The Dream of the Ipse Solus



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Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.


Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III


Gay Spirituality

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness


Gay Perspective


GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe


Secret Matter


SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan


Getting Life

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods


The Fourth Quill

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil




Two Spirits
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams



charmed lives
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers


Myth of the Great Secret


THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell



In Search of God


IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey



Unpublished manuscripts


About ordering


Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series


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  Toby has done five podcasts with Harry Faddis for The Quest of Life

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  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


Toby and Kip Get Married


Wedding Cake Liberation


Gay Marriage in Texas


What's ironic



Shame on the American People


The "highest form of love"


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Gay Consciousness


Why homosexuality is a sin


The cause of homosexuality


The origins of homophobia


Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness


What is homosexuality?


What is Gay Spirituality?


My three messages


What Jesus said about Gay Rights


Queering religion


Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men


Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?


The purpose of homosexuality


Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality


What the Bible Says about Homosexuality


Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men



Varieties of Gay Spirituality


Waves of Gay Liberation Activity


The Gay Succession


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


The upsidedown book on MSNBC


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Enlightenment


"It's Always About You"



The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara


Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara


You're Not A Wave



Joseph 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


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Gay Spirituality


Curious Bodies


What Toby Johnson Believes


The Joseph Campbell Connection


The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)


Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy


The Two Loves


The Nature of Religion


What's true about Religion


Being Gay is a Blessing


Drawing Long Straws


Freedom of Religion


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The Gay Agenda


Gay Saintliness


Gay Spiritual Functions



The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.


The Sinfulness of Homosexuality


Proposal for a study of gay nondualism


Priestly Sexuality


Having a Church to Leave


Harold Cole on Beauty


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Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption


Not lashed to the prayer-post


Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality


Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process


Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)


Redeem Orlando


Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar


Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson



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Mystical Vision


"The Evolution of Gay Identity"


"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."


Avalokiteshvara at the Baths


 Eckhart's Eye


Let Me Tell You a Secret


Religious Articulations of the Secret


The Collective Unconscious


Driving as Spiritual Practice


Meditation


Historicity as Myth


Pilgrimage


No Stealing


Next Step in Evolution


The New Myth


The Moulting of the Holy Ghost


Gaia is a Bodhisattva


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The Hero's Journey


The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016


The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)


You're On Your Own


Superheroes


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Seeing Differently


Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil


Allah Hu: "God is present here"


 
Adam and Steve


The Life is in the Blood



Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"


Seeing with Different Eyes


Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom


What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?


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The Vision


The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside


A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside


The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis


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The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby


Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara


Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection


Part 4: A Course in Miracles


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The Secret of the Clear Light


Understanding the Clear Light


Mobius Strip


Finding Your Tiger Face


How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated


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Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part presentation on YouTube


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About Alien Abduction


In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke


Karellen was a homosexual


The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance


Intersections with the movie When We Rise


More about Gay Mental Health


Psych Tech Training


Toby at the California Institute


The Rainbow Flag


Ideas for gay mythic stories


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People


Kip and Toby, Activists


Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.


Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement


About Hay and The New Myth


About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"


About Michael Talbot, gay mystic


About Fr. Bernard Lynch


About Richard Baltzell


About Guy Mannheimer


About David Weyrauch


About Dennis Paddie


About Ask the Fire


About Arthur Evans


About Christopher Larkin


About Mark Thompson


About Sterling Houston


About Michael Stevens


The Alamo Business Council


Our friend Tom Nash


Second March on Washington


The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"


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Book Reviews



Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook


Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer


The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter


The Gay Disciple by John Henson


Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry


Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth A. Burr


Extinguishing the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois


Over Coffee: A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson


Dark Knowledge by Kenneth Low


Janet Planet by Eleanor Lerman


The Kairos by Paul E. Hartman


Wrestling with Jesus by D.K.Maylor


Kali Rising by Rudolph Ballentine


The Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada


The Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook


The Scar Letters: A Novel by Richard Alther


The Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel


Missing Mary by Charlene Spretnak


Gay Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez


Cut Hand: A Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr


Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman


Nights at Rizzoli by Felice Picano


The Key to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo


The Door of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar


Occam’s Razor by David Duncan


Grace and Demion by Mel White


Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L. Rigoglioso


The Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery


The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass


Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen


War Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar


The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


The Invitation to Love by Darren Pierre


Brain, Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A Helminiak


A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey


Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes


The Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson & Rhodes


Keys to Spiritual Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian Ravarour


