Jim Fadiman is a prominent figure in the field of humanistic psychology and a student of Sufism. He has a B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. He has been involved in both teaching and facilitating creative problem-solving with and without psychedelics for more than three decades.

His experience ranges from early experimentation with Ram Dass and Tim Leary at Harvard to government-sanctioned legal research with Myron Stolaroff and Willis Harman at Stanford. He was involved with the International Foundation for Advanced Study in the late 1960s and later served as president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he once served as president, and now teaches.