On Gay Spirituality

On Gay Spirituality

Background to the article:

Around early 1980, someone had put an ad in the New Age Journal to the effect that he would award his entire collection of back issues of that magazine to anyone who could explain why the New Age Journal would not publish anything on gay spirituality. I was not sure what the term “gay spirituality” referred to, but I was curious to find out, so I wrote to this person. He sent me some material, and I decided to write an article and try to get it published.

Since gay spirituality was a men’s movement and I am a woman, I asked a gay male friend to do the article with me. Bruce Hoffman was an English professor and, like me, a follower of Avatar Meher Baba. In the article, I combined the material I had gathered on the gay spirituality movement with Bruce’s comments in a taped conversation that I had with him.

The New Age Journal turned the article down, but the Yoga Journal accepted it, as they had a column suitable for such op-ed pieces. The editor told me that many yoga teachers were gay men who would be interested in the article.

The article includes a circular diagram representing a cycle of incarnations, showing a series of six male incarnations on the left side of the “clock” and six female incarnations on the right side. I can’t recall where this came from; it could be that Meher Baba had imparted some such idea to someone and then Bruce thought of expressing it in this particular diagram. It suggests that just as the reincarnating individual was about to enter or leave an incarnation of the opposite sex, there would be a gay or lesbian incarnation. Several readers misunderstood this as "female souls in male bodies" or "male souls in female bodies," which was not at all what we'd intended; the soul has no gender, as far as we were concerned. It was more a matter of "impressions" (sanskaras in Sanskrit) deposited on the mental body in prior lifetimes.

After the article was published, we got many responses from men who were eager to know more about gay spirituality. Some 25 years later, I showed the article to Joe Perez, blogger and author of Soulfully Gay (2007); he thought the piece still had relevance and posted it on his blog. I was pleased to see this little bit of “history” republished. I dedicate it to my late dear coauthor, Bruce Hoffman.

—Kendra Crossen Burroughs

On Gay Spirituality

by Kendra Crossen and Bruce Hoffman

published in Yoga Journal, July-August 1980

This August, hundreds of men are expected to convene in the Colorado mountains for the second annual “Spiritual Gathering for Radical Fairies." The first such gathering was held last summer at a desert ashram in Arizona. Proudly affirming their identity with the magical little people of legend, the fairies proclaimed a new spiritual movement that looks to the "gay vision" for a conscious force capable of healing society as well as helping individuals realize their human potential.

The 1979 conference was the first dramatic expression of a growing impatience with the frequent failure of New Age groups, as well as traditional institutions, to address themselves meaningfully to the gay community. A participant in the conference summed up the problem this way:

"Bioenergetics says that gay people have marked blocks in the pelvic area. Macrobiotics say we are too yin. Kundalini says we are stuck in the lower chakras. Gurdjieff said we can't do the Work. Religion labels us sinners. The law calls us criminals. Psychiatrists still call us sick (despite recent changes in 'classification'). This all leaves me with one question: What New Age?" And his conclusion: "It's no New Age for us. Our support doesn't come from New Agers. They haven't liberated themselves from patriarchal, authoritarian structures—they've merely created new ones."

The Gay Vision

In response, the advocates of gay spirituality have decided that integration into a world dominated by "male heterosexism" is not an adequate measure of freedom. These men have come to see the gay community as a people who have their own distinct culture and share a "multidimensional" quality, a special "gay window" through which they view the world. Repudiating the notion that gays are "just like everyone else,” they seek a deepening of gay consciousness in the belief that gay people, as a unique manifestation of the Universal Spirit, can make a vital contribution to human unfoldment.