In Walt We Trust by John Marsh


Solomon's Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary


A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary


Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott


Fruit Basket by Payam Ghassemlou


Internal Landscapes by John Ollom


Princes & Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks


Yes by Brad Boney


Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler


Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal


Evolving Dharma by Jay Michaelson


Jesus in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette


The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson


The Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire


"Sex Camp" by Brian McNaught


Out & About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology



The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons


Out on Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert


The Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker


Out There by Perry Brass


The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh


The Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan


It's Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja


ReCreations, edited by Catherine Lake


Gospel: A Novel by WIlton Barnhard


Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson


Dating the Greek Gods
by Brad Gooch


Telling Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan


The Substance of God by Perry Brass


The Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols


10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort


Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love by Will Roscoe


The Third Appearance by Walter Starcke


The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann


Surviving and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall


Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long

An Interview with Ron Long


Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy Conner & David Sparks

An Interview with Randy Conner


Pain, Sex and Time by Gerald Heard


Sex and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak


Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan


Rising Up by Joe Perez


Soulfully Gay by Joe Perez


That Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco


Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman


Wisdom for the Soul by Larry Chang


MM4M a DVD by Bruce Grether


Double Cross by David Ranan


The Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak


Jesus in Love by Kittredge Cherry


In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson


The Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson


Life in Paradox by Fr Paul Murray


Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel Helminiak


Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A. Minor


Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien


Queering Christ by Robert Goss


Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage


The Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato


Catland by David Garrett Izzo


Tantra for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson


Yoga & the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main


Simple Grace by Malcolm Boyd


Seventy Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza


What Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett


Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans


Gift of the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen


Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden


The Liar's Prayer by Gregory Flood


Lovely are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman


The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak


3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke


Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak


Only the Good Parts by Daniel Curzon


Four Short Reviews of Books with a Message


Life Interrupted by Michael Parise


Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire


The Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman


Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny


Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman


True Religion by J.L. Weinberg


The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer


Everything is God by Jay Michaelson


Reflection by Dennis Merritt


Everywhere Home by Fenton Johnson


Hard Lesson by James Gaston


God vs Gay? by Jay Michaelson


The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson


Roxie & Fred by Richard Alther


Not the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen


The 9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether


The Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber


AIDS Shaman: Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar


Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost


The Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal


Secret Body by Jeffrey J Kripal


In Hitler's House by Jonathan Lane


Walking on Glory by Edward Swift


The Paradox of Porn by Don Shewey


Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire


Enigma by Lloyd Meeker


Scissors, Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson




Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:




Gay
Perspective cover
Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe


Gay Perspective audiobook
Gay Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Matthew Whitfield. Click here







Gay
Spirituality cover
Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness



gay-spirituality-audiobook
Gay Spirituality   is now available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here








charmed lives
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman







secret matter
Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated







Getting Life
Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance





Getting
Life in Perspective audiobook
Getting Life in Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click here 






The Fourth Quill

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE




johnson-the-fourth-quill-audiobook
The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here






Two
Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams




Two Spirits
audiobookTwo Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here






Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III
Finding Your Own True Myth:
What I Learned from Joseph Campbell

The Myth of the Great Secret III








In
Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld










The Myth of the Great Secret II

The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.




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Toby Johnson's titles are available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.



 Personal Intention and the EST Training

This essay appeared originally in The Myth of the Great Secret, first edition.



How to use the power of intentionality to produce a utopia for oneself--and maybe for the world--shows up in modern culture in Werner Erhard’s est. Like its numerous offshoots, est guarantees to assist participants in resolving issues that have been causing difficulty in their lives, from what color clothes to wear, what job to take, and how to get rich quick, to how to acknowledge homosexuality positively, how to attain one’s spiritual destiny, and how to end death by starvation m the world. It grew out of the sensibilities of the counterculture of the 1960s and the so-called narcissism of the 1970s. Its basic teachings, which pervade all of the offshoots, are founded on the experience of emptiness.

