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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
|
A classic, written
from a gay man's perspective and titled
before "queer" became an accepted umbrella term for sexual and gender
deviations of all sorts, i.e., LGBTQIA, Gay Spirituality
shows how the experience of being an outsider, a deviant with
different feelings and attitudes, and not part of the
ordinary human round of birth, reproduction, and death affords its own
kind of enlightenment and vision
of greater meaning for life and for God. Still
timely and insightful.
A bold declaration of the place of gay consciousness in the modernization of religious and spiritual thinking The
answer to what Gay People are here for!
by Toby Johnson
- 296 pages
- Softcover - $15.00 - Orignally published by Alyson Books, 20000.
Revised and Re-released by Peregrine
Ventures, September 2018. Winner of a Lambda
Literary Award for Spirituality/Religion, 2000. Gay Spirituality argues that religion is undergoing a dramatic transformation because of the recent recognition of the metaphorical nature of myth and religion. The rise of gay identity is an important part of this evolutionary development, both demonstrating it and helping to bring it about.
Johnson contends there is a certain kind of enlightenment that goes with being gay, a familiarity with being an outsider, a discovery that if the conventions of society are wrong about something as basic as sex, they're probably wrong about a lot of other things as well. Because of homosexual orientation gay men have an insight into the nature of consciousness. Able to step outside the assumptions and conventions of culture, gay men see things from a different point of view and consequently gain insights into our culture, our traditions, and our metaphysical assumptions.
The renowned writer, psychologist, and father
of gay-oriented psychotherapy, Don Clark, PhD calls Gay Spirituality
"stunning" and "remarkable."
The follow-up to this book is GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
Click below to order from amazon.com
in print, Kindle, and Audible
versions:
 Also available as an Audiobook,
beautifully narrated by John
Sipple.
Gay Spirituality is available in digital formats, like ePub,
from Smashwords.com and from Apple iBookstore
GAY SPIRITUALITY can also be ordered directly from the author (autographed & inscribed) or from gay and lesbian bookstores nationwide, like Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia. Support your local gay community bookstore. See tobyjohnson.com/books.html for info.  To purchase from the author The
ADD TO CART button will allow you to order a
paperback copy
for $15 (postage included) from the
author
(autographed, if you'd like) and pay by Paypal. Please be sure to
include your mailing address, contact info, and how you'd like the
autograph styled. About the author Edwin Clark (Toby) Johnson, Ph.D., is a former Catholic monk and comparative religions scholar turned psychotherapist and gay activist. He is the author of numerous books, including the Twilight Zone-like novels Getting Life in Perspective, The Fourth Quill, Two Spirits and the Lambda Literary Award-winning novel Secret Matter. These are profiled on the page tobyjohnson.com/books.html Johnson is past editor of White Crane: A Journal of Gay Men's Spirituality. His website is tobyjohnson.com
T H E B U Z Z "I am humbled by the scope of this
stunning, award winning book by Toby Johnson. Gay Spirituality: Gay
Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness
delivers exactly what its title suggests, fascinating and informing the
reader as it does so. One is invited to view the rich variety found in
our history, seeing that there are reasons aplenty for gay people to
share our tears as well as our laughter. And it is clear that there is
pride to be found in claiming one’s fair share of membership in this
'aristocracy of the considerate and the plucky.' Many thanks are due to
the author for giving us such a readable, timely and timeless rendering
of our story. It is a history well told, one that we did not learn in
school—and it is remarkable." Don Clark, Ph.D., author of Loving Someone Gay *** "With provocative insight, impressive breadth of knowledge, and insuppressible optimism, Gay Spirituality shows how a guiding vision is the scaffolding of spirituality and then goes on to construct one for the gay community. A wonderful contribution. Vintage Toby Johnson. Whether you agree or disagree, buy all of it or only a part, if there's an ounce of goodness in you, this book will make your heart smile--and perhaps help us all take that next step toward a better world."
*** "Toby Johnson's book reminds me of the parable about the man who asks the sea how deep it is. 'That depends,' replies the ocean, 'on how far down you want to go.' Gay Spirituality challenges the reader with all the right questions, offering an invitation to plunge into the unknown. With equal measures of erudition and vision, Johnson takes us where we need to go just when we need it the most. Gay men seeking to uncover their mysteries will find Gay Spirituality a source of brilliant intelligence and inspiration."