The idea of a prophetic mission latent in the gay experience is not new one. In the nineteenth century, for example, Edward Carpenter saw the role of what he called the intermediate sex as guiding the world toward "the life of the heart," in which the values of personal affection and friendship would replace monetary, legal, and social obligations as the dominant force in human relationships. Present-day spokesmen express a similar view, finding in the gay ideal a model of spiritual love. Don Kilfhefner, in discussing the need to reexamine "hetero-male assumptions" about spirituality, notes that in the Bhagavad Gita the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna has “a qualitative nature just like that of gay lovers." Though perhaps startling at first glance, this observation is understandable in light of Larry Fine's statement that gay people "tend to relate to each other as whole individuals, with an equality rarely found in a heterosexual relationships."

Harry Hay calls this "subject-to-subject" consciousness in contrast to "subject-to-object” relationships, which he links to opportunism, competitiveness, and the pursuit of self-advantage. Subject-subject consciousness, which fits into neither the "male" nor the "female" category, is felt to be the chief gay contribution to the New Age vision. A countercultural corrective that restores balance to society, it points the way to liberation from rigid definitions of self and to the possibility of a free interplay of love from soul to soul, regardless of sex.

As we understand it, gay spirituality proposes a merging of this spiritual vision with social/political awareness as a means of transforming human consciousness. This approach cannot be regarded merely as a petulant response to the exclusiveness of certain “straight" organizations, nor as an ad hoc philosophy thrown together to meet the needs of a few extremists; it is rather the latest culmination of a movement that has gradually evolved over a long period.

Nevertheless, while recognizing that homosexual as well as heterosexual impulses are inherent forces in the process of spiritual development, we question the validity of a spirituality that stresses sexual identity. To best appreciate the contributions and limitations of sexual identity in achieving spiritual growth, it is vital to understand the dynamics behind the spiritual journey.

The Spiritual Journey

Any approach to spiritual growth is essentially an attempt to answer the questions “Who am I?”; “What am I doing here?”; “Where am I going?”; and “How do I get there?” In the view presented here, these questions are seen to arise simultaneously with the origin of the universe itself.

Sources as ancient as the Vedas and as recent as God Speaks by Meher Baba assert that the universe came into existence in order for the Divine to play hide-and-seek with Its own creation. The soul's consciousness advances slowly and painfully through the process that we know as evolution, and it is not until the human form is reached that the soul is capable of asking, "Who am I?" But human consciousness is so burdened with the multitude of impressions picked up in the course of evolution that it takes millions of human lifetimes for the soul to suspect that it is something more than the particular form in which it happens to find itself.

Through millions of incarnations, one is exposed to the entire range of human experience—as female and male, rich and poor, black and white, powerful and weak, healthy and sick, and so on, until the individual reaches the point, of involution: the conscious return to the one Self from which we all originated unconsciously. Every spiritual aspirant is on this journey of involution, which basically entails the elimination of impressions that cause the soul to identify with being limited.

Heterosexuality and Reincarnation

Heterosexuality is obviously essential to the perpetuation of this Cosmic Game, requiring as it does the survival and evolution of the species. In the majority of incarnations, only that limited group of impressions corresponding to the gender of the body are given free expression. The other impressions—those related to the opposite gender—are usually repressed and latent, for the most part. Thus there is a tendency for heterosexuals to seek a sense of completion through attachment to the opposite sex.

However, the lost unity of the Self can never be regained through sexual attachment to other selves or through other forms of possessiveness that have their basis in separative consciousness. Unity must be sought by the individual within his or her own self. Ultimately, nonidentification with the body and its sex is the condition for overcoming the illusion of duality. When perfect understanding is achieved within, the soul experiences itself as neither exclusively male nor exclusively female.

Homosexual Incarnations

How does homosexuality fit into the Divine plan? In the course of reincarnation, some individuals find that although they are in a male form, the psychic impressions left over from previous female incarnations are still exerting a powerful influence. Similarly, a soul entering a female body after several lifetimes as a male may continue to be strongly affected by male impressions. In either case, the individual may develop homosexual tendencies. Although not every such transition results in homosexuality, there seems always to be a certain percentage of people experiencing a sexual/affectional orientation that is not shared by the great majority of the population.