Most of the criticism of est tended to center chiefly on the issue of the cost of the “training.” That the two-weekend training costs about the price of a week’s lodging in a stylish hotel obscures real issues about the content of the training. The fact is that est accomplishes in less than two weeks a life transformation that psychotherapy, at many times the cost, can hardly do in months. The issue is not the money. The issue is the kind of transformation est produced.  



Werner
In March of 1971, Werner Erhard experienced a conversion while driving into San Francisco from Corte Madera in Marin County, north of the city. In its simplest terms, his realization was that everything is empty and nothing really matters and that the everyday world is a construction of the mind.

Before this conversion, John Paul Rosenberg, who took the name Werner Erhard to change his identity when he moved to California, had been a huckster salesman. Of particular importance in his formation and preparation was his training in salesmanship and in Mind Dynamics. Especially in California, he was exposed to a broad range of the techniques and gimmicks of the “human potential movement” that had flowered out of the intense psychological sophistication of the sixties. Extremely energetic and ambitious, Erhard devoted great intensity to his life and later to his effort to break through to truth beyond the surface.  

On Highway 101 Erhard achieved the breakthrough and a glimpse of transcendental truth. He talked about his experience with friends, who must have found his metaphors effective in conveying his insight and encouraged him. For soon the intensity he had devoted to pursuing a career he turned to broadcasting his “enlightenment.” Being familiar with the organizational structures of Mind Dynamics, Scientology, and the new psychologies, he began to organize training groups. His personal charisma and success in communicating the wisdom attracted to him many more followers, who offered time and energy to help him spread the gospel of est.

Followers seemed to believe that est sprang virtually full—born from Erhard’s mind, like Athena from the head of Zeus. And though Erhard does acknowledge a debt to Buddhist thought—he has hosted the Gyalwa Karmapa and the Dalai Lama in their trips to America—and to the mathematical theories of G. Spencer Brown, the zealous followers consistently denied that est’s presentation techniques had any precursors or used any kind of “brainwashing.” Supposedly there were no books that describe how est worked. In Jerome D. Frank’s Persuasion and Healing, however, there’s a fine description of the techniques and dynamics by which est and similar systems of persuasion operate.  

Its success is the result, at least in part, of est’s use of the most modern, sophisticated techniques of image manufacturing and advertising—what Vance Packard called “hidden persuaders”—and the demise of the traditional religious and political belief systems. It managed to present a mythological system that sounds remarkably, if naively, cogent, even in relation to advanced discoveries and theories of modern physics. Indeed, est is surprisingly able to communicate, to relatively unsophisticated members of the American middle class, the esoteric wisdom that the world is an arbitrary creation of concepts of the mind and of language structures.  


werner erhard teaching
I was utterly amazed by est’s power. I had avoided the training for a long time. 1 had been put off by the jargon and the hard sell. But in 1978 I was thinking about leaving California and it seemed that before I did, I ought to take est, if only to complete the “California experience.” And so it was easy to say yes when my friend and former teacher Kim McKell invited me to attend a guest seminar with her at which Werner himself was appearing, and to sign up that night for the training.  

A few weeks later I joined some two hundred and fifty other people in a meeting room in a Holiday Inn for what was promised to be an experience of enlightenment. I was skeptical, but open. I certainly did not want to begrudge myself a fruitful experience just to prove est wrong. And, in the end, I didn’t.  

Of the two weekends, the first was by far the more moving. It focused on emotional catharsis. The second focused on the “doctrine.” It proved to be familiar, though I had been quite surprised when early on the first day I realized where all the talk was going. I had thought est was going to be about “winning friends and influencing people.” It turned out to be about emptiness. I was delighted.  

The high point of my entire experience came at the close of that first weekend. We had been warned that the last process was going to be a mindblower, but had not been given any clue to what it would be except its name: the Danger Process. Then, after a grueling day of lecture, “sharing,” processes, and introspection, always grappling with a vision of reality that kept slipping—or being pulled —out of grasp, we were sent to dinner with the admonition that something big would be in store for us when we got back.  

