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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil  TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams  CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996 The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian? The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph Campbell Talks about Aging What is Enlightenment? What is reincarnation? How many lifetimes in an ego? Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Buddha's father was right What Anatman means Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Cutting edge realization The Myth of the Wanderer Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss World Navel What the Vows Really Mean Manifesting from the Subtle Realms The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse The est Training and Personal Intention Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven Gay
Spirituality
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I go back quite a long way in Institute history. I graduated with the first PhD in what was called the Dept of Integral Counseling at the time; the school was still C.I.A.S.. I was in the "accreditation class" that was interviewed and monitored by the WASC committee for Institute accreditation. I actually started at CIAS in 1970. I certainly wasn't the first gay student at the Institute, but I was very consciously part of the Stonewall generation and was very openly gay at school--and at a time when there weren't other gay students around. I did classwork for my MA in comparative religions that first year. Then spent the next year working as a "hippie carpenter and general factotum" for one of the popular professors at CIAS at the time, and volunteering with the San Francisco Gay Counseling Service/Gay Rap, a fledgling gay social service agency. I went off to Napa State Hospital the next year and got a license as a Psychiatric Technician, then came back to the City and worked at Mt Zion Hospital Psych Emergency Unit. Then went back to CIAS and completed my thesis (under Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri & Bishop Nippo Syaku) and started in on a doctoral program in the Dept of Counseling. (By that time, Paul Herman and Vern Haddick were openly gay faculty members.)  Both
my Masters Thesis and my Doctoral Dissertation and my first book
and my fifth book were titled The Myth of the Great Secret;
that is a
central concept in my understanding of the world: there's a secret we
are always looking to uncover, and it's the driving force of our lives
as individual human beings and, collectively, as incarnations of
consciousness. The wise and wonderful, ever-cheerful and laughing
Nichiren Buddhist teacher Nippo Syaku taught a course on the wisdom of
sunyata,"emptiness," in a class on Nagarjuna, author of the text,
MulaMadhymaka Karikas, and one of the founders of the Mahayana
tradition.  Influenced
by Bishop Syaku and the textbook for the course (Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning
by Frederick Streng), The Myth of
the Great Secret, in all its incarnations, has
been about Nagarjuna's notion of the emptiness of meaning in religious
doctrine and medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart's idea that
ultimate truth--the "Godhead" as God-in-itself, not as thought about in
human's minds--is absolutely unknowable. All we can possibly know about
"ultimate truth" is metaphors that hint at it, but never communicate
it. It's a secret, a great secret. (See "Let me Tell You a Secret") For another discussion of the "great secret" in Kantian philosophy, and in gay consciousness, see Boswell & Kant) From the phone counseling service onward, I was part of the "gay-oriented psychotherapy" movement in the Bay Area (under the influence of Don Clark, Ph.D.) I was in the first class to offer services through the Institute's own counseling service; and was effectively the male "gay-identified counselor" in the program that first year; there were also a couple of lesbians on the staff at the beginning. I then did an internship at The Tenderloin Clinic, a gay-identified mental health clinic downtown (that had indirectly evolved out of the activism of the Gay Counseling Service/Gay Rap volunteers). I graduated with a PhD in 1978. In those days, graduation (which was held at the Ashram out in the Richmond District) was always on the same day as the Gay Pride Parade. I remember running from one event to the other. So I got a pretty gay degree out of the Institute. I left San Francisco in 1981--first spending the summer at Southern Dharma Foundation, a meditation center outside Asheville, NC that was established by a lesbian couple who were in my Institute class, then returning to my hometown of San Antonio TX. I was THE "Gay Therapist" in San Antonio for a few years, using my MFCC license gained at CIIS. In the late 80s, my partner, Kip Dollar, and I moved to Austin and ran the gay community bookstore there for seven years. Then moved to the Rocky Mountains and ran a small B&B for a few years, then brought that operation back to Texas to a little town outside Austin. By the way, we're celebrating our 25th anniversary next spring. When we had the bookstore in Austin we were fairly high-profile characters in the local community and so got called on to advocate for gay relationships; we were the first male couple to register as Domestic Partners in Texas in 1993. I am also a writer and have written several books on Gay Spirituality. And from 96-2003 was editor/publisher of White Crane: A Quarterly Journal of Gay Men's Spirituality. Some of my books, I know, are in the Institute Library. While I was at the Institute that first year, I came across a notice on the bulletin board (in  the original bldg on 21st and Delores) that
Joseph Campbell was giving a program at the Mann Ranch Seminars in
Ukiah. I signed up for the
seminar and applied for a work-scholarship (I was a poor hippie
flower-child in those days). As a result of that, I was invited to come
early to help clean up the building; Campbell also arrived early. And I
had the opportunity to meet and befriend him. I corresponded with
Campbell for nearly a decade and was part of the crew that regularly
worked his public programs when he was in the Bay Area.Photo: Toby Johnson at the Mann Ranch 1973 I only slightly tongue-in-cheek fancy myself "Joe Campbell's apostle to the gay community." My books are generally about how Campbell's comparative religions model makes sense of myth and religion in ways that queer, gay and lesbian people can embrace because it transcends the old time understandings of religion and allows us to drop the nonsense. I'm living back in Texas again these days; we came back to San Antonio to watch over Kip's elderly mother. I'm working as assistant to the Publisher of Lethe Press and White Crane Books, doing freelance editing and book layout/design for this small gay press that specializes in gay spiritualities. Kip and I have recently moved to Austin. I was at CIAS/CIIS at a pivotal time in the school's history. (I actually have two doctoral diplomas: one showing CIAS as the name of the school; the other CIIS.) I think my experience demonstrates a gay-positive attitude at the school stretching way back to the beginnings. Coincidentally, as an undergraduate I was a fellow student in the Honors Program at St Louis University with Institute professor Charlene Spretnak; I suspect we both ended up with interests in comparative religions and new paradigm thinking as a result of an honors class in Jungian interpretation of literature. And Randy Conner and I are old friends from Austin days. I'm impressed to see Queer@CIIS. December 15, 2013 See Also: Toby's account of his experience at C.I.A.S. and Dr Frederick Spiegelberg |
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.
Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.
His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 