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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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A gentle breeze blew threough the dawnsky-tinted blossoms of the pink cherry tree, delicating provoking the flowers. Beneath the tree, rapt in the reverie of the morning light and the whispering coolness of the wind, Subhuti sat and watched the dancing of the blossoms. Suddenly, the whole tree began to tremble, the blossoms to sway and frolic and then to fall all about the monk seated under the tree, like the flowers strewn in processions before passing holy men or before the images of the Incarnate Wisdom of Buddha. Subhuti sat up, a little startled, and asked rhetorically of heaven, "What is happening that this tree should shower me with its blossoms that are so pure and perfect?" To his surprise, the Voice of Heaven spoke and the Gods gave answer, saying, "O noble Subhuti, do not be surprised, we are only manifesting our appreciation of your glorious discourse on emptiness." "But I was giving no discourse on emptiness," said the bewildered monk. "You have given no discourse on emptiness," said the Gods, "and we have heard no discourse on emptiness." And the blossoms continued to fall, glorious in their appreciation, cascading in torrents of beauty and all-surpassing wisdom. Epistemological VacuumIn order to decide what to do, one must first know what is true. One must know what truth is. That is the issue of epistemology. And the epistemological stance of most Americans is too simple and too threatened to support an ethic that can deal with the complex questions of the modern world. But perhaps there is something hauntingly significant about our epistemological vacuum. Perhaps, in order to find a resolution, we need simply to reverse our attitude toward our confusion. Perhaps what seems so to threaten belief is instead the condition in which insight can be achieved. Perhaps the crisis of religion can be the source of spiritual transformation. That has been a progression I have seen in my own life and this is why my story may be of some interest. From unquestioning belief I moved into confusion and dismay as the religious tenets I held so dear seemed to conflict with the rational, scientific principles I knew to be correct. My effort to be both a holy and virtuous man and an intelligent, clear-minded thinker seemed doomed. That confusion pushed me to grapple with the epistemological issues that founded the problem. I saw that religion is only superficially concerned with doctrine and behavior and much more truly with spiritual awareness. I glimpsed the mystical substratum on which belief rests and saw that the confusion and sense of the emptiness of all truth need be a source less of apostasy than of ecstasy. And I saw that this awareness of a mystical reality--not unlike the critiques of modern philosophy--points beyond itself and beyond its gods to a deep stratum of consciousness, the experience of which for many has been the fruit of the mystical quest. For even in religious language, this has sometimes been described as an experience of emptiness. Thus, paradoxically, the sense of emptiness and meaninglessness which has resulted from the attenuation of faith brought about by the scientific age appeared to be, with only a slight twist, the goal of religious experience. The twist, I discovered, is that where for modern humankind the experience of emptiness is frightening and demoralizing, for religiouskind it has been metaphorized in ways that make it enlightening and liberating. Self-referential StatementsThe familiar example of the problem of self-referential statements is the sentence: “This statement is false.” If the statement is true, then it’s false. If the statement is false, then it’s true. The only way to make sense of such a statement is to move up a level to a metastatement observing the problem of self-reference. While the example seems mere sophistry, the problem really has profound philosophical implications. And these manifest the problem of modern consciousness’s ability to be conscious of itself. While this has become a problem of modern times, it’s actually quite an ancient phenomenon. Those Hindu and Buddhist icons and statues of gods and buddhas with multiple heads layered one upon another are depictions of the experience in meditation of watching oneself watching oneself watching oneself ad infinitum. That these depictions show up in such a context indicates the religious implications of such questioning. There was, for example, a time when many of us were satisfied with the argument that the Bible must be the true revealed Word of God since it says so right there in the Bible and the Word of God can’t lie. But as soon as we got sophisticated enough to understand self-referential statements, that polemic might have begun to seem as strong an argument against the literal truth of the Bible as it had previously been in support of it. We were forced up a level to a metaquestion. A sense of emptiness arises from such questioning of the explanations of reality that we have traditionally held. For they force us to suspect, at least, that the explanations, especially