I returned, eager to continue my “transformation,” to find the room rearranged and a new group of assistants standing waiting for the Danger Process to begin. The trainer convened the session, the process started, and something strange happened in the room. Within minutes, and for no reason at all, I was in hysterics. Even now I cannot quite understand how they managed to do what they did.

My body was trembling. Cries of pain and of laughter were coming out of my mouth, while my mind—my ego —watched detachedly, wondering what was happening to me. There was nothing to be afraid of, and yet I was behaving as though I were scared to death. I wondered if I was acting, if I was shaking and screaming like that because the others were doing it and I thought that was what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn’t sure. But the suggestion made me wonder if, indeed, all my life I’d been acting, doing what I knew was expected. Perhaps, I thought, all my intelligence has been just a sham. Perhaps I haven’t understood anything at all, but have just been parroting back what was wanted by teachers and friends. Perhaps my whole life has been a ploy to impress people, so they wouldn’t see how really empty I am inside.  

The world around me, the other two hundred and fifty people, most of whom were also screaming or crying or laughing hysterically, all of a sudden appeared but the surface of my consciousness. Inside me there seemed nothing but empty space. In looking out, I realized, I was seeing the illusion of myself, just as years before I’d realized that in looking out I was seeing the face of God.  

Then one of the new assistants came to stand in front of me, his face only a couple of inches from mine. And though he looked nothing like me, I saw that he was me and that I was nobody.  

Satori. My ego was gone. It had been just a sham. There was really nobody here. All my life had been only a cover to protect me from my fears. The world wasn’t real. Nobody else was real. We were all merely playing like persons, pretending we were not really deathly afraid of the emptiness that is life.  

The screaming and crying continued. But now I was no longer surprised. The me that had been watching, wondering how they’d done this, was gone. There was just the crying and it felt good: as someone must feel who has endured incredible danger totally in control, but breaks down in tears of relief when once the danger passes. Only this danger had been going on for a lifetime.  

How we all had the stamina to carry on like that I don’t know. It lasted for hours. After a while, the room was rearranged again and we curled up into balls on the floor and were guided toward the realization that if all our lives we’d been afraid of the others and pretended not to be, then it followed that all the others were afraid of us and were likewise pretending a show of bravery. In fact, just as our show was affected to protect us, so the very show that scared us was affected by the others to protect them. But there was nothing really to be afraid of. Years of fear somehow cried and screamed themselves out. Finally, at almost three in the morning, the hysteria subsided and a wonderful peace and security filled the room. We could go home.

I do not know what the others experienced. I suspect each understood it his or her own way. For some, the process probably affirmed their self-worth. For some, I’m sure, it affirmed their business ambitions. For me it affirmed the experience of emptiness. Once again, I’d been God and God had been nothing, nothing at all. Not one square inch on which to stand.  

Whatever the others got from those hours of screaming I am sure had something to do with facing the emptiness and finding therein the salvation we were all looking for. That wisdom was, at least for a while, profoundly transforming —somehow a little too bound up in the est jargon and presentation, but profound nonetheless. 
 
This wisdom is presented by est in a way that mobilizes the participants’ ability to deal with what is one of the primary issues for any system of psychological or spiritual development.  That is, how to change patterns of behavior. For human behavior becomes habitual. Each time a person repeats a particular pattern of responses to a life situation, that pattern is reinforced; the next time such a situation arises, the person will tend to repeat the same behavior, even when it is self-defeating. If it is going to alter the life, a conversion experience has to break this cycle of reinforced learning. Therefore, any effective conversion must teach techniques that keep the conversion active and thereby reinforce the new patterns of behavior.  

Roman Christianity, for instance, mythologizes the effect of sin that influences a person to repeat the sin and to suffer the consequences of the action as “temporal punishment due to sin,” which must be made up either in this life or in purgatory in the afterlife. The punishment can be eradicated, however, by performing good works and religious practices that earn “indulgences.” For a devout Catholic, then, included in the performance of religious acts—especially the reception of the sacraments—is the faith that these acts bring release from the past, so that one can feel confident that one’s life is changing and will be changed in the future.  

