Why do we do this? Michael asks us to imagine the person who is talking inside us as a real person. Now, which one of them is YOU? We conveniently believe that the ‘good things’ that our mind talks about is US while the ‘bad things’ are NOT US. He asks you simple but profound questions: Inside your mind, there is a person who talks and there is a person who listens. He says that the reader has wisdom inside him/her that is waiting to be tapped. Michael begins the book by saying that he is not going to consult any experts to answer the question, “Who am I?” (he does consult them, later in the book though). ‘The Untethered Soul’ is about honoring the experience of the individual and realizing that only when we honor this experience can we truly understand what the mystics have been teaching since ages. We try to explain this experience through words but ultimately, that experience can never be completely understood.
We can of course read about people who have answers but we can only gain knowledge. For me, the inspirational thing of Buddha’s story is that we don’t need fancy degrees to understand who we are. The rest is history.and also science! The course takes us into the findings of neuroscience, psychology and science and we see that the discoveries that modern science has made are similar to Buddhist teachings. He sat under a tree and vowed to not get up until he understood and transcended the human mind.
He left them because he felt that there was something wrong in starving yourself for attaining liberation. The only ‘training’ he had was from a group of ascetics who taught him some extreme practices. A man, who had no scientific equipment, no degrees, no technology had some amazing insights into the human mind.
After finishing a course called, ‘Buddhism and Modern Psychology’ on Coursera, I was in awe.
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