Sacred Garden Community Church: A Founder’s Story

Written By: Adapted from a Psychedelic Bar Association presentation by Pastor Bob (June, 2025, edited notes from PBA)

Sacred Garden Community Church (SGC) emerged from decades of personal, academic, and community-based engagement with entheogenic sacraments by its founding Garden Steward and Senior Pastor, Bob “Otis” Stanley, with several “seed” co-founders, including Dr. Gary Kono, Nicole Greenheart, Andre Lamar, Danielle Nova and others from groups including SF Psychedelic Society and Chacruna Institute. In this discussion regarding the founding of SGC, Bob recounted an entheogen-assisted mystical experience at age 17 as seminal. This experience, growing from his family’s long lineage of religious and physical healing, accelerated and informed his spiritual path, leading to advanced studies and work in psychology, comparative religion, sociology, epistemology, and cognitive science. With gratitude for U.S. religious protections, he has cultivated a group entheogenic practice for over 40 years, focused on sacred plant gardening and invocation, meditation and globally comparative learning - connecting science, practice, experience, and the Sacred.

By 2015, rapidly growing interest in group meditations he had been supporting (as “Practical East Bay Satsang” and later, “Satsang Unity Project”) prompted a sense of need for supportive structures and facilitators. In 2017, Bob began to lead collaborative facilitation training. In late 2017, Bob and community leaders referenced above realized the “Sacred Garden Community” (SGC) name, and began collaborating to align their entheogenic practices with safety, structure, and legal considerations. In 2019, Bob became the founding chair for Decriminalize Nature Oakland, with three of the five founding board members hailing from SGC. This effort was guided by a commitment to respect and trust, to grow safety and integrity in practice. In June 2019, this group passed the first Sacred Plants “Decrim” initiative in the United States, effectively decriminalizing all entheogenic Sacraments found within plants and fungi. Following this successful engagement, Bob and the SGC team quietly ceded leadership, as political activist energy entered the group with desires for rapid expansion. Bob continues to offer facilitation education within SGC, and has personally contributed to broader policy efforts in Oregon, California and elsewhere.

Reflecting on SGC’s and broader community needs, Bob also co-founded and joined the Sacred Plant Alliance (SPA), a self-regulatory 501(c)(3) providing peer review, ethical accountability, and fellowship among entheogenic churches. Although instrumental in SPA’s founding, Bob remains at arm’s length from its governance, to preserve neutrality in the event of ethical review involving SGC. 

In 2020, Sacred Garden Community was formally established as a California Religious Association (non-profit church) with legal guidance from Sean McAllister and early guidance from groups including Chacruna Institute and SF Psychedelic Society. Philanthropic aid, including from the All-One! soap company, helped SGC develop its trainings, safety processes, and infrastructure. SGC maintains a donation-based model—no one is excluded from ceremonies due to lack of funds—and follows a shared spiritual ethos known as “Least Dogma,” welcoming all traditions and identities, towards directly experiencing divinity,  through direct Sacramental experience.

SGC hosts services, group meditations, ceremonies, Preparation and Integration events, and broader community functions. The community prioritizes bridging divides across social differences through shared religious practice and a framework of care, respect, and trust. During the Covid pandemic, virtual meetings supported deep dialogue around the meaning of Least Dogma, including a "hermeneutic of critique and retrieval” of core words and related concepts such as religion, church, sacrament and divinity, strengthening community cohesion. SGC develops documented “Liturgies” for all Sacramental Practices, with Practitioner suitability screening and experienced facilitation support required. Assisted group meditation and ceremonial Liturgies (description of processes for group meditations) are designed to safely support both initiatory and mature experiences. While defining its own liturgies, and while critiquing, reclaiming and defining core language, SGC commits to meeting or exceeding local standards for good practice. Structured onboarding, health and safety screening functions were developed with input from trained therapeutic and medical oversight. Participants are evaluated via a tagged system as approved, provisional, or not eligible, and facilitators are briefed prior to ceremonies. Member and Facilitator agreements provide guidance for transparent safety. When necessary, an external ethics body is available for oversight and support. 

SGC’s “Least Dogma” encourages gentle, apolitical “radical inclusion” of global traditions, not as dominating dogmas, but as enriching diversities. Confirmed Members agree simply to be “Open to the possibility that respectful practice with the Sacraments of our Church can bring about a direct experience of the Divine, within this lifetime.” Radical inclusion is approached with welcome humility regarding incoming dogmas, beliefs and practices, to be shared and received with values of care, respect and trust. Supported by clear member safety agreements and content-free shared values, inclusion is organic and opt-in, not appropriative, divisive or dominating. Members are respectfully invited to share insights from their own personal experiences and lineages, while recognizing that only “Least Dogma” is intended to be shared by all members. 

Following the openness that SGC’s Least Dogma brings, the Pastor expresses respect for traditional religious and philosophical insights as well as for modern, post-modern, post-secular, scientific and indigenous guidance. He expresses sensitive respect due Native American elders, for example, regarding peyote. Following discussion with NCNAC leadership, he acknowledges the importance of reserving peyote for indigenous use, suggesting Huachuma as a sustainable alternative. Bob affirms his belief that, engaged with care, respect and discerning trust, both natural and synthetic entheogens may hold authentic Sacramental potential. Reverence for entheist Stewardships and Traditions - whether hailing from North, South, East or West; ancient or modern, even post-modern - remains central to the SGC ethos.