Hinduism, in its varied forms, teaches that the commission of “sin” incurs karma, which is the tendency to suffer the same injustice one has caused another and to continue repeating such acts and to become the kind of person who commits sin. Religious practices, especially darshan (being in the presence and under the influence of a saving person or a relic of a saving person), tend to clear away these karmic accretions. Meditative practice—in one of its modern forms, Transcendental Meditation, for instance—allows the karmic accretions to rise up into consciousness as memories of the karma-incurring acts or of consequent attitudes, which are then swept away by the cleansing repetition of the meditative mantra.  

Psychoanalysis utilizes the practice of free association to bring up the past in the presence of an analyst who—through either calm, passive acceptance or intelligent interpretation— assists the analysand to de-cathect psychic energy from its past objects so that previous neurotic patterns arc broken.  

The est explanation is that patterns are reinforced by resistance to experience, but “disappeared” by experiencing them fully. When one does not resist one’s experience, the quality of life improves and one keeps developing and growing into the future. Assumed as axiomatic is the principle that what one resists persists, while what one consciously experiences disappears. Acceding to this axiom is one of the few real leaps of faith that est demanded; the system was sophisticated enough to convince the trainees, however, that the axiom is not only correct, but obvious to anyone who looks. Because of the “operational principle” —that the mind seeks its own survival—events associated with survival threatening issues are resisted and pushed out of consciousness. And since all experiences are so associated, if only because of memories from infancy when survival was the only thought, all experience is resisted. Thus, in fact, people don’t experience life at all. And they continue to repeat patterns that are self-defeating, limit their ‘‘aliveness,” curtail their growth, and prevent them from experiencing “who they are,” which is the Self that creates the world out of emptiness.  

Responding to an event is likened to plugging a tape cartridge into a cybernetic system. Each time an event happens, it is said, a person pulls out the old tape for that event, plugs it in, and repeats the previous response—which, since it is fraught with survival fears, is one of resisting life. And the pattern is reinforced. But when an event occurs and one pulls out the old tape, plugs it in, and consciously and deliberately chooses the event to happen just the way it does, one becomes conscious of the response and, without resistance, experiences it fully. Then, in fact, the tape is erased.

choose
Choosing every event that happens to you, recognizing the consequences as integral to the event, allows you to experience it and so “disappear” it. Then nonexperiencing changes to experiencing, and the cycles of karmic repetition are broken. This developmental method was one of the key notions of est. To mythologize and thereby strengthen this process of choosing, est proposed that we all have absolute power over our lives; that, indeed, as “who we really are,” we have already chosen everything in our lives. This proposition, which parallels the Tibetan Buddhist notion that each of us from the bardo state before conception chooses exactly the situation in which to reincarnate, results in est’s solipsism. This solipsism is, in fact, a mythologization of the developmental method.  

In the same way that the Mahayanist is urged to identify with the bodhisattva who has chosen to take upon himself, and therefore affirm, all experience, so the est trainee is urged to see himself or herself as the source or creator of the entire universe, responsible for everything in it, having already chosen it. By affirming that choice and accepting the responsibility, the karma of the past is “disappeared,” barriers drop away, and “space” is created. When there is more space, the past survival fears cease to dominate our lives and the quality improves, “miracles” begin to happen, we are buoyed up by life and pushed ahead with feelings of vibrancy and aliveness. The quality of life is thus transformed, and what have been difficulties clear up on their own. As we choose the content, we transform the “context.” The developmental method that allows the trainees to choose their experience and so recognize their identity with the self is reinforced by a teaching of radical solipsism.  The solipsism, in turn, is fit into the developmental method by the introduction of the notion of intentionality.  