"A most insightful and moving book that connects with the heart of every gay mans struggle trying to fit. I was knocked to the floor so many times in recognizing myself in Toby's writings. For one filled with self doubt and self hatred being a gay born again Christian this book guided me back to the Cross, back to my Loving Heavenly Father and letting go of the terrible hurt and pain my childhood memories evoke. I purchased 20 copies and give them to men who are wrestling with the same Spiritual anguish I was. I am God's creation, God's Beloved Son; to criticize myself is to criticize the handiwork of God."
"Love it! Love it! Love it! We created a book club about the book and we had the wonderful privilege to have the author attend our book club. I highly recommend this book to every gay man!""
"This a very clear, insightful and
thought-provoking
book that looks at the topic of gay sexuality from many angles. It is
also quite a quick easy read being written in a very accessible style
and divided into short, manageable chunks.
"I haven't really thought about spirituality much in recent years but this book really touched me. At first I feared it would be one of those new age sort of books that cause my eyes to roll back in my head - it most certainly isn't. This is a powerful book that I would even describe as potentially life changing."
"[Gay Spirituality] shows that being
gay is a spiritual asset, not a liability. Where some look down on
same-sex love as defective, because it does not express the male-female
duality, Johnson turns it around and proudly declares that to be the
precise reason why same-sex love is spiritually superior. It transcends
the duality. "Johnson's vision of a life-affirming,
sex-positive spirituality of love, cooperation, mutual respect and
acceptance is in sync with modern scientific knowledge, and does not
ask the reader to suspend logic or critical thinking. Gay Christians
who are struggling with their sexual orientation will especially
appreciate Johnson's convincing refutation of common "biblical"
anti-gay arguments. "A powerful book for personal change, a wonderful antidote to the negativity of the Religious Right, and a great gift to a gay friend who is unhappy with his life or suffering from low self-esteem."
*** More Reviews of Gay Spirituality** Lambda Literary Award Winner
2000
**
by Lori L. Lake
Reviewed by Dennis Paddie White Crane Journal Issue #47 Some years ago, I was walking in New York City just after sunset in a relatively quiet residential block. The ambient light, pouring down from windows a story or two above the hot pavement, was soft and grainy. A few doorways or stoops held sweltering New Yorkers cooling off from an intense summer day. In the shadows of the secluded steps to one of the buildings lay two boys, beautiful in the extreme, their lair protected from the eyes of neighbors by heavy brownstone balustrades. They reclined in one another’s arms like figures from a Doric frieze, totally absorbed, in the immortality of youth, by their mutual muscles, eyes, skin, lips and tips of hairs. I stood transfixed for a moment watching, then moved on, my own body now suddenly electric with their secret beauty. I saw but did not intrude. There is a similar scene in Pasolini’s “Arabian Nights.”An old black queen adorned with golden bells, baubles and priceless trade beads inveigles a session with two beautiful young lovers. But once the scene is set up, the older man humbly, unworthily withdraws out of respect for its erotic beauty. In those boys, watched by their elders, on the street of my New York City walk and in Pasolini’s movie, lies the irreducible spiritual center of all philosophico-religio-mythico-mentalization upon the subject of homosexuality—something perfect, something tragic, something poignant. In the flesh of men in the height of their sexual vitality is such an affirmation of life, such a via positiva of the spirit, that it fills your own body with electricity and life. “I sing the body electric…” rhapsodized proto-gay poet Walt Whitman. Yet in the need for their hiding—behind heavy balustrades or downcast eyes—lies such suffering that the via negativa imposed by traditional religion—patriarchal, homophobic, and flesh denying— comes to life. The via positiva, the positive way to God, is the spiritual practice of affirmative attitude, interpretation and action in life. Such a way of life in the modern world often requires a fair amount of economic and therefore, social and political security, and is therefore denied to many people. Though this is exactly what has been championed by modern American countercultures, like gay liberation. The via negativa, the way to God through suffering, champions the privation, declaring suffering the basis of all of existence and poverty the common lot. Such a negative way has great spiritual content, a content often served by poetry and art. It has become an assumption of Western society: the way to achieve happiness in afterlife is to accept unhappiness and self denial in this life. That would be especially so, the religions would say, for homosexuals who are expected to forego sexuality completely in fulfillment of the religionists’ notion of cleanliness and purity. It is wise, then, to consider phenomena such as the notion of the “evil eye,” “the bitch queen,” the self-loathing pervert like “the Aesthetic Realist,” the jock in denial, the businessman, the lawyer and the politician, the habitue homosexuelle, and again, as the basis of all of existence, suffering itself as the whole of gay reality. The clear, cruisy eye of the gay person in some cultures is considered an evil to be burned out of the human family. The bitch queen suffers his femininity and inflicts his persecution on others through bad temper and aesthetic tyranny. The Aesthetic Realist tortures his true feelings out of his life in the name of an abstraction handed