religious explanations, are merely images, fairy tales that satisfy specific needs but that possess of themselves no real truth. This questioning has been done in the past not only by the opponents of religion but, as well, by religious mystics and visionaries. These were men and women not satisfied with the simple, superficial beliefs of their families and neighbors. Fascinated with what seemed to lie behind conventional religious teaching, they sought some direct experience of Truth and of God instead of mere images. They might have said that God had called to them from behind the stories and images that those around them accepted complacently as Truth. Some of these seekers then tried to explain how their experiences of God were different from what they had been taught and how the images had both helped and hindered their mystical quest. Some, trying to cut through the use of myths and images altogether, used words like “emptiness,” “nothingness,” and “the Void” to describe their experience of the Ultimate. Thus some of the most famous religious figures sounded very much like modern skeptics who declare that the myths of religion are false, that the gods do not exist, and that Ultimate Truth is empty--if only because it seems to go on forever. Nagarjuna and SunyataIn his major work, the Mulamadhyamakarikas (Fundamentals of the Middle Way), the first century Buddhist sage, Nagarjuna cut through the distinction between two conficting theological schools of early Buddhism, the Abhidharma and the Prajnaparamita, by denying that either doctrine had any substantial reality. Nagarjuna taught the principle of sunyata. Sunyata is usually translated “emptiness,” or “nothingness.” Perhaps a more intelligible way of translating sunyata would be “contentlessness.” For in Nagarjuna’s thought it meant that the metaphysical and religious notions of Buddhism are only temporarily useful concepts that have no content and that refer to no objective existence--in the contemporary lingo of Marshall McLuhan: no message, only medium. Nagarjuna taught that all ideas, philosophies, and beliefs are empty because everything is relative. According to his principle of “mutual co-origination,” no experiences are more basic than any others because all are intelligible only in terms of each other. He maintained that, since the very existence of the world itself arises from the mutual interaction of the relations within the world, enlightened consciousness should not focus on individual objects and experiences. Thus Nagarjuna’s reality shifted from the world of nouns to a world of verbs or, even more properly, to a world of adverbs, devoid of substantives. What was significant about Nagarjuna’s teaching was not his elaborate and convoluted refutations of Buddhist thinking. These seem merely like clever sophistry. But the implication of this teaching was that what is important about religious doctrine is not what it teaches about the universe, but how it works to bring about release from illusion. Nagarjuna taught that the distinction between nirvana and the world of suffering exists only in the mind. He maintained that nirvana--the state of not clinging to anything, including belief in the Buddha and in nirvana--was achieved when one realized that there is not the slightest difference between samsara (the world of flux) and nirvana (the state of release), between time and eternity. This was the transforming vision of the bodhisattva. Indeed, in the end, the bodhisattva would discover the emptiness on which his whole sensibility was based and would see that there had never been any suffering beings, nor any bodhisattva to save them. Nagarjuna concluded that the aim of Buddhism was not the achievement of some holy ideal but the destruction of all viewpoints. From there, enlightenment would follow of its own accord. This is the kind of thinking responsible for such curious Buddhist ideas as that if one meets the Buddha on the road, one should kill the Buddha, and that sitting in meditation can no more make one enlightened than polishing a floor tile can make it a mirror--and this in a religion the major practice of which is sitting meditation. A Zen drawing depicts a bullfrog sitting on a lily pad, with the caption: “If sitting could make a Buddha, I, foolish old frog, would have been enlightened long before now.” According to Nagarjuna, enlightenment comes from seeing that all views and opinions are just views and opinions and have no real substance. They are empty. Truth is empty. It is appreciation of this emptiness that brings release. A Course in MiraclesThe first aphorism of the Workbook -- the meditation practices taught by A Course in Miracles--is: "Nothing means anything." The second is: "I give everything all the meaning that it has for me." That is what "Emptiness" means. This is what creative intentionality is about: Human beings create in their own experience of consciousness what their lives mean. We are responsible for our own experience. There is no god to blame. That is why the Gods rain down blossoms of pink cherry upon Subhuti for saying nothing about God and simply being present in the moment. |
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. 