Thus it is said that, since each person is God in his or her own universe, each person can determine what happens. On the one hand, the teaching asserts very clearly that one’s intention can only be to choose things the way they are: The way always to be right and always to get what you want is always to choose things to be exactly the way they are.  
The way they are is, after all, the way you chose them to be. The est trainers dramatized this teaching in a delightfully instructive way by remarking throughout the training that various things that occur, for instance where people happened to sit, do so because of choice. They joked that during the breaks they had drawn up a seating plan for the upcoming session, and were pleased to see that it has worked. On the other hand, the teaching suggests that by “getting your intention clear” you can achieve control over your life and begin to make space so that you can get what you want.  

An elaborate recruitment program had been developed in the est organization. Because est calls for everyone in the world to choose his or her own life, to take responsibility for the world, to tell the truth, and to be open to negotiating with others for what goods and satisfactions are available to be shared, of which, it said, there is no scarcity) so that the world will “work,” est necessarily needed to “train” everyone. Trainees come to realize that in order for their lives to work, everyone’s life must work. And since they were persuaded to attribute the working of their lives to est, they saw that everyone must be recruited for est. Indeed, as part of the persuasion, they were told that the “miracles” would cease if they were not actively participating in communicating the est wisdom.

Obviously, the fact that people experience “miracles” which means that they feel satisfied with their lives, since they are actively choosing everything to happen just the way it does and therefore always getting what they choose —seemed to verify that “est works.” That was Erhard’s claim to authority. All too often the “miracles” were simply things like finding a parking space when one needed one, having the bus come just as one arrived at the stop, getting a raise in salary. These are trivial, and it seemed to trivialize the whole wisdom to verify it by such inconsequential alterations in a life. But the events were sometimes amazing and they impressed new “graduates”—as initiates are called—with the power of the system.  

The “miracles” are est’s major selling point. What happens, however, was that the recruitment concern created a subtle change in the doctrine itself . In the interests of advertising, the graduates began to sing the praises of est. Subtly, insidiously, they ceased to say that they are wanting what they get and begin to say that they are getting what they want. That change is subtle, but it distorts the doctrine significantly.

What began as a teaching that life is lived well when you don’t resist experience, and disinterestedly but vitally take things as they come, has shifted to a promise that life can be manipulated and destiny changed. What was originally a call to awareness of the power of intentionality, by which all sentient beings collectively create the world of consensual reality and by which, through cooperation, that reality can be improved, has become a justification for an individual with a “clear intention” to be forceful, pushy, and opportunistic.  

The shift happened for two reasons, both stemming from imperatives of organizational maintenance. The first was the need for recruitment. In spite of the fact that it is common wisdom in all cultures that the way through suffering is acceptance of it, it remains difficult to recruit new members to a group that will teach them to accept their suffering and dissatisfaction. The second was est’s ambition to appeal to the middle class.  
Erhard rightly recognized that if his enlightenment was really going to change the world, it had to appeal to the great mass of Americans who, though powerless themselves, are the channels of power in American society. They are the middle-level managers, bureaucrats, functionaries, property owners, family builders, the “silent majority,” who constitute the work force of the American system. Their inertia keeps the system going. If they could be touched, Erhard must have realized, the entire system could be in influenced and transformed. Emptiness could be announced to the masses, and once their love and cooperation were mobilized, they would rise up and create utopia.  

The problem is that to reach them one must assume some of the values and the trappings that they understand and respect. One must promise that success will somehow look like the upward mobility that the middle class prizes as its peculiar privilege. And this determined est’s public image: trainings were generally held in fancy hotels; est’s literature was professional and slick; and its appeal promised a life replete with the comforts and affluence valued by mainstream American culture.

The model of the successful est graduate, the person who “got it,” as est called its enlightenment experience, was of course Werner Erhard himself. In some respects he appeared a warm and likeable man. With clear, deep eyes and a penetrating but friendly gaze, a strong nose and jaw, tanned and (to add a touch of verisimilitude) just faintly pockmarked skin, a stylish collegiate haircut, a winning smile, broad shoulders, and an athletic build almost always clothed in soft cashmere sweaters or tailored suits, usually with the shirt collar casually unbuttoned, he seemed a fine example of the best qualities of the successful, white middle-class, heterosexual male. (Though est made successful outreaches to incarcerated members of the lower class, it had been fairly unsuccessful in recruiting large numbers of poor or Third World trainees.) Erhard had certainly achieved all that he promised the est attitude could give. And that, of course, was precisely where the criticism of est must be directed.

