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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
Unpublished manuscripts
About ordering
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
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"
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Hero's
Journey
The
Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016
The Gay Hero Journey
(shortened)
You're
On Your Own
Superheroes
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?
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
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
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding
the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding
Your
Tiger Face
How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated
Joseph
Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part
presentation on YouTube
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
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"
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
Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us
about the
Nature of God and
the Universe
Gay
Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated
by Matthew Whitfield. Click
here
Gay Spirituality
Gay Identity and
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness
Gay
Spirituality is now
available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here
Charmed
Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling
edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman
Secret
Matter
Lammy Award Winner for Gay
Science Fiction
updated
Getting Life in
Perspective
A Fantastical Romance
Getting
Life in Perspective is available as an
audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click
here
The Fourth Quill
originally published
as
PLAGUE
The Fourth Quill is
available
as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie
Moreland. Click here
Two Spirits: A Story of
Life
with the Navajo
with Walter L. Williams
 Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click
here
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
The Myth of the Great
Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.
This
was the second edition of this book.
Toby Johnson's
titles are
available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.
|
Science Fiction as Religious
Mythology
3001: The Final Odyssey
by Arthur C Clarke
Voyager Press, 288 pages
November 3, 1997
978-0586066249
Available new and used from Amazon.com
3001:
The Final Odyssey  
This review originally appeared in White Crane
Journal #35, Winter 1997
Arthur C. Clarke is arguably one of the
best known and most influential people in the world. His 59 some odd
books have sold a hundred million copies. His TV appearances, during
the Moon landing, for instance; interviews with him about modern
technology; and his own cable TV series about unexplained phenomena
have reached millions of people.
Clarke may be best-known for the four novels and two movies that began
with the amazing and revolutionary film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In that mind-boggling movie about human evolution and “alien
intervention,” Clarke created a metaphor for some sort of
multi-dimensional, “transcendent reality” in the image of the monolith.
This manifestation of incredible creative power was a black, stone-like
slab with the dimensions 1x4x9—the first three numbers of the quadratic
series. (And why,Clarke asks,w ould you think it stopped after only
three dimensions?) According to the mythology of the Space Odyssey
series, the monolith first transformed primate consciousness on Earth
into human intelligence, then, after waiting beneath the surface of the
moon for human astronauts to uncover it in a sure sign of technological
evolution, announced to its makers—whoever or whatever they were—that
the cultivation of life on Earth had been successful. And then, through
another monolith near Jupiter, ingested an astronaut, transforming him
into a kind of mystical/psychic Superbeing who returned to watch over
the Earth as the apotheosis and final evolution of Humankind.
In the later story, 2010, the monolith reappears to oversee the
cultivation of life on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter and, to this
end, ignites the gas planet into a companion star for Sol to make a sun
for the life evolving on Europa. The monolith obviously operates at a
scale way beyond anything human. Its makers are scientific equivalents
to gods in the same way that in the 1950s modern airplanes were the
gods of the “cargo cults” of South Pacific Islanders who saw these
strange apparitions in the sky and mythologized them.
Many of Clarke’s novels are concerned with the nature of the gods and
“spiritual reality.” Pervading his work has been an understanding of
the mythologization process and an effort to “explain” mysterious and
unscientific-seeming events, like psychic powers, telepathy, religious
visions, ghostly apparitions, etc. He does this by forcing larger the
scope of scientific understanding, looking for a bigger picture from a
yet higher perspective that, in fact, honors the reality of the
inexplicable and the mystical while also placing it solidly in the real
world that can be explained rationally (if perhaps sometimes
metaphorically) when enough information is available.
Arthur C. Clarke’s best novel, many would argue, is Childhood’s End.
It is the story of an extraterrestrial visitation to Earth by the
benign, but technologically all-powerful, Overlords who take charge of
the Earth in order to bring peace, technological marvels, and
prosperity to all people. The Overlords (rather like Mr. Spock in the
competing sci-fi mythological system) are scientific, rational and
logical, above emotion and hysteria and mysticism. But they are
fascinated with the human race’s penchant for religious and mystical
phenomena. They see it as the seeds of transformation into something
greater than material existence.
