Reincarnation

Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Home Also on this website: Toby Johnson's books: TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams 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: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press with Afterword by Mark Jordan GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING. CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story About ordering Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series   Articles and Excerpts: Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry Wedding Cake Liberation Gay Marriage in Texas What's ironic Shame on the American People The "highest form of love"  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 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 Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism "It's Always About You" The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A Wave What is Enlightenment? Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Curious Bodies What Toby Johnson Believes The Joseph Campbell Connection Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy The Nature of Religion Being Gay is a Blessing 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  "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 Next Step in Evolution 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 What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel? The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle 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 The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance More about Gay Mental Health Psych Tech Training The Rainbow Flag Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta. Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out" About Michael Talbot, gay mystic About Guy Mannheimer About Dennis Paddie About Sterling Houston About Michael Stevens 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 Bougeois Over Coffee: A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson Dark Knowledge by Kenneth Low Janet Planet by Eleanor Lerman

What is Reincarnation really about?   During the fascination with "Eastern religions" in the 60s and early 70s, our generation got exposed to reincarnation myths, especially the naive sort of reincarnation that was described in Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical variation on Hindu Vedanta and that got popularized by Timothy Leary with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the myths of the "bardo." In the naive understanding, reincarnation offers solace in the face of death by assuring that you will come back in another life. Just wait. It'll be OK. Orthodox Buddhism has a much grimmer notion of reincarnation. For Buddhism imagines the universe as infinitely long in both directions. So, for them, human souls have been reincarnating for billions and billions of years, a Cantor set of previous lifetimes all besot with suffering and longing to get off the wheel. So the Buddhist aim is nirvana, which means extinction and an end of the cycle of reincarnation.  Of course, this notion of an infinitely old universe has been disproved. I think the way you would experience reincarnation as solace and reprieve from death is by remembering your LAST lifetime now. Reincarnation of your soul isn't going to be any good for you in the NEXT lifetime; it's only solace in THIS lifetime. So one of the things the Buddha is supposed to have experienced during the 21 days after he was enlightened under the Bodhi Tree was the recollection of his past lives. I think what the myth of "recollection of one's past lives" means is the realization that you now are the leading edge of all the accumulation of human experience. We are the present culmination of all previous lives human beings have lived. And so when I think back about people who've lived before--relatives, mentors, figures of history, etc.--I can understand that that was "me" in an earlier life. I am one with the Mind of All Humankind. Personal survival in an afterlife isn't very relevant to spirituality. In fact, the belief in heaven and hell has allowed Christians to put off social justice and solution to problems into a time after death, and kept people dependent on the priestly caste for exoneration from Hell. I say we only experience change. Experiencing creates time. At the level of human brain, experience IS a change in the polarity of the surface of a neuron. At the level of the cosmos, change is gravity. The universe IS the propagation of activity across the surface of spacetime, and the lines along which change happens most smoothly warps space, and the "force" that shapes the universe of matter is gravity. Gravity and change are indivisible and both are a result of experiencing. What is having the experience of the universe? In a twist on the Abbot and Costello routine, maybe the answer to that question is "What." I mean, it is asking the question "what?" which causes experience to happen. The cosmos develops life and consciousness in order to ask the question "What?" and asking the question is what causes the universe to develop life and consciousness.

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 Lammy-nominated book  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was published by Alyson in 2003.