Rationale [for seeking religious type experiences]

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1. Profound experiences of unity with the cosmos – called, variously, non-dual consciousness, mystical experiences, unitive experiences, awe-inspiring experiences, or primary religious experiences – sometimes lead to lasting, and lastingly beneficial, changes in values 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 preparing for such experiences or for 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. Likewise for engagement in suitable ongoing spiritual practices, such as meditation.

These observations lead us to believe that increasing the number of people who undergo mystical-type experiences under suitable conditions would tend to increase the amount of prosocial 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.