A Crisis of Layers: Supreme Court Decisions and the Spiritual Consequences of Localized Thinking
A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. -Albert Einstein
A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels. -Albert Einstein
On Sunday, 17 September 2023, I defended my doctoral dissertation — research born of years immersed in the mystical traditions of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, Consciousness and Human Potential Studies, and the inward technique of Transcendental Meditation. Not long after, during a particularly deep meditation, a new framework surfaced: the Seven Layers of Manifestation. It came not as abstraction, but as a living insight — a roadmap showing how consciousness moves from the unmanifest to the manifest, from Pure Being to lived reality. Subsequently, and as Nature would have it, I delivered a talk on said framework to an engaged audience the following year — it resonated.
Today, as I sit with the recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court, that same framework echoes with increased clarity and urgency.
A society that does not understand how reality unfolds — from intention to action, from inner to outer, from universal to local — is bound to repeat cycles of harm. The Court’s recent rulings on birthright citizenship, LGBTQ+ educational opt-outs, Medicaid access, and the limiting of nationwide injunctions are not merely legal acts. They are manifestations — symptoms of a collective consciousness operating from its lower, more constricted layers.
And that is the danger.
We are living in a moment where the decisions shaping our shared future are increasingly emerging from a localized state of mind: reactive, tribal, rigidly categorical. These are decisions made in the absence of what I and others call non-local awareness — an awareness that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life, the primacy of Universal and Natural Law, and the spiritual dignity of every being.
The Seven Layers: A Brief Orientation
The Seven Layers of Manifestation is a contemplative and practical framework that illustrates how Consciousness becomes form. At its core are seven progressive fields through which awareness expresses:
1. Outcomes (e.g. Local Identity)
2. Constructs
3. Derived World
4. Human Consciousness (i.e. Individual Mind)
5. Phenomenal World
6. Universal and Natural Laws
7. Pure Consciousness (i.e. The Non-Local Field)
We manifest reality — from the design of a home to the design of a nation — through these layers. When we become stuck in the lower layers, particularly the localized identity or rigid constructs of group affiliation, we cut ourselves off from the deeper wisdom available through higher fields.
It is from this lens that I view the recent Supreme Court decisions.
Decisions Rooted in Disconnection
Take the ruling limiting nationwide injunctions. The Court has narrowed the power of federal judges to block executive actions on behalf of the whole country. While this may seem procedural, it carries sweeping implications. In effect, it restrains the legal system’s ability to challenge harmful policies with universal consequences — such as revoking birthright citizenship — on behalf of a broader human community.
This is not just a legal narrowing. It is a spiritual constriction. It reflects a retreat from the layer of universal law back into the fragmented realm of localized control — jurisdictional silos and isolated harms.
Likewise, the ruling allowing parents to opt out of LGBTQ+ education on religious grounds speaks not to a true balancing of rights, but to a deeper spiritual confusion. It reinforces the idea that children must be shielded from the full spectrum of human expression in order to preserve cultural or spiritual purity. Yet from the higher layers of consciousness, diversity is not danger — it is divine.
What is absent from these decisions is a cosmic ethic — an ethic rooted in Natural Law, not cultural or sectarian power.
The Misuse of Spiritual Language
Ironically, these rulings are often justified using spiritual language — religious freedom, moral tradition, the sanctity of life. But when spirituality is divorced from its unifying core, it becomes a weapon. True spirituality does not divide. It integrates. It recognizes the Self in the other. It honors life in all its forms.
To invoke religion while ruling against the full dignity of women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, or the economically vulnerable is to operate from the shell of spirit without its soul.
The Role of Meditation and Inner Expansion
One of the most radical acts we can engage in today is to slow down and expand inwardly. Meditation is not escapism. It is the foundational technology of mind for perceiving the deeper architecture of life — the patterns that precede politics, the laws that govern human flourishing beyond courtrooms and legislatures.
Through regular practice of Transcendental Meditation, I have observed students, leaders, and even children move from reactive states of being into calm clarity. Their sense of self widens. Their decisions become less impulsive, more coherent. They begin to live from the higher layers.
What would it mean for a society to do the same?
Returning to Non-Local Intelligence
To live from the higher layers of manifestation is not to abandon the world, but to anchor action in deeper truth. It is to legislate not from fear or faction, but from a recognition that we are already interconnected, already nested in Universal Law.
The Seven Layers framework offers more than theory. It is a mirror for our societal consciousness; or rather outcomes. Are we manifesting from separation, or from unity? From compulsion, or from alignment?
What we are witnessing now in our nation is the consequence of misaligned manifestation — the building of systems from fear, ideology, and short-sighted dominance, rather than wisdom, integration, and long-term coherence.
But this moment is also an invitation.
A Call to the Wise
To those who feel disheartened or displaced by recent decisions, I offer this: your grief is not weakness. It is evidence of your alignment with truth. Your discomfort is not confusion. It is a signal from the higher layers of your being — urging you to stay awake, stay connected, and stay in service.
We need more than protests and opinions. We need philosophies that can hold complexity, and practices that cultivate clarity.
And we need leaders — parents, educators, artists, healers, and yes, even judges — who are willing to see beyond the local and act from the cosmic.
That is the Great Work now.
And that is where this framework — this humble offering from one imperfect soul to another — seeks to serve.
To learn more about Transcendental Meditation, visit: https://www.tm.org.
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Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, along with his wife, Mina, serves as Director of the Transcendental Meditation Program in Cambridge and the larger area of Metropolitan Boston. They are parents to four beautiful children. To learn more about him, visit his website: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.