The Romance of Reality

How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity

By: Bobby Azarian

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Why do we exist? For centuries, this question was the sole province of religion and philosophy. But now science is ready to take a seat at the table.

According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and the emergence of life is an accident devoid of meaning.

But this bleak interpretation of nature is currently being challenged by cutting-edge findings at the intersection of physics, biology, neuroscience, and information theory—generally referred to as “complexity science”. Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight.

In The Romance of Reality, cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us. In engaging, accessible prose, Azarian outlines the fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics at the heart of the old assumptions about the universe’s evolution, and shows us the evidence that suggests that the universe is a “self-organizing” system, one that is moving toward increasing complexity and awareness.

Cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan once said of humanity that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. The Romance of Reality shows that this poetic statement in fact rests on a scientific foundation and gives us a new way to know the cosmos, along with a riveting vision of life that imbues existence with meaning—nothing supernatural required.

©2022 BenBella Books (P)2022 BenBella Books

Great for the layperson but I did find a few concepts overwrought if you are familiar with Gaia Theory already

This is a great book that almost never strays into incomprehensiblity, outside of perhaps a few sections in the middle. However, for a new reader curious to challe ge reductionist norms in the Western world but leery of driving off the cliff into the so called "Woo woo" world, you can be safe in picking this up.
As someone who lives in a hippie-dippie place (Humboldt CA), I don't mind woo but also am a natural skeptic and science-minded individual. I have consumed significantly more "woo" in my day but felt able to sift through what was conjecture and what seems like reliable-enough truth. This book sticks about 98% to "reliable enough" and should be suitable for a general audience.
Knowing a bit of quantum theory and it's pop-implications on our modern world would be helpful but not required. if you are familiar with why Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead, then you have what you need.

In general, this will equip you with the kind of perspective that you can explain to a 'normie' (ie NOT a science consumer) at a party or something if they'll give you long enough attention. Meaning that this doesn't require any huge leaps of faith and, in fact, address why leaps of faith are, on the whole, a fairly bad idea for the survival of a species near the end.

This book won't make you believe in god, because it proves that God doesn't need an ounce of belief to function. But if you believe in the belief in your species that was crafted by a concept, idea, entity if you desire it to be so... then maybe your life will start to take on a non-selfish, more collective structure and your worldview will naturally catch up.

Psychedelic experience optional but it does help. Overall, very recommended with a warning that it's not going to blow your spiritual mind apart if you're already fluent in it's language, but it might give you some cool black hole and multiverse questions and ideas to ponder either way.

this is what schools should be teaching

I particularly like the way the book ropes in all of the disciplines all of the state of the art theories breaks them down into a nuts and bolts how does this fit into the puzzle or not leaving you with a very clear picture of the most modern state in which we find ourselves and science

A Speculative Science/Spirituality

Azarian does a good job summarizing and explaining the current thinking of many contemporary scientists who embrace a new scientific spirituality based on a model of a computational universe. However, many of these theories are inherently not falsifiable and therefore are speculative and destined to remain so.

Excellent book on the understanding of the human experience and function of the universe.

Cant recommend enough. If possible, I would recommend listening to Visionary by Graham Hancock, and The immortality Key by Brian Muraresku before embarking into this. These books give a solid understanding of the roots of human consciousness leading to where we are today without too much esoteric speech.

Reality Redefined with New Epistemic Findings!

Excellent book! For a sequel or prequel, but definitely a must, read/listen to The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution by futurist and evolutionary cyberneticist Alex M. Vikoulov where you'll find many confirmations as well as additional insights and fresh perspectives.

The great awakening revealed

Finally an intelligent person who was able to articulate all of the discoveries of silence and combine them into a single theory of everything This book we'll change your life and Mr. Arzarian is a prophet of the universe!

Simply mind-blowing.

I don't know for another work like this. It's very dense and draws on a lot of works.

2/3rds great

The first two parts were great. the third part got to be very subjective. however I agree with the basic premise of the book, just slightly different supports.

Overwhelming in a beautiful way

The variety of concepts, often conflicting; that’s probably my favorite part. An intense amount of research obviously went into writing this book. As someone who is in awe of the beauty of nature and sees scientific study as a means of drawing more near to it, I absolutely loved this book!

A Monumental Work! (If you are fortunate to grasp it).

After reading close to 300 books over the past decade on various domains in Science, I would say this book was a watershed moment for me in terms of perspective. It needs a familiarity with concepts in evolution, neuroscience, Bayesian model and quantum theory else you only see the tip of the iceberg. I found nuggets of wisdom in almost every other page and for someone like me that reads a lot of books on these topics, that’s a big statement.

What a debut. I hope Bobby Azarian writes more books.