It turns out that they are studying how certain planets go through an
evolutionary process that takes their biosphere ultimately beyond
matter and space and time, becoming purely “spiritual,” and jettisoning
the planet as the intelligent species which grew on it matures beyond
matter to become part of a larger psychic entity called the Overmind.
The Overlords have come to Earth because they know Earth is about to
undergo such an apocalyptic apotheosis. They’ve come, out of a
self-interested compassion, to observe the transformation of humankind
and to palliate the suffering and distress of the planet’s population
when the people realize they are the last adults there will ever be. It
is the children in whom the effects of the transformation will occur.
And to protect the children when the change begins, the Overlords
quickly take all of them away from their parents.
For the children will never grow up, instead they’ll grow into a
telepathic collective, super-conscious global Mind and then grow out,
leaving the cocoon of Earth behind. This is a wonderful statement—in
modern, scientifically acceptable metaphors—of what religion is really
about: the evolution of life into God and an explanation for religious
and mystical phenomena.
Clarke is now a man of 80. He lives as what English society might call
a confirmed bachelor in a sort of intentional extended family in the
Theravada Buddhist land of Sri Lanka. Lately he’s been debilitated by a
serious bout with post-polio syndrome. But he’s still thriving. Of all
the people in the world who ought to live to see the year 2001, he is
certainly one.
Arthur C. Clarke is not a gay man like the post-Stonewall gay men that
make up the readership of White Crane. But he is certainly one of us.
He gives a marvelous example of the contributing, participating life,
lived free of the conventions of marriage and childrearing. And in his
modern/futuristic way, he is surely a visionary and Enlightened Being,
a modern
scientifically-minded prophet who has foreseen, and helped bring about,
the transformation of consciousness that technological advance, the
discovery of the physical nature of the cosmos, and the overpopulation
and ecological crises of the late 20th C. is ushering in. (You know, if
the planet Jupiter ignites into a star in the year 2001, Arthur C.
Clarke just might come to be worshiped as a god.)
3001: The Final Odyssey completes the story. After the
monolith has launched its report of the state of life on Earth in the
year 2001 (when it was uncovered on the moon in the first novel) on a
five hundred light year trip to its homebase, now the response from
home is about to arrive in the year 3001 in the form of the judgment
that the belligerence and ecological ignorance of humankind at the
close of the 20th C. was surely evidence that the experiment had
failed. Now the monolith is about turn on again to scrub the
experiment, wipe out the human race and start the cultivation over
again. But in the thousand years it’s taken for the signal to get home
and back, humankind has changed—perhaps precisely because of knowing
about the monolith and its intervention in evolution—and now deserves
to survive. The last test of evolutionary success then is of the
capacity to realize what’s going to happen and the ability to
technologically disarm the monolith. Accomplished with the modern
gimmick of the computer virus, the humans of the Third Millennium prove
their evolutionary success and prevent their destruction by turning off
the vehicle of transcendent intervention.
Interpreting the metaphor, doesn’t this suggest the Buddhistic thought
that the maturation of humankind finally entails transcending mythology
and metaphor altogether, giving up reliance on outside intervention and
taking responsibility for our own evolution, and “turning off” God?
This review was
written in 1997. Sir Arthur did, indeed, see the year 2001—but the
transfiguration of Jupiter did not happen. Clarke died March 18, 2008,
at the age of 90. This reviewer had the good fortune to correspond with
Arthur C. Clarke during the time this review was written. Clarke gave
permission for the indirect outing of him in the review. He was quite
fascinated with the contributions to culture made by homosexuals down
through history—including Abraham Lincoln, who was outed by C.A. Tripp
in the book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, about that
time. Clarke was on the White Crane Journal mailing list. The so-called
"Clarkives" archives which are to be released 30 years after his death
are going to be full of material about gay consciousness.
By the way, the awkward ending of 3001 which other reviewers complain
about was used in the blockbuster 1996 movie Independence Day.
At least, Arthur C. Clarke didn't deliver the computer virus by rocket.
Reviewed by Toby
Johnson, author
of Gay
Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness,
The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph
Campbell and other novels and books
|