down to him by straight society. The man, who passes for straight, pretends. And the boys in the New York street scene and those represented in Pasolini’s movie inevitably will suffer for their love and desire. They each will inevitably become the older man who withdraws because their beauty has faded. The via negativa homosexualis reflects the fact of all human suffering. But gay people must have their gay experience in order to know anything of themselves and of the world. Even if in having such, we struggle, suffer and die, without ever having read or heard of a via positiva. But will we survive, as the evil in the eyes of others, as persecuted queens, as self-deniers or as innocents? And if we survive, how will we survive? There is great human pathos in the question. “We will survive in the spirit” is the answer, I believe, to that grave question. One of the meanings of the word, “spirit,” to me is “transmission”: that which is communicated in an event, its content, as well as its communicating medium, the pneuma, the breath of life which emanates from Being into All. The two boys in New York and in Pasolini’s movie survive in my memory and in my heart. Yet there is another survival in the transmission to the world of the knowledge of their having been and having been seen. This survival, this transmission of their essences to us, adds to the world’s store of good and beautiful things. And this transmission, as hermetic and revolutionary as it is, changes the world, just as Spirit, itself, in its transmissions to us changes the world in us, around us and for us. But can the essence of the boys, the lovers be cultivated? Or is it a wildflower always? Toby Johnson obviously believes that their flower is a rose to be cultivated and fostered and that it should be. In his book, Gay Spirituality, Johnson outlines a way that cultivation is to be done in order to reveal gay spirit to the world-at-large. And in his revelation, Johnson proposes nothing less than a renovation of the way all human beings experience religion and reality in the method that descends to us from Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. The Lord Buddha said, “We are what we think, having become what we thought.” Gay Spirituality offers us the knowledge and the understanding that we homosexuals are not quite what we think, and that we are not at all what the world thinks us to be. Everybody, gay and straight, can avail themselves of the experience of an instant transformation of an attitude, just by changing how they think about sexuality, and homosexuality in particular. Indeed, reading Toby Johnson’s Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness, you are struck by the thought that everyone, not just gay people, should be reading this book. For just reading it transforms your own vision. Johnson examines the various myths of the world, the religions, the metaphysical philosophies and doctrines, their sects and effects. And he has found, in the method of the etymological and cultural archaeology practiced by his teacher, Joseph Campbell, evidence of a mystery figure of enigmatic but positive form in the literate traditions of the world. The existence of this figure, a metahistorical presence at the heart of our culture that exemplifies harmony, gentleness, cooperation and transcendence of the clashing polarities of male and female, goes a long way toward explaining the multi-dimensional myths he examines. With careful scholarship that is neither tedious nor bland, Johnson uncovers this mystery personality and names him many times as a major actor in the world’s stories.(This is the character Andrew Ramermythologizes in the figure of Tayarti. And which Johnson finds in the Buddhist image of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.) Johnson believes that this personality is structurally “gay,” as we understand the term today, that is, outside the conventions of mainstream culture, aware with critical perspective, unfettered by the imperatives of childrearing, transcending the polarities of male and female, and free from the pretense of having to be a real man, “following bliss,” in the words of Campbell. And in the myths that surround the figure Johnson finds a history full of lessons upon the greatest of human motives: to be good and to do good. He goes further and interpolates the gay personality into the larger existence of the world. He valorizes various “gay” characteristics, such as unvaunted sweetness, high-minded sensibility and attainment and noble service, qualities which characterize what Johnson cites E.M. Forster as calling “an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky… [who] represent the true human tradition, the one queer victory of our race over cruelty and chaos.” Gay Spirituality tidily lays out the metaphysical and historical preoccupations of the Gay Movement in a convenient and genial discussion. It seemed to me at times that I was reading a variation upon my personal quest for spiritual experience over the past thirty years. In the Introduction, Johnson anticipates such a reaction, saying “I hope all this will strike you as whaty ou have always known, though may not have thought about in quite this way—especially as coming directly from the experience of your homosexuality.” Johnson is Jesuit educated, therefore, there is at the heart of his comments a scientific devotion to meaning. Gay Spirituality is like a breviary or a manual of spiritual exercises, albeit without a hint of self-righteousness or of arbitrary authority and method, not even of piety. The text is only mildly, but at the same time, thoroughly, didactic. His disquisition upon the asshole is an instant classic! Johnson asserts throughout the book, in a calm rational voice, that homosexuality, rightly understood and practiced, is a way of devotion which Western culture badly needs in its present violent and sexual