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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: 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Unpublished manuscripts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

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

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

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 Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness

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

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:

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.

The View from Outside

A Special Illumination:

Authority, Inspiration and Heresy in Gay Spirituality

amazon.com
A Special Illumination: Authority, Inspiration and Heresy in Gay Spirituality

Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness



This is a worthwhile and important book. It represents a sort of official recognition of the place of the stream of thought in Western culture and specifically in modern gay culture that’s called “gay spirituality.” In the Introduction, Australian Rollan McCleary argues that homosexuals have been influential throughout the history of culture and religion, and so as homosexuality came out as gay in the modern times, the spiritual side of gay consciousness has also become visible. Up to now, however, the consciousness of an out gay religiousness has been shadowed by the intensely secular and political nature of Gay Liberation and has been unwelcome in religious circles and taken as an affront to religion rather than a serious stream of thought in human consciousness that address the nature of the self, of vision, and of ethics. This has resulted, McCleary says, in the field of gay spirituality going unexamined, unassessed, and unorganized.

A Special Illumination sets out to remedy that by surveying the whole field, observing interweaving themes, critiquing conflicts and inconsistencies, and seeking to uncover a fundamental cohesion. Not only does he consider the “new paradigm” threads (like Christian de la Huerta, Will Roscoe, or myself), he also includes traditional religion and churches.

This is a huge task. The study McCleary set for himself has so many parts and so many themes and so many ideas to consider and comment on. The result is impressive and, I think, generally successful. The book suffers from its origins as a doctoral thesis. There are too many footnotes and too many references commenting on similarities in one thinker’s ideas, for instance, with other writers so that it’s hard to distinguish just which writer he’s talking about. There’s an academic convention of identifying the various subjects of the analysis by their footnoted last names that assumes that the reader should know who all these various writers and principals are and what they’ve done or written about. And there’s a personally critical tone that seems acceptable in a dissertation, addressed only to a few members of one’s committee, to demonstrate the perspicacity of one’s research, but not in a book addressed to the public; the author occasionally pokes jabs or reports unflattering personal dish about his subjects.

The style, however, is pleasantly not academic; there are no clumsy passive constructions or strings of jargon. McCleary doesn’t write much about himself as a character in the field of gay spirituality, but he does use the first person pronoun, and inserts his personal opinions. By and large the book is very readable and interesting, if at times a little overwhelming with its scholarship and breadth.

A theme that runs through the book involves the word queer and the constructionist/essentialist debate and applicability and inapplicability to spirituality. Queer appeals to a youthfully disaffected segment of the homosexual population for its militancy, shock value, and currency. It’s deeply associated however with the queer theory argument of social construction which generally denies the historical reality of homosexuality as an inherent human trait, explaining sexuality as fluid throughout history, taking on different meanings and inflections at different times in response to historical and cultural trends. But a primary tenet of gay spirituality is that there is a spiritual nature inherent to gay consciousness and that people whom today we’d call gay have been in the forefront of the evolution of religion. So queer theory conflicts with the “essence,” as it were, of gay spirituality.

McCleary doesn’t say much about himself, so it’s not clear what founds his various opinions. Sometimes he sounds rather conservative and judgmental (as around issues of promiscuity). He seems to prefer Christian theological argument and religious sounding debate to Radical Faerie and New Age/New Paradigm assertions about gay identity.

There’s a very detailed account of the development of the Radical Faeries and of the evolution of thought in some of the founders of the movement, in particular, Harry Hay, Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker.

The book ends with a call for a gay ethics, as though the notions of political correctness, responsibility to all other oppressed minorities, and compassion for one another that are so prevalent in gay spirituality don’t point to ethical behaviors. And the specific issue he addresses is monogamy vs. open-relationship. Offhand, I’d say we do surprising well around that thorny issue. I’d say what we need by way of ethical direction is help showing attraction to other men in ways that aren’t threatening and in ways of turning down unwanted advances without causing hurt.

It was hard to know what McCleary himself believes religiously, though I gathered he seems to believe in an objective reality outside the human mind which religion seeks and sometimes succeeds at describing, even if in sometimes contradictory and confused ways. This is certainly the familiar epistemological basis of religion, though it is one that science and incisive fact-finding has to cause modern people to question.

This is an important book. For students of the burgeoning field of gay spirituality, it is something of a must-read; McCleary manages to touch on nearly every theme and to comment on nearly every writer or teacher in the field. Even when his observations are minor, that they appear in the book is indicative of something the student may want to investigate further.

It is not in any sense a devotional book, however. A religiously conflicted homosexual trying to reconcile his spiritual yearning with his sexual and emotional feelings will certainly discover that he or she is not alone in this effort—McCleary demonstrates this struggle stretches back to the beginnings of religion—but his survey and analysis isn’t likely to satisfy the religious conflict. There are few “spiritual answers” in this book, but lots of references to what other people have offered as answers.

But what McCleary clearly shows, whether this is his intention or not, is that essential to the effort of gay spirituality—and gay consciousness—is the attitude and technique of critical perspective. Virtually every theme and example that the author mentions is critiqued. Personally, I think that’s quite appropriate and correct. The critique of religion is itself a religious enterprise and a practice for opening to personal inspiration and “revelation.” To seek to understand religion is itself a religious act—and one that is necessarily outside religion. And this is where gay people find themselves.

The light from outside—ah, that’s the “special illumination.”



To order from amazon.com

A Special Illumination: Authority, Inspiration and Heresy in Gay Spirituality