This point may be illustrated by a hypothetical model of twelve consecutive incarnations represented by a clock (see diagram). Between 12 and 6 o'clock, one incarnates in six male forms; between 6 and 12 o'clock, in six female forms.

Between 6 and 7 o'clock—the first female form taken after a series of six male forms—one could be a lesbian owing to the activity of previous impressions. Similarly, between 12 and 1 o'clock, a soul would enter the first male form after six female forms and might be a gay man. It's also possible that as one approaches an incarnation in a different gender, the impressions associated with that gender might be prematurely released.

The interesting thing about this view is that it confirms the wisdom of not being chauvinistic about our present gender or sexual orientation. In reality we have all been there too. So being gay is simply another part that one plays in the Divine drama, and gay consciousness another partial answer to the question "Who am I?"

A man with whom Meher Baba discussed the subject of homosexuality reported that Baba presented it as "part of God's Whim . . . as a part of knowing. And there was nothing wrong per se with it. What was wrong, as is wrong in heterosexual ideas, is the promiscuity which is so often attached, too."

Sexuality and Spirituality

Sexuality is widely believed to be an obstacle on the spiritual path, except perhaps in Tantra and Taoism, which assert that physical love can be a route to liberation. However, these systems do not attract the gay seeker, since they condemn male homosexuality and accept lesbianism as a natural, "regenerative" practice but not as an alternative to the union of the "cosmic couple."

The problem of sex for both the gay and the straight seeker is essentially the same. That is, to the degree that the aspirant tries to find completion through a sexual relationship, she or he can proceed only so far along the path that leads to union with the Self. It is easy to fall into this trap, for the illusion of duality finds its most powerful expression in sexual desire.

Among both gays and straights there are people who are driven to involve themselves in sexual escapades. Even people on a spiritual journey are not immune to this drive, but they soon discover that the attempt to transcend separateness through physical union is doomed to failure. Promiscuity results not only in seeing others as objects, but in being an object oneself, thus heightening the very painful feeling of separation from the one Self.

Until we become conscious participants in the Game, our moves are largely confined to the realm of confusion. At this stage, some see "through a gay window darkly," for when an aspirant embraces a gay versus a straight approach to spirituality, he or she is merely failing once again into the arms of duality. In truth, there is only one approach: moving from separateness to Oneness. This approach is expressed through many different lifetimes with many different reality frames. And in a sense they're all valid; everything works.

En route, it is not necessarily true that the spiritual seeker must renounce close relationships altogether, since a love relationship can be a source of emotional support and spiritual caring, an environment in which both partners can discover their own uniqueness. This self-discovery is a personal, inner experience that each person must face alone, like birth and death. It can be like working with a spiritual master, who in reality is our true Self.

Toward the New Age

With all this, gay people must still deal with the social and political reality of their situation. And at this point, they need to detach themselves from the stereotyping, labeling, and degrading myths that have long been imposed on them. It would seem that all aspirants should work toward a society in which every individual can freely unfold his or her consciousness and recognize that gay spiritual consciousness will play an important part in this work, which apparently the "Me Decade" has failed to accomplish.

At the same time, the aspirant must realize that individual spiritual growth cannot be achieved by means of group consciousness. The moment support or acceptance by various groups is sought, one is not able to act spontaneously on one's own vision of what is spiritually valid. Instead, the aspirant tends to react by seeking yet another, albeit a more sympathetic, group.

Spirituality is not a democratic process; one does not get voted into Self-realization by being accepted by the world. In identifying spiritual freedom with various forms of personal or social liberation, we risk gaining the world but losing our soul. To “come out” as a true brother or sister of the spiritual path, one does not need acceptance. The only quality needed is the ability to act with integrity and to live more and more in constant remembrance of Divine Love.

The spiritual journey is a singular one. In the course of this journey we meet with something truly radical that has the power to bring us closer to the realization of the New Age vision: the revelation that gay consciousness, like straight consciousness, is only partial consciousness, leading ultimately to a transcendence of all partialities as one surrenders to the Divine Self.