Many of Deida’s earlier unpublished written works are privately distributed and based upon the integration of his many fields of study. Among Deida’s published works, the following themes are demonstrated, listed in approximate chronological order.
While developing a mathematics of cognitive distinction based on G. Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form, Deida published several papers on a new system of formal representation of self-boundaries, space and time: “The Form of Duality: Objectification as Implicate Time (1985)”, “Some Fundamental Aspects of the Indicational Calculus and the Eigenbehavior of Extended Forms (1985)”, “The Indicational Calculus and Trialectics (1985)”, “An Approach to a Mathematics of Phenomena: Canonical Aspects of Reentrant Form Eigenbehavior in the Extended Calculus of Indications (1988)”, and “Multiplicity and Indeterminacy in the Dynamics of Formal Indicational Automata (1991).”
Throughout his academic involvement, Deida continued deepening and refining his various spiritual practices and teachings, and eventually decided to shift the focus of his writing to more popular cultural themes of self development and intimacy. In the mid-1990’s, Deida began publishing non-academic books on spiritual practice, sociocultural evolution, and nondual sexuality.
His first two published books,
Intimate Communion (1995) and
It’s a Guy Thing (1997), were oriented to a general readership and introduced some of Deida’s key concepts such as his three-stage model of psycho-sexual development and an understanding of non-gender-based masculine and feminine identities in a Western cultural context. His three-stage model lays the foundation for a developmental understanding and application of how to move from “first-stage” sexually differentiated co-dependence and power struggles, to “second-stage” sexually neutralized co-independence and cooperation, culminating in “third-stage” realization of the nondual unity of consciousness and light, with its potentially sexualized expression in love.
The first stage is characterized by self-serving egotism and also by the traditional 1950’s gender roles of man as breadwinner and woman as stay-at-home mom. Stage two is the “fifty-fifty” level of empathy and balance we see in much of the postmodern West today, where equality and congeniality reign supreme between the genders and our main aspiration is really just to get along. Then there’s stage three, [Deida] says, where we finally break free of the more timid and passionless aspects of second-stage partnership and begin to reawaken the [non-gender-based] masculine devotion to mission or feminine desire for love that allegedly will bring back our vital core energy and lead to a renewed sense of purposeful being. “There is the [feminine] energetic light aspect of existence, and the [masculine] consciousness aspect of existence, and they are not separate,” Deida says. “Light is the shine of consciousness. Consciousness is the cognizance of light or energy. It’s the knowing aspect of energy, and it’s impossible to separate them. They’re together, and that’s why sex feels so good, because sex is the recapitulation at the human level of consciousness and light in unity.”
In
The Way of the Superior Man (1997, 2004), Deida summarizes his three-stage view of men’s socio-cultural evolution in colloquial language: “It is time to evolve beyond the (first-stage) macho jerk ideal, all spine and no heart. It is also time to evolve beyond the (second-stage) sensitive and caring wimp ideal, all heart and no spine. Heart and spine must be united in a single man, and then gone beyond in the fullest expression of love and consciousness possible, which requires a deep relaxation into the infinite openness of this present moment. And this takes a new kind of (third-stage) guts. This is the way of the superior man.”
In 2001 Deida compiled a series of personal essays into a controversial book called
Waiting to Love: Rude Essays on Life After Spirituality (2001). This book, currently out of print, stretches the reader away from main-stream and new-age beliefs into a more non-dual approach to life, love, and third-stage intimacy. “Our life is an offering. Can you feel the urge to offer more? Unoffered love is our suffering. Our ungiven gifts clench as stress. Relaxing as now frees the gift our love wants to be. You and I are love’s means. This moment is our offering. We will die fully given, or we will die ungiven, still waiting. Now is our chance.” “If you are waiting for anything or anyone in order to feel more full, free, relaxed, happy, or loving, then you are wasting this moment of your life.”
Deida focuses on women’s third-stage practices involving whole-bodied exercises of compassion and devotion in
Dear Lover (2002, 2005): “Whether you are angry or hurt...beneath and through all emotions...your love yearns. This indestructible love is the same love, or openness, that yearns at the heart of all beings. Even when you are tense or upset, you can practice surrendering your body and heart to be breathed open by this love that yearns in everybody’s heart.”
In
Finding God Through Sex (2002, 2005), (with a foreword by one of Deida’s colleagues, Ken Wilber...Deida is a founding member of Wilber’s Integral Institute ), Deida writes on non-sectarian practices for dissolving first-stage fear and second-stage self-boundaries while sustaining third-stage self-integrity-in-communion during sex: “The cultivation of utter freedom...which is to live as the flow of love...can be practiced during sex. To practice love [during sex] is to be and express your deepest heart, whatever your religious persuasion or chosen spiritual method.”
Deida’s approach to spirituality, considered to be increasingly unorthodox, is perhaps most fully elaborated in
Blue Truth (2002, 2005). Referring to
Blue Truth, Lama Surya Das categorizes Deida’s emerging orientation as having “...no pigeonhole. He himself is carving out his own territory, like a pioneer, an explorer... [Deida] is in the dynamic living oral tradition of maverick spiritual teachers who, like free-jazz musicians, can riff directly on Reality, outside of established forms.”
Deida’s experimental exploration “outside of established forms” continues in his semi-autobiographical novel,
Wild Nights: Conversations with Mykonos about Passionate Love, Extraordinary Sex, and How to Open to God (2005). This story recounts a pivotal period in Deida’s life with friends, sexual intimacy, and God awareness through his time with an unconventional spiritual teacher, Mykonos. This controversial novel was a primary source for a magazine article appearing in 2009, which criticized Deida’s philosophy and use of language by comparing his work to that of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino: “Like Tarantino, who raises pointless conversation to the level of poetry, [Deida] likes to have fun with his audience while always staying one step ahead of them.and Deida’s got the same basic postmodern formula that took Tarantino to Cannes...a posh kind of skepticism, and the incorrigible coolness of not giving a damn.”
One of the many significant expositions that Deida has brought voice to is the applied distinction between therapeutic modalities, yogic practices, and spiritual realization. In the video program
Function, Flow & Glow (produced by the Integral Institute), Deida speaks to the confusion of the post-modern Western confluence of therapy, yoga and spiritual ideologies. He delineates the differences by giving clear description to each. “Therapy cures, heals dysfunction into functionit makes yourself better.” “Yoga increases your capacity to allow energy or light to flow through you.” “In spiritual practice, you realize you are the light regardless of your capacity to flow or your wounds. You are the glow of God.”
Deida presents his introductory program for sexual yoga in the book
The Enlightened Sex Manual: Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover (2004) and in the audio program
Enlightened Sex: Finding Freedom & Fullness Through Sexual Union. Although Deida does not refer to his work as a form of traditional “tantra,” he offers a collection of what some have called neotantra practices of love and expanded awareness in
Instant Enlightenment (2007). “Deida’s ultimate spiritual context for practicing ‘living as love’ in every moment [is] similar to that of classical tantra, the recognition that all manifest existence is essentially a nondual ‘play,’ a divine show of energies, polarities, and sensory objects that move through our day-to-day, moment-to-moment experience but in no way fundamentally define who we are. Instead, we’re defined by our own deep subjectivity, by the space in which all of our experience arises, by the posture of the witnessing consciousness that sees everything coming and going but remains free of and unmoved by any of it.”