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Toby Johnson's books: 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 PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles and Excerpts: The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate "It's Always About You" The Joseph Campbell Connection,
"The Evolution of Gay Identity" "St. John of the Cross & Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"
The Techniques Of The World Saviors Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
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Here's a way of understanding the notion of the "Clear
Light."
In the afterlife state (called the bardo), for instance,
you might see a smoky light off to the left and a bright white
light beside it. These lights lead to the loka of hell. These lights
look especially attractive if your karma is full of anger. If you enter
there, you'll reincarnate as a denizen of hell. It will be hard to get
out of there. You'll have to wait to be reincarnated as a human to ever
get another try at Buddhahood. A dull red light leads to the loka of the hungry ghosts.
Red looks attractive to souls whose karma is full of attachment. A
green light leads to the loka of the angry gods. It looks attractive to
souls whose karma is full of jealousy. It's always better to choose the brighter light than the duller, but ideally you won't choose any of these lights (blue, white, yellow, red, green, or rainbow) and so avoid reincarnation at all. If you can hold out long enough and pass all the way through the bardo, you can get back to the clear light. But most souls end up at a place where they see their old lives and get reattached to having a body and then inadvertently get reincarnated again. (There's an interesting twist on this image that's presented in the short essay How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated.) Indeed, before any of these colored lights were seen, you
were given a chance to enter buddhahood directly. That's what called
the experience of the Clear Light at the moment of death. What's "clear light"? It's not white light. White comes later; it actually leads
to hell. And white isn't "clear." It's white. "Clear" means you can't
see it at all. You see right through it. The "clear light" that we're seeing through all the time
throughout our lives is the light we're giving off ourselves, i.e., the
light other people see us by. We see right through this light as though it weren't there,
but it is really surrounding us, isn't it? To all the other people in
the world, it's us. It's what others see us as. Mixing a little Catholic Purgatory mythology into this
understanding, we might consider that what Purgatory means is seeing
the truth of what was really going on during one's life. People live in
delusions. They don't know what other people are thinking, especially
about them. So maybe Purgatory is getting to know what others were
thinking, what was really motivating them in their dealings with you,
what was really going on in your dealings with them. It might really be quite purgative--even punishing--to see
what was really going on during one's life. Maybe that is what the "Clear Light" refers to. It's seeing
ourselves as others see us. In the poem "To a Louse," the poet Robert Burns expresses
this wisdom like this: Oh, that God would give us the very smallest of giftsThe Clear Light is the truth. Perhaps the image functions on an even deeper reality. In esoteric physiology, it's said human beings have several layers or sheathes or bodies in which we reside. The physical body is the most obvious; it is enlivened by the vital body, which in turn is experienced and directed by the mental body, etc. The last and most subtle of these bodies is the radiant body; it's that "organ of consciousness" that radiates karmic vibes. It's what some people see as the aura, and maybe what psychics experience as telepathy. The radiant body is giving off an even clearer light. It's so clear nobody sees it. It's the karma of our lives and it shows up in the lives of people who live after us. It's our spiritual effect on the world. To see the Clear Light, then, would mean to realize the karma you're transmitting out into the collective consciousness of Earth. According to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, if you choose the Clear Light at the moment of death, you avoid the bardo altogether. You go right into Buddhahood and are freed from reincarnation. You become the bliss of the Buddha. At every moment in our lives, we can make the effort to see ourselves as others see us, we can make the effort to see what kind of karma we're incurring for future generations. This would change the way we live. It would make our lives blissful, it would make life "heaven on earth." See also: |
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of eight 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, three 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. In addition to the novels featured elsewhere in this web site, Johnson is author of IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD and THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET (Revised edition): AN APPRECIATION OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL.
Johnson's Lammy Award winning book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness was published in 2000.
His newest book is GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe.