The problem with est was not the money it cost. It was only indirectly the “narcissism” it encouraged. Since it proposed a monism in which all the separate solipsists are, in fact, manifestations of the one Self and so none can be “saved” until all are saved, the wisdom urged active, moral, and political participation in creating a utopian world—which could hardly be called a narcissistic ideal. The problem with est was that it failed to question the value system of those to whom it appeals.  

Erhard rightly denied the accusation that est was “pop psychology.” It was very sophisticated. It was, however, pop mysticism. And like most attempts (perhaps including this present book) to popularize mystical teaching, it failed to be radical enough. Despite the (ex opere operato) sacramental-sounding guarantee that even if they slept through the training, so long as they stayed in the room and followed instructions they would “get the results,” graduates didn’t always “get” it. They didn’t continue to take seriously and radically the fundamental teachings that everything is perfect just the way it is, and that wanting things to be different only makes the undesired state persist.  

A prototypical example of this failure to really “get” the basic message was the pressure by the leaders of the follow-up seminars to make seminarians bring guests to recruitment functions. Week after week, the leaders scolded the seminarians for not being serious enough in their commitment to participate in the training by “sharing their experience of est,” which meant proselytizing. Yet the basic tenet of the system held that resisting the fact that guest quotas were not met would only cause that situation to persist. And, of course, it did persist. So the leader scolded more and fewer guests were invited and more scoldings followed.  

It does not take a sophisticated mystical doctrine to explain why that approach alienates people. But it also, of course, “winnows the wheat from the chaff” and guaranteed that those who continued to take follow-up seminars and volunteer to work for est would be those who were most easily persuaded and who became dependent on the organization. Organizational concerns were, therefore, reinforced and est teaching appeared to encourage being obsessive-compulsively efficient, following instructions unquestioningly, and pressuring all comers to sign up to be trained.  

The wisdom of est was profound. Though completion of a two-weekend session of powerful, emotionally cathartic processes probably shouldn’t be called “enlightenment”—that only dilutes the meaning of the word—it certainly appeared that Werner Erhard had seen deep into the epistemological malaise of modern society and discovered a path through it to the divinity and wonder that lie on the other side.  

What we can learn from est, by taking a critical stance on it, is that emptiness is a hard teaching. Its questioning of values and its demand that one follow one’s own path, a path that no one has taken before, must necessarily be conveyed through metaphors and symbols. By choosing for organizational purposes the metaphors, jargon, and style of modern, high-powered big business, instead of the subtle, ancient, fluid metaphors of myth, est allowed to distort its teaching of emptiness many of the values and priorities of the culture that was responsible for the malaise that Erhard was working to alleviate.  

As the experience of the mendicants showed, institutionalizing the wisdom of emptiness—despite the virtual necessity to do so in order to communicate it and to align the intentions of the multiple solipsists who are creating the world—inevitably distorts and confuses the wisdom. It is true that est was a powerful aid in confronting the emptiness. The training could be recommended wholeheartedly.  Yet it, too, must be subjected to its own analysis and be stripped of its pretensions. You failed to “get it” if you completed the training and still thought that est is “it.”

The wisdom that est taught about how to deal with life and self in the context of the experience of emptiness is found in many places. It has, in some respects, always pervaded the esoteric and mystical teachings of groups like the Masonic Orders, the Rosicrucians, and the Theosophists, though it was often expressed in forms that today seem highly mythologized. Today we seek to avoid the most obvious mythological expressions (though, of course, even in creating metaphors that seem less dramatic and sentimental and more scientific and psychological, we are still creating myths).




FYI -- Toby's second Trainer in San Francisco, Dec 78, was Randy McNamara.

Toby did the 6-Day Course in April 84.

Kip's second Trainer in Austin, the last est, in 84 at the Women's Center, was Prema Elvin.
 

 


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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.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual qualities of gay male consciousness.

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