CSP

CSP appears in the book as one of the nonprofit organizations supporting psychedelic research and as a sponsor of the 2010 MAPS conference in San Jose. Its documented role is specific but consequential: it helped support a gathering where university researchers, underground guides, and people who used psychedelics for spiritual, therapeutic, or recreational purposes met in the same venue.

Institutional role

The account identifies CSP alongside MAPS, the Heffter Research Institute, and the Beckley Foundation as one of four nonprofits funding most of the psychedelic research then underway. It does not describe CSP’s governance, membership, or day-to-day activities, so its institutional profile remains less developed than its place in this funding network. The evidence establishes the organization’s participation in the wider research landscape without assigning it sole responsibility for the conference or for the work presented there.

The San Jose conference

In 2010, CSP sponsored the MAPS-organized psychedelic-science conference in San Jose. More than a thousand people attended, including scientists presenting research, guides working in both university trials and underground settings, and a much larger group of regular psychedelic users. The conference’s scale and mix of participants made it a meeting point for constituencies that could otherwise remain separate; CSP’s documented contribution was to support this shared forum as one member of a group of nonprofit sponsors.

Place in the guide community’s emergence

The conference also provided the immediate setting for James Fadiman to invite underground guides to meet. Expecting only a handful, he found about a hundred people at the next morning’s gathering. That response revealed a substantial, previously uncounted population of guides, although the account does not identify the meeting as a CSP initiative. The distinction matters: CSP’s connection is to the conference sponsorship, while the guide meeting and the later account of shared practices and professional ethics describe a broader community. In this limited but clear role, CSP belongs to the institutional infrastructure that brought psychedelic research and practice into contact.