The Nature of Reality Book Club Reading List
Cycle I – Rupture: What Is Real, Really?
1. Werner Heisenberg — Physics and Philosophy
2. William James — The Varieties of Religious Experience
3. Henri Bergson — Creative Evolution
4. Jorge Luis Borges — Ficciones
5. Simone Weil — Gravity and Grace
6. Carlo Rovelli — Reality Is Not What It Seems
7. Hermann Hesse — Demian
8. Owen Barfield — Saving the Appearances
9. Thích Nhất Hạnh — The Miracle of Mindfulness
10. Cormac McCarthy — The Road
Cycle II – Pattern: Meaning Without Certainty
11. Joseph Campbell — Myths to Live By
12. Suzanne Langer — Philosophy in a New Key
13. David Bohm — Wholeness and the Implicate Order
14. Clarice Lispector — The Passion According to G.H.
15. James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
16. Ursula K. Le Guin — The Lathe of Heaven
17. Erich Neumann — The Origins and History of Consciousness
18. Fritjof Capra — The Tao of Physics
19. W.G. Sebald — Austerlitz
20. Jacob Needleman — The Heart of Philosophy
Cycle III – Dissolution: Who Is Observing Whom?
21. Nāgārjuna — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
22. Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
23. Gary Zukav — The Dancing Universe
24. Kazuo Ishiguro — The Unconsoled
25. David Loy — Nonduality
26. Karen Barad — Meeting the Universe Halfway
27. Martin Heidegger — The Question Concerning Technology
28. Stanislaw Lem — Solaris
29. Thomas Metzinger — The Ego Tunnel
30. Peter Kingsley — Reality
Cycle IV – Embedding: Reality as Relation
31. Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass
32. Vine Deloria Jr. — God Is Red
33. David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous
34. Dōgen — Shōbōgenzō (selected essays)
35. Huang Po — The Zen Teaching of Huang Po
36. Marilynne Robinson — Gilead
37. Bernardo Kastrup — Why Materialism Is Baloney
38. Isabelle Stengers — Cosmopolitics I
39. Teilhard de Chardin — The Phenomenon of Man
40. Ailton Krenak — Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
Cycle V – Return: Living With Uncertainty
41. Iain McGilchrist — The Master and His Emissary
42. Ananda Coomaraswamy — Hinduism and Buddhism
43. Roberto Calasso — The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
44. Jean-Luc Marion — Being Given
45. Hermann Broch — The Death of Virgil
46. Emil Cioran — The Trouble with Being Born
47. Peter Kingsley — In the Dark Places of Wisdom
48. Georges Bataille — Inner Experience
49. Bernardo Kastrup — Why Materialism Is Baloney (Revisited)
50. Joseph Campbell — The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
Cycle I – Rupture: What Is Real, Really?
The breakdown of common sense reality—objectivity, selfhood, narrative, and certainty all begin to fracture.
1. Werner Heisenberg — Physics and Philosophy
A foundational reflection on quantum mechanics showing that reality cannot be separated from observation. Heisenberg dismantles classical objectivity and introduces a world where knowledge, measurement, and reality are inseparable.
2. William James — The Varieties of Religious Experience
A psychological study of religious and mystical experience that treats inner experience as real data. James reframes “truth” as something lived and transformative rather than abstractly proven.
3. Henri Bergson — Creative Evolution
An argument against mechanistic views of life, proposing élan vital—a creative, unfolding force at the heart of reality. Time, change, and consciousness are shown to be irreducible to static laws.
4. Jorge Luis Borges — Ficciones
A collection of short stories that collapse distinctions between reality, imagination, authorship, and infinity. Borges uses fiction as a philosophical weapon against linear truth and stable identity.
5. Simone Weil — Gravity and Grace
Fragments of spiritual and philosophical insight exploring attention, suffering, and self-emptying. Weil presents reality as something grasped only through humility and the undoing of egoic will.
6. Carlo Rovelli — Reality Is Not What It Seems
A lucid tour of modern physics that dismantles intuitive notions of time, space, and matter. Rovelli shows that reality is relational, probabilistic, and far stranger than appearances suggest.
7. Hermann Hesse — Demian
A coming-of-age novel centered on inner division, moral ambiguity, and awakening beyond social norms. Reality fractures as the protagonist confronts the shadow and the multiplicity within the self.
8. Owen Barfield — Saving the Appearances
A philosophical history of consciousness arguing that what we perceive as “objective reality” is shaped by evolving modes of participation. Barfield suggests modern alienation is a loss of participatory knowing.
