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.