Spirituality for the
Common Good
Supporting Direct Spiritual Experience Since 1993
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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.
"Long before I took very seriously the claims that eaters of psychedelic chemicals made as to their religious experiences, I defined religion as “the inner experience of an individual when he senses a Beyond, especially as evidenced by the effect of this experience on his behavior when he actively attempts to harmonize his behavior with the Beyond.” Consequently, it would be to this standard that I would refer experiences triggered by the psychedelic drugs, in order to determine whether they should be called religious or not."
— Walter Houston Clark, “The Psychedelics and Religion,” in Psychedelics (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1970), 184.
CSP at the Supreme Court
CSP joined leading scholars in filing an amicus brief that helped secure the Supreme Court’s landmark decision affirming the right of minority religions to practice their faith.
In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the right of the União do Vegetal (UDV) to use hoasca (ayahuasca) in religious ceremonies. CSP, together with Huston Smith, Carl Ruck, Kenneth Smith, and Roger Walsh, filed an amicus curiae brief that provided historical and comparative evidence on the role of entheogens in religious practice.
Why It Matters:
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First time the Supreme Court recognized entheogenic sacrament under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
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Validated that minority faiths deserve the same protection as mainstream religions.
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Established a legal precedent still cited today.
"How does one get from mystic experience to an established religion? My one-word answer is: inevitably. What makes the process inevitable is that we do with our mystical experience what we do with every experience, that is, we try to understand it; we opt for or against it; we express our feelings with regard to it. Do this with your mystical experience and you have all the makings of a religion."
— Brother David Steindl-Rast, “The Mystical Core of Organized Religion,” ReVision, Vol. 12 No. 1, Summer 1989.
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"If the only thing to say about the entheogens was that they seem on occasion to offer direct disclosures of the psychic and celestial planes as well as (in rare instances) the Infinite itself, we would hold our peace. For though such experiences may be veridical in ways, the goal, it cannot be stressed too often, is not religious experiences; it is the religious life. And with respect to the latter, psychedelic “theophanies” can abort a quest as readily as, perhaps more readily than, they can further it.
— Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition
(NY: Harper, 1976, 1985), 155,
revised in Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 80.
Collaborators
CSP has worked alongside organizations, researchers, and communities who share our commitment to ethical and responsible spiritual practice. Together, we cultivate resources, insights, and experiences that honor lineage while supporting contemporary exploration.
"In terms of combining religious practice and psychedelic drugs in a fruitful way one simple model comes to mind. This is one in which a religious aspirant, with strong moral and intellectual understanding of religious doctrine, practice, and community, lacks a deep experiential realization of the bases of these doctrines and practices. The view provided by a properly prepared, supervised, and followed-up high-dose psychedelic experience may provide the validation of the teachings necessary for inspiration to continue the work at hand."
— Rick J. Strassman, “Biochemical Research with Psychedelics,”
in Entheogens and the Future of Religion (SF: CSP, 1997), 161.