Through the protagonist’s journey from mental crisis to spiritual growth, Dan Millman explores the nature and reasons for human distress. The graphic description of Dan’s nightmares vividly reflects his inner thoughts and emotions, signaling his mental health crisis amid his athletic accomplishments. The protagonist’s mentor immediately detects Dan’s condition and comments on the reasons behind his feelings and reactions. In Socrates’s philosophical teachings that underlie the narrative, the mind is the source of human suffering and distress, an idea that has roots in Buddhist philosophy.

Even though the mind is at the core of mental exploration, relating to emotions, thoughts, and feelings, Socrates’s philosophy undermines its significance in spirituality. For Socrates, the human mind impedes people from living because it leads them on a constant “search of distraction and escape from the predicament of change, the dilemma of life and death” (42). Therefore, people resist life’s realities and experience frustration and distress in their perpetual pursuit of happiness. Socrates explains that Dan’s mind is “the fundamental source of his suffering” (50); his goals, fears, and regrets are illusions created by his mind that keep him in turmoil. Dan is unable to enjoy life as each of his habits and actions are simply distractions that impede him from confronting his “underlying sense of fear” (50), characterized by the tendency to live either in the past (regret) or the future (anxiety) rather than being in the present moment and accepting what happens.