For those drawn to the edge of language and the dissolution of frameworks, the following texts may resonate:
Miranda Warren – This Terrible Love (2022) A poetic and raw articulation of non-dual intimacy, expressing the collapse of separation as a seamless love story of life itself.
Tony Parsons – The Open Secret (1995) A foundational work in Radical Non-duality, expressing the end of seeking and the simplicity of what already is.
Jim Newman – The You That You Think You Are (talks) Talks and dialogues pointing to the complete absence of self and the impossibility of communication about truth.
Andreas Müller – No-thing (talks and writings) Direct and uncompromising messages about the illusory nature of separation and the absence of path or realization.
Robert Saltzman – The Ten Thousand Things (2017) An unflinching dismantling of spiritual identity and seeking, pointing toward radical immediacy and not-knowing.
Robert Saltzman – Depending on no-thing (2019) In this deeply personal and radically honest continuation of The Ten Thousand Things, Robert Saltzman invites the reader into the immediacy of lived experience unfiltered by belief or ideology. With piercing clarity and a deep reverence for the unknowable, Saltzman explores what it means to live without clinging to conceptual footholds — without "thingness" — and without a self to depend upon. Rather than presenting answers, the book functions as an invitation to abide in openness, not-knowing, and what he calls “the vivid present.”
Shiv Sengupta – Writings and talks (available on YouTube and personal website) Combines devotion, beauty, and non-duality into a message of total intimacy without division or goal.
Harding, Douglas - On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious A concise and revolutionary introduction to “headless” seeing — the direct recognition that we are not what we appear to be from the outside. Harding points not to mystical experiences but to the radical immediacy of what is always already the case.
Tollifson, Joan - Nothing to Grasp Written in clear and compassionate prose, Tollifson invites readers to drop the endless search for a final answer. Her work dissolves the divide between spiritual insight and everyday life.
Nāgārjuna – The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (trans. Jay Garfield, 1995) Core text of Madhyamaka Buddhism revealing the emptiness of all phenomena and the collapse of inherent existence.
David Loy – Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (1988) Comparative study of Eastern and Western nondual thought, including Zen, Vedānta, and Heidegger.
Stephen Mitchell (trans.) – Tao Te Ching by Laozi Poetic and paradoxical expression of the Tao — that which appears as all but cannot be spoken or grasped.
Thomas Cleary (trans.) – The Book of Serenity (Zen koans) A classic collection of Zen koans designed to break conceptual mind and open direct seeing beyond duality.
The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous, 14th century) Christian mystical text that calls for surrender into the darkness of divine unknowing beyond concept and image.
Martin Luther – Heidelberg Disputation (1518) Includes reflections on Deus Absconditus, the hiddenness of God, as utterly beyond human grasp or merit.
Meister Eckhart – Sermons and writings Christian mystic who spoke of divine darkness, detachment, and the absence of self in union with the unnameable.
Darkness in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Deleuze:
Pierre Klossowski – Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (1997) A deep exploration of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return and intensity, emphasizing the dissolution of stable identity and the abyss of sense.
Sarah Kofman – Nietzsche and Metaphor (1983) Shows how Nietzsche’s thinking is grounded in metaphor and ambiguity — his “truth” is always shadowed and elusive.
Lawrence Hatab – Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence (2005) Engages Nietzsche’s idea of time and being as a form of abyssal repetition — a dark undercurrent beneath existence.
William McNeill – The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory (1999) Explores Heidegger’s concept of truth as unconcealment, highlighting the persistent concealment that grounds all knowing.
Reiner Schürmann – Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (1987) Interprets Heidegger’s mature thought as an abandonment of metaphysical foundations, embracing an unknowable openness.
Julian Young – Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art (2001) Examines how Heidegger sees art as revealing through concealment — evoking the poetic, the obscure, and the ungraspable.
Claire Colebrook – Understanding Deleuze (2002) A lucid introduction with a strong section on the “dark precursor” — Deleuze’s name for the unseen force behind transformation.
Elizabeth Grosz – Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (2008) Reads Deleuze’s chaos as generative darkness — a fertile ground beneath thought, language, and subjectivity.
Arne De Boever – Plastic Sovereignties: Agamben and the Politics of Aesthetics (2016) Offers insight into Deleuze’s concept of sovereign chaos — an aesthetics of the unrepresentable and dark.
François Laruelle – The Non-Philosophy Project Proposes a radically non-representational mode of thought — a “black universe” beyond philosophical grasp or division.
