The Untethered Soul

The Untethered Soul is, at its core, a book about learning to achieve a higher state of consciousness. Singer references Eastern traditions, which understand consciousness as a person’s identity when it is stripped of the ego and other forms of clinging, as a source of insight into how to accomplish this transformation. Because this is a self-help book, Singer wants his audience to come away from reading the book convinced that they too can solve their problems by learning to identify as pure consciousness, a concept that is intellectually straightforward but difficult to put into practice.

To make the concept of consciousness easier to understand, Singer refers to it by several names throughout the book, including awareness, the Self, Atman, Spirit, and the Soul. These terms all refer to an essential spiritual core and may resonate with people from different cultures or who have knowledge of a variety of spiritual traditions. According to Singer, personhood, or having a “Self,” is about the conscious spark that exists outside of any external objects and point of view of the “watcher” from which we all experience the universe. It is about having “a certain quality […] awareness, consciousness, an intuitive sense of existence” (27). Eastern spiritual traditions, for example, the ancient Hindu scriptures the Upanishads, discuss the possibility of identifying as this pure consciousness, the achievement of which is the culmination of a spiritual journey and a form of enlightenment.

In the West, the discussion of spirituality and the Self usually takes other forms. The Judeo-Christian tradition does not focus on conscious experience as do Hindu or Buddhist traditions. However, effacing the self remains an important concept: In Judeo-Christian religions, selflessness and sacrifice are two of the most important ideas as is giving oneself over to God. Though the language is different, Western religions advocate for shedding worldly concerns as a way to experience God and let go of the ego-centric self. Singer uses the term Spirit to refer to the essence of Self in this context: We know what it means to experience God “because those who have gone beyond have come back and said that the Spirit you’re experiencing is the doorway to God. […] They felt tremendous love, Spirit, and light waking up inside of them” (175). In the Judeo-Christian tradition, experiencing God’s love is the same as identifying as pure consciousness because it requires a relinquishing of the Self. In presenting language that appeals to people from a Judeo-Christian background, Singer intends to show the benefits of identifying as pure consciousness in a context that people familiar with that tradition will understand.

Singer explains that distraction is the greatest obstacle to attaining pure consciousness: When we are “distracted by disturbance—your seat of consciousness falls down to where the disturbance is happening, and the whole world looks different” (76). Usually, the world is filtered through the chaos of the mind: Endless internal conversations, the ebb and flow of emotional energy, and external stimuli from day-to-day life keep us engaged with the surface aspects of life. We tend to identify with the chaos of the mind and build up psyches that consist of an accumulation of memories and experiences that we cling to because they keep us within our comfort zone, where we do not have to confront the most difficult aspects of life, such as fear of death. By reminding readers of the negative and painful qualities of the distracted, worldly mind, Singer shows how beneficial it is to identify with the eternal Self because it offers an internal state of peace, openness, and harmony.

Singer understands that making consciousness itself the focus of our attention does not come intuitively to most people and usually requires daily meditation training until it is possible to simply notice thoughts, emotions, and other stimulus pass by without engaging or identifying with them. Eventually, it may become possible to turn attention on itself, which Singer promises will be beneficial to the individual: The long-term practice pays off because we reach a kind of spiritual enlightenment in which the problems that used to consume us cease to matter and instead, we feel oneness with the universe.