network's expertise into civic matters. This has included an amicus brief for the Supreme Court of the United States (2005). The Court's unanimous (8-0) decision in that case affirmed a position CSP presented a decade earlier in invited testimony before the New York City Bar Association (1995).

In 2004, CSP and the UCLA Working Group on Awe-Inspiring Experiences produced a public conference and a concurrent research retreat titled Awe to Action, with support from the Metanexus Institute and the Templeton Foundation. At the research retreat, scientists from several universities met to develop new empirical research into primary religious experience (awe), spiritual transformation, and the development of prosocial values and behaviors, such as forgiveness and altruism.

Contributions

Contributions to this work may be given as follows. Please make checks Payable to the order of:

San Francisco Foundation CSP Fund, #4745

and send to:

The San Francisco Foundation
225 Bush Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94104

Rationale

1. Profound experiences of unity with the cosmos – called, variously, mystical experiences, unitive experiences, awe-inspiring experiences, or primary religious experiences – sometimes lead to lasting, and lastingly beneficial, changes in consciousness and behavior. Some of them (Moses at the Burning Bush, the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, Bill Wilson in Towns Hospital) are not only life-changing but world-changing.

2. Not much is known about how frequent such experiences are, what triggers them, what sorts of people are most likely to experience them, and what conditions increase the probability that altered states will lead to beneficially altered traits.

3. Many different activities – prayer, meditation, chanting, fasting, and dancing among them – have been used with the intention of either preparing for such experiences or occasioning them. Among such activities, the use of certain plants and chemicals is one of the least demanding in terms of time and among the most likely to bring about a strong experience on any given occasion.

4. There is some evidence that the nature of the subjective mystical experience is largely independent of the occasioning mechanism.

5. There is traditional wisdom and logic (but nothing like adequate empirical evidence) behind the notion that the existence of a social "vessel" to contain the experience – a group of people with some shared understanding of what the experience means and what is to be done with it – increases the chances that a given experience will lead to lasting benefit.

These observations lead us to believe that increasing the number of people who undergo awe-inspiring experiences under proper conditions would tend to increase the amount of saintly behavior in the world. CSP pursues this goal by catalyzing research to develop a better scientific knowledge of the phenomena and their consequences, by working to create social understandings that would make seeking out primary experiences seem less unusual than it now does to most westerners, and by trying to imagine, and encouraging others to imagine, social contexts that would serve as appropriate vessels.