jungles. His concerns with the proper understanding and interpretation and practice, the ethos, of same-sex love, extend into the culture at large. And in the intersection between homosexuality and the world he finds a Christic configuration amongst gay people and in the institutions of high gay culture, a Christ-like presence congruent with the history of the gay personality and that of the salvific hero, Love. Even the Gospels belong to this tradition. Johnson considers the active participation in these congruencies to be the modern gay experience, par excellence. And from that experience, he launches this very positive take upon the lore and light of the gay tradition. Bys uch lore and light alone, he says, we steer our lives, if we are honest with ourselves But a whole take upon the gay circumstance surely involves considerations discussed above, those seemingly opposed to this via positiva homosexualis: the commonplace of the evil eye around the globe, the bitch queen’s bitch, the aesthetic realist’s apostasy, the denials of the trapped jock, the furtive stockbroker, the fascist attorney. The list is endless in the via negativa homosexualis. But these oppositions form a counterweight to Johnson’s thesis, and do not negate Gay Spirituality’s truly great claim on behalf of the homosexual phenomenon. Indeed, they demonstrate the need Johnson calls for for transformation of the negative—and too often self-fulfilling—prophecies of the via negativa. And, even in the golden glow of Johnson’s achievement, it is not improvident to point out that there are those who insist that the oppression represented in these negative considerations, require sterner, more traditionally masculine means, in the American style, means other than those Johnson presents to remedy the world-view of Gays and to change the world’s view of gay people.This is a political struggle, afterall, they argue, not some mystical reverie. I agree with these voices but far from completely. For ultimately the message of a truly gay life is “Everything for Love.” And this is a truly spiritual, even mystical, message. Johnson, I think, would say, that it is the revolutionary duty of gay people to renovate their self-concept. For in the negativist model, without such renovation, it is sometimes necessary to die for one’s being and one’s right as a being. For the via negativa homosexualis is not the way of devotion but of mortal struggle. The methods and ideas, the programmatic attitudes and action with regard to homosexuality that Johnson proposes in Gay Spirituality are refreshing and personally satisfying to me. He describes a gay life that is, well, downright heavenly. But perhaps, also, tangential. For it may be that by externalizing secret, erotic doctrines and histories of same-sex-love experience and meaning, which lurk throughout all human history, we will not transform human society at all, but rather bring about our own destruction. As Randy Conner makes clear in Blossom Of Bone, the common fate of many such externalizations in the past was extirpation. But even if we are only exposing ourselves to annihilation by the forces in our culture hostile to our truth, it is still necessary to try to change ourselves and the world in which we find ourselves. And in that context, one thing looms as a certainty: full citizenship for gay people is a political imperative for us and for this country. And it will change the culture enormously because it supplants the now-outmoded notions of what human life is about in the polarity of male and female. If we are to present a public face other than the one, largely a caricature, of the moment, a book like Gay Spirituality might help lead us out. It is great P. R. However, any progress made by this direct assault upon the anti-homosexual forces will likely provoke a violent response in American society. If the book gains the attention it deserves, the Gay Movement, always required to anticipate the heart of the mortal enemy, may be be forced to mediate the extremely gay-positive stance Johnson promotes. But Gay Spirituality goes so far toward explicating the mystery of the homosexual nexus that we can be confident as citizens, politically, that even the mediated space provided in the arguments for and against the book’s assertions will be an advancement for Gay Rights. On another level entirely, it seems time for the gay gentleman of a certain age, style and learning to come into his own.He is a literate and cultured man, valuable, not only to us in the underworld, but to everyone. Of a certain age, style and learning, he has lived, in the main, a life modeled upon the putative figures discussed here, and he deserves to speak his piece in the full light of, say, the TODAY SHOW. Toby Johnson seems to be such a gentleman. The scholarship alone in Gay Spirituality should garner Johnson the interview with Katy and Matt. But let’s not hold our breaths. Besides, the basic lesson of the book that Johnson is only revealing to gay people what we already know and have always known about ourselves, makes the necessity for such celebrity moot. The point is not celebrity, but celebration. This book is, by the way, like Randy Conner’s Blossom Of Bone, a product of Central Texas. And there is a message in this. For Austin represents the coming to be of a new cultural pivot in the American Empire. Gay Spirituality and Blossom Of Bone’s cosmopolitanism grows out of the possibility of practicing, in an imperial city, gay positive lifestyles here in the fast disappearing provinces of a recent backwater. The world is changing. And in great part, and because of our spiritual efforts, it’s changing in our favor. Dennis Paddie has been a poet, gay activist and local character in Central Texas since the days of “flower power” when he was one of the “high priests” of Austin’s hippie community. |
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. 
