BONUS – Imagine: A Song, a Memory, and the Future of Human Consciousness
How a Song, a Moment, and a Memory Revealed the Architecture of Unity
There are songs that surface in moments of quiet and, for me, at times when observing the seemingly decaying order of civil society—moments that compel the question, Has society ever been all that civil? From the mental vinyl shelves of my mind, one track rises again and again: John Lennon’s Imagine. Recently, as I surveyed the socio-political landscape and the familiar cascade of human foibles during a meditation, the song began echoing—pleasant, concerning, and hopeful all at once. Its return brought with it not just melody, but memory: an up-close encounter that gave the song, and its import, indelible meaning.
On a Saturday night twenty years ago, in a dimly lit corner of the Red Light Café in Atlanta, I met the Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel. I first learned of his musical genius through a friend of mine, Bill Simpson—the beloved on-air personality known to Philadelphians as “Sanborn” from the Carter and Sanborn in the Morning show on Power 99. After one of my visits to the City of Brotherly Love, Bill encouraged me to explore Tommy’s catalogue. I did—and was captivated.
So when I discovered that Tommy was performing in Atlanta, attendance was non-negotiable. He did not disappoint. His two-set performance was nothing short of astonishing: a single guitar sounding like an entire ensemble. At the time, I had recently purchased a Taylor T5, my first guitar, after consulting my father—an incredibly proficient player of both acoustic and electric guitars—who urged, “Don’t buy any junk.” The Taylor was the outcome, and Tommy’s performance that night inspired me all the more.
Between sets, as I purchased a few CDs, Tommy and I fell into a quiet, unhurried conversation—two strangers who somehow felt familiar. As the audience drifted back to their seats, Tommy paused, looked at me, and asked, “Is there something you’d like to hear?”
I offered two possibilities: Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” He smiled, returned to the stage, and began the second set. After a few songs, he played “Mona Lisa,” and I smiled. At the close of the night, he looked toward me and said, “This one is for the young man right there,” nodding in my direction. A wave of turning heads followed—and then he played Imagine.
He played it with such tenderness that many of us wept. Tears at the beauty of the moment. Tears at the possibility of imagining a better world. Tears at the simple dignity of being acknowledged in a room full of strangers. It remains one of the most treasured moments of my life—and, fortunately, one captured in a photograph.
The next day, I visited his website forum to share the experience. Several audience members replied, noting that they had also shed tears. One woman shared that she and her husband, seated behind me, were the ones who touched my shoulder as the moment washed over us all—a shared human coherence, a collective slicing of proverbial onions, if you will. I later realised they are the couple standing behind Tommy and me in the photograph.
Imagine has lingered with me ever since. Its melody returned many times, but it was during a recent Saturday morning meditation that it resurfaced with startling clarity—not as memory, but as message. A message that aligns, now more than ever, with the Seven Layers of Manifestation and my ongoing reflections on the state of our shared world.
The Song as an Invitation
When Lennon wrote Imagine in 1971, he was not attempting to dismantle culture; he was attempting to liberate consciousness. This intention makes perfect sense when placed in its proper context: just three years earlier, Lennon—alongside his fellow Beatles—spent February through April of 1968 practising Transcendental Meditation® in Rishikesh, India, where they had regular audiences with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Immersed in the teachings of Pure Consciousness, stillness, and the natural laws governing human evolution, Lennon absorbed insights that would later re-emerge in his most iconic work. His lyrical dissolving of heaven, hell, borders, possessions, and religious divisions was therefore not an argument against meaning. It was an invitation to remember the ground beneath meaning—an invitation many have long resisted.
Imagine there’s no heaven…
Above us, only sky.
Through music, Lennon gestured toward the unified field that modern physics describes, toward Pure Consciousness as articulated across spiritual traditions, and toward the deepest layer of the Seven Layers Framework. He was doing through melody what philosophers and mystics attempt through treatises: revealing humanity’s reflection without inherited distortions.
Tragically—though admittedly unsurprisingly—his message has yet to be heeded. Perhaps now, amid our present zeitgeist, more of us are ready to listen. And yet listening is only the beginning, for Lennon’s appeal invites a deeper inquiry—one that has guided much of my recent scholarship and teaching. That being: If people were to recognize the equality and thus dignity of all humans, what next?