9. Thích Nhất Hạnh — The Miracle of Mindfulness
A practical introduction to mindfulness as a way of directly encountering reality. Presence reveals how perception, suffering, and meaning arise moment by moment.
10. Cormac McCarthy — The Road
A stark post-apocalyptic novel stripping reality down to survival, love, and moral choice. With civilization gone, meaning is no longer inherited—it must be carried, or it disappears.
Cycle II – Pattern: Meaning Without Certainty
After rupture, reality reappears not as fixed truth, but as pattern, symbol, myth, and coherence without guarantees. Meaning returns—but it is provisional, participatory, and interpretive.
11. Joseph Campbell — Myths to Live By
Campbell argues that myths are not false explanations of the world, but symbolic maps for living within it. Meaning arises through story, not literal belief, and must evolve with consciousness.
12. Suzanne Langer — Philosophy in a New Key
An exploration of how humans create meaning through symbols, art, and feeling rather than logic alone. Langer reframes philosophy as the study of symbolic form and expressive coherence.
13. David Bohm — Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Bohm proposes a universe where separateness is an illusion and all things unfold from a deeper, implicate order. Reality is patterned movement rather than isolated objects.
14. Clarice Lispector — The Passion According to G.H.
A radical interior novel in which a woman’s encounter with a cockroach dissolves her identity. Meaning collapses and reforms as raw, pre-linguistic awareness replaces narrative selfhood.
15. James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
Hillman challenges ego-centered psychology, arguing that psyche is imaginal, mythic, and plural. Healing comes not from integration into normalcy, but from honoring inner figures and patterns.
16. Ursula K. Le Guin — The Lathe of Heaven
A science-fiction novel where dreams alter reality itself. The book explores the danger of imposing “better worlds” and suggests that harmony emerges from restraint, balance, and non-interference.
17. Erich Neumann — The Origins and History of Consciousness
A depth-psychological account of the evolution of human consciousness through mythic stages. Individual development mirrors collective archetypal patterns embedded in culture and psyche.
18. Fritjof Capra — The Tao of Physics
A comparative work drawing parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism. Capra presents scientific reality as dynamic, relational, and process-oriented rather than mechanistic.
19. W. G. Sebald — Austerlitz
A novel of memory, trauma, and historical absence, told through wandering reflection. Meaning emerges indirectly, through fragments, photographs, and silence rather than linear narrative.
20. Jacob Needleman — The Heart of Philosophy
A call to recover philosophy as a lived spiritual practice. Needleman argues that philosophy’s true task is awakening attention and questioning assumptions, not producing answers.
Cycle III – Dissolution: Who Is Observing Whom?
The collapse of the observing self. Reality is no longer “out there,” and the subject who once perceived it begins to dissolve.
21. Nāgārjuna — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
A rigorous philosophical dismantling of inherent existence. Nāgārjuna shows that all phenomena—including self, causation, and time—are empty of independent being and arise only through relation.
22. Maurice Merleau-Ponty — Phenomenology of Perception
An exploration of perception as embodied and pre-conceptual. Consciousness is not a detached observer but arises through the lived body’s engagement with the world.
23. Gary Zukav — The Dancing Universe
A popular but sincere synthesis of modern physics and consciousness. Zukav emphasizes that observation participates in reality, dissolving the sharp boundary between knower and known.
24. Kazuo Ishiguro — The Unconsoled
A disorienting novel where time, memory, and identity collapse. The reader inhabits a dreamlike consciousness in which the stable self can no longer orient reality.
25. David Loy — Nonduality
A clear exposition of nondual philosophy across Buddhism, Advaita, and Taoism. Loy examines how the sense of a separate self generates suffering and how its dissolution alters experience.
26. Karen Barad — Meeting the Universe Halfway
A dense philosophical work arguing that reality emerges through intra-action rather than interaction. Objects, observers, and meanings co-arise through relational practices.
27. Martin Heidegger — The Question Concerning Technology
An inquiry into how modern technology reshapes our understanding of being itself. Heidegger warns that technological thinking reduces reality to resource, obscuring deeper modes of revealing.
28. Stanisław Lem — Solaris
A science-fiction novel confronting humanity with an incomprehensible intelligence. The book exposes the limits of human cognition and the projection of the self onto the unknown.
29. Thomas Metzinger — The Ego Tunnel
A neuroscientific argument that the self is a constructed model with no central controller. Consciousness is a simulation that feels real precisely because we cannot see its construction.
