About Us
The Founders
Founded by Cody Johnson and Robin Haines Johnson
Robin Johnson
Robin Johnson is the co-founder of the Great Mystery initiative and has spent her life exploring the mysteries of consciousness and healing. Her path opened early through a near-death experience as a child, which sparked a lifelong curiosity about the unseen world. In the 1970s, she immersed herself in practices like Science of Mind, Transcendental Meditation, and Integral Yoga with Swami Satchidananda, living for a time at his ashram in Santa Cruz.
Drawn to wisdom traditions, Robin studied with Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and learned from medicine men and women across the Americas, Polynesia, and Siberia, as well as through work with plant medicines. These experiences deepened her sense of the interconnectedness of all life.
With her late husband, Gary Cody Johnson, Robin first worked in the music world, producing concerts in California and Hawaii with legendary artists such as Van Morrison, Phoebe Snow, Neil Young, Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, and Ray Charles. Later, they created Great Mystery, bringing people such as Carlos Castaneda, Ram Dass, Gabrielle Roth, Deepak Chopra, Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and Joe Dispenza into dialogue about who we are and what it means to be human.
Alongside this, Robin has practiced bodywork, energy, and sound healing since the 1970s, weaving these modalities into her work with individuals and groups.
Today, she makes her home on the beautiful island of Mallorca, where she continues to create programs that inspire, connect, and invite people into a deeper experience of presence and wonder.
Gary ‘Cody’ Johnson
An early life of cowboy ranching and railroading that paralleled in many ways Kerouac’s On The Road, Cody began his life as an adventurer. He played second chair clarinet in a symphony orchestra and tenor saxophone in a jazz band. Always involved as a conscientious objector, he helped raise the funds that released Angela Davis from prison and he started a free school modeled after AS Neill’s Summerhill.
Cody and Robin began their creative relationship producing concerts beginning in the late 1970s in Santa Cruz, California and then in the Hawaiian Islands. Many of these were fundraisers to benefit groups like The United Farmworkers’ Association, SolarCal, The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, the Red Cross, and homeless shelters, with artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Jane Fonda, the Doobie Brothers, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea . The concerts were celebrations of the shift in consciousness taking place at that time.
An avid explorer, Cody immersed himself in the ideas of Alan Watts, Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. While living in Hawaii he studied hoʻoponopono, the Polynesian philosophy of forgiveness, for many years with the highly respected kahuna lapaʻau Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona.
The shift from concert production to individual retreats, conferences, and tours to ancient sites gave birth to Great Mystery. These programs took place in the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, England, Egypt, India, and Malta, synthesizing new findings in science with a deeper understanding of spirituality.
A musician and lover of music, Cody founded the non-profit Hawaii Jazz Preservation Society with a jazz education program in the schools. He ran a Jazz Club in Waikiki that hosted jazz legends Wynton Marsalis, Stan Getz, Freddy Hubbard, Ray Charles, and others. Alongside concert production, he created the popular radio programs Traffic Jazz and 21 Degrees North syndicated on radio stations throughout the Hawaiian Islands, and Earth Tracks with endorsements from Elton John and Sting. As technology evolved he and Robin created the online radio station Café Cody, which continues to bring pleasure to people from every corner of the globe.
He transitioned from this world in December 2011.