The key ideas

The Untethered Soul

Michael A. Singer, 2007

Inside everyone's head runs a conversation that never stops, not for a minute. Michael Singer, an economist who withdrew into solitude for yoga and meditation, asks a simple question: who is listening to that conversation? From the answer grows a path to an open heart, to freedom from old thorns, and to a happiness that does not depend on circumstances.

Who it is for

For anyone tired of the conversation that runs non-stop inside their own head. And for anyone whose old hurts sting again and again, even though years have passed since.

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind, you are the one who hears it.

An awkward pause on the sofa

Winter, the early seventies, Florida. A young graduate student in economics is sitting on a sofa next to a relative. The conversation dries up and an awkward pause hangs in the air. And then he notices something strange: inside his head someone is scrambling to find something to say, anything to end the silence. That voice had been talking in him all his life, but for the first time the student heard it as if from the outside.

The student was Michael Singer. He would describe that evening in detail later, in a book about his own life. At the time he left his academic career, withdrew into solitude, took up yoga and meditation, and in 1975 founded the Temple of the Universe centre in Alachua, Florida. This book came out in 2007, and in it a whole system grew out of that evening on the sofa.

Singer puts the central idea right at the start. Inside you a voice talks without end, but you hear that voice, which means you and it are not the same thing. From this distinction he draws everything else. Why the heart keeps opening and closing. Where the hurts come from that fire at a single word. How to live without hiding from your own life.

Singer speaks the language of yoga and meditation, but without rituals and without asking you to believe in anything. He keeps inviting you to test what he says against your own experience. In twenty-five minutes you will walk his path: from the voice in your head to the one who listens to it, from a clenched heart to an open one, and on to the question he considers the most important.

The voice that never goes quiet

Singer begins with an observation that is hard to argue with. Inside your head a conversation is going on, and it never stops. The voice comments on the weather, argues with a colleague who is not in the room, works out what to say if someone asks. “I hope it doesn't rain.” “Why did I say that?” “Fine, I'll deal with it later.”

And if just now something inside said, “What voice? I don't have any voice,” then, as Singer points out, that is the one.

Next he suggests a simple experiment. Say “hello” to yourself a few times in a row and notice: you hear the word. The voice speaks, and you hear it. So there are two participants inside, even though all our lives we have taken them for one.

The mistake, according to Singer, is that we take the voice at its word. It frightens us, and we get frightened. It takes offence, and we take offence. It has been doing this for so long that its chatter seems like our own voice and the only truth about the world.

Singer does not suggest arguing with the voice or forcing it to be quiet. That would just be one more thought, one more argument. It is enough to step back now and then and notice: there it goes again. If you want to come back to yourself in the middle of the rush, you can repeat “hello” in your mind again and calmly listen to how it sounds.

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About the author

Michael A. Singer is an American writer and meditation teacher. In 1975 he founded a yoga and meditation centre in Florida, the Temple of the Universe. He also created the company Medical Manager, which made software for doctors in private practice.

All books by this author: Michael A. Singer

Terms from the book

  • Sanskrit
  • Tao Te Ching
  • Tao
  • Temple of the Universe: A yoga and meditation centre in Alachua, Florida, which Michael Singer founded in 1975. People of any faith come there to meditate together.
  • Alachua: A small town in northern Florida, near Gainesville. It is home to the Temple of the Universe.
  • Indweller: An image from the book, not a scientific term: the one who lives inside and looks out. This is Singer's name for the consciousness that notices thoughts, feelings and the world.
  • Seat of consciousness: Singer's phrase: the inner point from which you watch your thoughts and feelings without merging with them.
  • Samskara: A Sanskrit word: the trace that an experience leaves inside. For Singer it is an impression that did not pass all the way through and got stuck, and then fires again later.
  • Psyche: A person's inner world: thoughts, feelings, habitual reactions. For Singer it is a structure a person builds in order to feel safe.
  • Angel of Death: A character in a parable Singer tells in the chapter on death. It is an image, not a religious teaching of the book.
  • Lao Tzu: An ancient Chinese sage to whom tradition attributes the Tao Te Ching. Historians disagree about whether he really lived.
  • Unconditional happiness: Singer's phrase: a decision to be happy that does not depend on how circumstances turn out.
  • Awakening: In Eastern spiritual traditions, a state in which a person sees themselves and the world without the usual distortions. Singer speaks of it as the goal of the spiritual path.
  • Nonresistance: For Singer, the habit of not arguing inwardly with what is already happening, and of letting events pass through you without getting stuck.

All terms

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