30. Peter Kingsley — Reality
A radical re-reading of ancient philosophy as a living initiatory tradition. Kingsley argues that true knowledge dissolves the personal self and confronts the practitioner with a deeper, impersonal reality.
Cycle IV – Embedding: Reality as Relation
After the self dissolves, reality is rediscovered as relational, ecological, ethical, and participatory. Meaning arises through belonging rather than control.
31. Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass
A blend of Indigenous knowledge, ecology, and personal narrative. Kimmerer presents reality as a web of reciprocal relationships between humans and the living world.
32. Vine Deloria Jr. — God Is Red
A critique of Western religious abstraction and a defense of place-based spirituality. Deloria argues that reality is known through land, story, and lived relationship rather than doctrine.
33. David Abram — The Spell of the Sensuous
An exploration of perception as a dialogue between human bodies and the more-than-human world. Abram shows how language, senses, and landscape co-create lived reality.
34. Dōgen — Shōbōgenzō (selected essays)
A profound Zen meditation on time, practice, and awakening. Dōgen collapses distinctions between practice and enlightenment, self and world, being and becoming.
35. Huang Po — The Zen Teaching of Huang Po
A direct, uncompromising Zen text emphasizing sudden awakening and the emptiness of conceptual thought. Reality is encountered only when grasping and dualism fall away.
36. Marilynne Robinson — Gilead
A quiet novel reflecting on grace, memory, and human finitude through the voice of an aging minister. Reality is revealed in ordinary moments, love, and moral attention.
37. Bernardo Kastrup — Why Materialism Is Baloney
A critique of physicalist metaphysics arguing that consciousness is fundamental. Kastrup reframes reality as mental, relational, and intrinsically meaningful.
38. Isabelle Stengers — Cosmopolitics I
A philosophical proposal for engaging science, politics, and ecology without reductionism. Stengers argues for a pluralistic reality that resists universal domination.
39. Teilhard de Chardin — The Phenomenon of Man
An evolutionary vision of consciousness moving toward increasing complexity and unity. Reality is presented as a participatory cosmic process culminating in collective awareness.
40. Ailton Krenak — Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
A contemporary Indigenous critique of modernity’s separation from nature. Krenak calls for re-embedding humanity within Earth’s living systems to avoid civilizational collapse.
Cycle V – Return: Living With Uncertainty
After rupture, pattern, dissolution, and embedding, the inquiry returns to human life—without closure, certainty, or final metaphysics. Wisdom here is the capacity to live with paradox.
41. Iain McGilchrist — The Master and His Emissary
An exploration of how the brain’s hemispheres shape culture, perception, and reality. McGilchrist argues that modernity is dominated by reductive thinking at the expense of relational, contextual knowing.
42. Ananda Coomaraswamy — Hinduism and Buddhism
A comparative exposition of Eastern metaphysical traditions. Coomaraswamy presents reality as symbolic, perennial, and accessible through disciplined contemplation rather than belief.
43. Roberto Calasso — The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
A mythic retelling of Greek mythology that restores its philosophical depth. Calasso presents myth as a living mode of knowledge rather than archaic fiction.
44. Jean-Luc Marion — Being Given
A phenomenology of givenness in which reality exceeds conceptual control. Marion argues that the most real phenomena are those that overwhelm intention and calculation.
45. Hermann Broch — The Death of Virgil
A lyrical novel depicting the final hours of Virgil’s life. Reality dissolves into language, memory, and mortality as art confronts its limits.
46. Emil Cioran — The Trouble with Being Born
A collection of aphorisms expressing radical skepticism toward existence itself. Cioran refuses consolation, offering lucidity as the only honest response to being.
47. Peter Kingsley — In the Dark Places of Wisdom
An exploration of ancient initiation, myth, and descent as paths to knowledge. Kingsley argues that wisdom requires confronting darkness rather than transcending it.
48. Georges Bataille — Inner Experience
A philosophical and mystical inquiry into excess, transgression, and the limits of reason. Bataille seeks truth through experiences that rupture order and utility.
49. Bernardo Kastrup — Why Materialism Is Baloney (Revisited)
A return to idealism after the full journey. Read here, Kastrup’s arguments feel less polemical and more existential—consciousness as the condition for any world at all.
50. Joseph Campbell — The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
A final reflection on myth in the modern world. Campbell closes the cycle by showing how ancient symbols still orient life in an age without shared cosmology.