Constructs and the Human Condition
This sentiment—the question What next?—was born of a pivotal conversation with a friend and mentor, and ultimately became the central inquiry of my essay What Next? Consciousness as the Continuation of Equality. It remains the pivot around which my research, teaching, and writing currently orbit.
Lennon’s lyrics align almost uncannily with the Seven Layers of Manifestation—particularly the first and the fourth through seventh layers: Pure Consciousness (Non-Local); Human Consciousness (Local); the Human-Derived World; Constructs; and Outcomes respectively.
Local Consciousness—spanning Human Consciousness, the Human-Derived World, Constructs, and Outcomes—contains the full spectrum of human-made divisions: religions competing for legitimacy, nations competing for dominance, identities competing for survival. These are the scaffolds of separation.
Non-Local Consciousness, by contrast, reveals the truth behind the scaffolding:
unity, abundance, irreducible interconnection.
Lennon wasn’t rejecting humanity; he was rejecting the constructs that shrink humanity.
In my earlier essays, The Violence of Comfort and Against the Natural Order, I explored how human-made systems have drifted so far from Universal and Natural Law that we now mistake fragmentation for order. Lennon sensed this same disorder in his time—and he sang towards its resolution.
The Dreamer and the Advanced Mind
One line has stayed with me across decades:
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
This is not naïveté; it is metaphysics.
It is the seventh layer—Outcomes (Non-Local Influence)—expressed poetically. Dreamers perceive coherence where others perceive only chaos. They sense what the world might become once knowledge of and action around an understanding of Pure Consciousness is restored as the organising principle of human life.
The dreamer is not escaping the world.
The dreamer is remembering it.
Why the Song Returned Now
The United States stands in a moment of perilous dislocation—politically, socially, spiritually. History teaches that old structures are loudest when closest to fracturing. And whenever humanity arrives at such thresholds, artists, mystics, and thinkers begin hearing the same signals.
That calm Saturday morning, Imagine resurfaced not as coincidence, but as reminder:
Unity is not an aspiration; it is the structural reality of consciousness.
The Seven Layers, the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress, and the arc of my current work all aim toward this truth—toward the possibility that humanity may yet evolve beyond the illusions of difference into the clarity of Being.
Tommy Emmanuel played Imagine for me two decades ago. I did not fully hear it then. In meditation that Saturday morning, I did. And today, I do—with a clarity the moment itself had been waiting to reveal.
Such is the nature of consciousness:
It discloses meaning only when we are prepared to receive it.
Are you ready?
Suggested Practice
Guided Meditation: Imagine as a Pathway to the Field of Unity
Duration: 8–10 minutes
Purpose: To explore the vibratory essence of Lennon’s imagery through the Seven Layers of Manifestation.
1. Settle
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes gently.
Take a slow breath in… and release.
Let your awareness soften.
2. Above Us Only Sky
Imagine the space above you.
No ceiling. No roof. No barrier.
Just sky—open, expansive, eternal.
Let this sky represent the field of Pure Consciousness.
3. No Divisions
With each breath, allow one human-made construct to dissolve.
Not erased—simply no longer organising your perception:
borders…
possessions…
labels…
fear…
scarcity…
lack…
limitation…
the “us” and the “them”…
Watch each dissolve like mist in warm light.
4. A World Living in Peace
Now imagine humanity—not as separate bodies, but as points of light.
Each light unique, each luminous.
Slowly, the lights begin to synchronise.
Not in uniformity, but in coherence.
Feel the shift from separation to unity.
5. The Dreamer’s State
Repeat silently:
I imagine a world aligned with Pure Consciousness.
I imagine a world rooted in dignity.
I imagine a world living as one.
Let the resonance expand outward from your heart.
6. Return
Take a gentle breath.
Bring awareness back to the body.
Back to the room.
Open your eyes when ready.
Carry the coherence with you.
—
About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a consciousness scholar, executive coach, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work—spanning The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explores how Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social-systems transformation intersect in the evolution of both the individual and society.
He is the Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship, and President of Serat Group Inc., the parent company of Transcendental Brain, a consulting and educational platform bringing consciousness science into leadership and institutional development.
Alongside his wife, Mina, he co-directs the Cambridge and Metropolitan Boston TM Program and serves as Host and Founder of International Meditation Hour (IMH), a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
He writes from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul.