The Environment Within the Walls
Reflections on Environmental Determinism, Spirituality, and the Human Condition
Author’s Note
As my wife and I approach the thirteenth anniversary of our arrival in Cambridge after a two-day drive from the campus of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa to endeavour to reconstitute the teaching of the Transcendental Meditation® technique within the region, I have found myself reflecting not merely upon the years themselves, but upon the environments through which those years unfolded.
Over time, I have increasingly come to question the degree to which human behaviour is shaped not solely by ideology, belief, or aspiration, but by the environments—be they material, institutional, historical, psychological, or social—in which people operate.
These reflections are not offered as denunciation, nor as rejection of contemplative practice or spirituality. On the contrary. They emerge precisely because I continue to believe deeply in the possibility of human growth, expanded consciousness, and ethical development.
Yet belief, observation, and experience do not always arrive at the same conclusions simultaneously.
And perhaps maturity consists, in part, of learning how to hold all three at once.
—Baruti KMT-Sisouvong, PhD
One afternoon during my post-meditative contemplations, I began ruminating on the term Environmental Determinism.
Today, the term is regarded with considerable caution within academic circles, and for understandable reasons. Historically, the theory was often used to justify imperialism, racial hierarchy, and civilisational arrogance by suggesting that geography and climate predetermined the development—or limitations—of entire peoples.
And yet, despite its abuses, the theory persists because it contains a difficult truth that continues to haunt human enquiry: environments matter.
They shape behaviour, institutions, expectations, survival strategies, and what individuals and communities perceive as necessary in order to endure.
The harshness of winter alters the psychology of preparation. Scarcity influences competition. Isolation changes social structure. Geography influences trade, migration, warfare, and cultural exchange. No serious observer of history can deny these realities entirely.
What interests me now, however, is not solely the external environment of geography and climate, but the internal environments human beings create around themselves—particularly within communities devoted to spirituality, higher consciousness, and ethical aspiration.
Can environments shape behaviour even there?
More importantly: can spiritual environments unconsciously reproduce the very patterns and social behaviours they seek to transcend?
These questions have remained with me for years.
Long before my wife and I relocated to Cambridge in May of 2013, we lived and studied in Fairfield, Iowa while preparing to enter the Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Course (TTC). My wife’s course commenced in July of 2012, while mine began the following month. Together, the process would carry us away from each other and our rented basement flat for several months.
Before our departure, and presumably as a way for her to generate revenue from the soon-to-be-unoccupied space, the owner of the home where we rented proposed the idea of allowing others to occupy the space during our absence. In presenting the suggestion, she remarked that any prospective occupants would “only be meditators” and therefore would be trustworthy.
At the time, something about the statement unsettled me.
Not because I believed meditators to be inherently untrustworthy, but because I had already observed enough human behaviour to understand that no practice automatically dissolves contradiction from the human condition. Meditation may reduce stress, expand awareness, and cultivate moments of compassion and clarity; but it does not instantly erase ambition, self-interest, insecurity, ego, fear, or opportunism.
The category itself seemed insufficient.
“Meditator,” in that moment, appeared to function not merely as a description of practice, but as a symbolic assignment of moral character.
I did not fully trust the assumption then. Years later, I understand more clearly why.
Upon completion of her Teacher Training Course, my wife observed staining and water damage near the base of our bookshelves. We later learned that flooding had occurred in the adjacent laundry and storage area within our flat while we had been away. Whether the flooding resulted from a mechanical issue or occupancy during our absence was never fully clarified.
At the time, we moved forward and life continued.
Months later, however, and ahead of our departure for Cambridge, another incident emerged that would alter our relationship to the space more permanently.
During a torrential overnight downpour that Spring, the pump responsible for clearing water from the stairwell leading to our lower-level flat failed. As rainwater accumulated beyond the pump’s capacity, the water eventually began cascading beneath the doorway and into our living space while we slept.
I awoke to the sound and sensation of water entering the flat.
Our sleeping area rested low to the floor. Water spread steadily across the room, damaging property, including several solid Cherry wood Mission style bookshelves that had accompanied us through initial phases of our marriage in 2010.
What remained with me most strongly, however, was not the flooding itself.
Floods occur.
Pumps fail.
Storms overwhelm systems.
What lingered was what followed.
When the insurance assessor arrived to evaluate the damage, the owner of the property refused to allow me to be present during the inspection of our unit and involving our belongings. We never received compensation for the damaged furniture, though the circumstances surrounding the insurance process remained opaque enough to leave lingering questions regarding how the losses had been represented.
Eventually, she agreed to release us from the lease, thereby allowing our relocation to Cambridge to proceed.
On the surface, these may appear as relatively ordinary disputes involving rental property, insurance, and conflicting interpretations of events.
Yet over time, I began to realise that what unsettled me was not merely the incidents themselves, but what they revealed regarding the environments human beings create around identity, morality, and group belonging. Particularly within spiritual communities.
There exists within many consciousness-based communities an implicit assumption that proximity to spiritual practice corresponds directly with ethical refinement. The meditator, the yogi, the healer, the teacher, the monk, the activist, the scholar—all may gradually become associated not simply with a role or practice, but with presumed moral elevation.
And perhaps, in some instances, there is truth within that association.
Many contemplative practices genuinely do help human beings become calmer, kinder, more reflective, and less reactive. I have witnessed remarkable transformations through the teaching of the Transcendental Meditation technique over the course of more than a decade of service. And I continue to believe deeply in the value of the practice and the profound possibilities contained within consciousness-based development.
But belief in the transformative potential of consciousness is not the same as belief in automatic ethical transcendence.
Those are not identical things.
What I have increasingly observed—particularly over the last two and a half years amid institutional contraction resulting from upstream decisions—is that human beings often carry pre-existing social and psychological structures directly into spiritual environments rather than leaving them behind.
Among my observations are the following: a scarcity mindset still influences behaviour, institutional preservation still dictates decisions, organisational hierarchy still seeks continuity, image management regularly emerges, power continues to protect itself at the expense of the socially structured less powerful, and communities organised around elevated ideals may become especially vulnerable to subtle forms of pseudo-mutuality: the appearance of harmony and shared ethical identity masking unresolved tensions, asymmetries, or contradictions beneath the surface.
This does not invalidate spirituality, nor does it invalidate meditation. Rather, it suggests something far more complicated and perhaps more honest:
human beings do not cease being human merely because they pursue transcendence.
Environmental Determinism once attempted to explain entire civilisations through geography and climate alone. In so doing, and from my observations, it failed to account adequately for consciousness, creativity, adaptation, and human agency.
Yet contemporary spiritual communities sometimes drift toward the opposite error:
assuming that consciousness alone sufficiently transcends environment.
My own observations increasingly suggest that both positions are incomplete.
Human beings exist within layers of influence—material conditions impact thought, institutions suggest behaviour, constructs provide identity, history impacts perception, economic pressures may sway ethics, and consciousness itself operates not in isolation from these forces, but through them.
As a result, I am coming to suspect that genuine spiritual maturity begins not when we imagine ourselves beyond the human condition, but instead when we become honest enough to observe how deeply entangled we remain within it.
As I reflect upon thirteen years in Cambridge—years filled with service, sacrifice, teaching, growth, joy, disappointment, community building, institutional observation, and continued enquiry—I find myself less interested in preserving idealised narratives and more interested in pursuing clearer forms of truth.
Not cynical or nihilistic truth, but a sober-minded truth. The kind capable of holding aspiration and contradiction simultaneously.
And yet, if I am honest, I must also acknowledge another possibility emerging slowly through continued reflection.
For all the instability, contraction, disappointment, and institutional friction of the last several years, those same pressures may also have initiated a different form of expansion—one less dependent upon inherited structures and more aligned with a broader field of service.
Had the flooding not accelerated our departure from Iowa, my wife and I may never have arrived in Cambridge when we did. Had we not secured our flat in June of 2013 after arriving with little more than aspiration, books, and determination, many of the relationships, students, writings, doctoral research, associated frameworks, and initiatives that now shape our lives may never have emerged.
More recently, even amid the contraction of the last two and a half years, I find myself recognising that periods of institutional narrowing sometimes force individuals toward deeper forms of adaptation, creativity, independence, and clarity regarding purpose.
Perhaps environments do not merely constrain human beings; they also redirect them.
In so doing, it may be surmised that disruption occasionally functions not solely as collapse, but as initiation into environments previously unimaginable.
From this perspective, even difficulty may carry concealed forms of instruction.
Not all storms arrive solely to destroy. Some alter the road sufficiently enough to reveal a different horizon entirely.
Meditation remains valuable. Consciousness matters. Inner development matters.
But perhaps ethics requires something more enduring still. I believe such encompasses radical accountability, humility, transparency, and the willingness to examine the environments we create both around ourselves and around one another.
Because the environment within the walls may shape human behaviour every bit as meaningfully as the environment beyond them.
And if such proves accurate, it suggests we humans do indeed, as I strongly posit, have more agency—both individually and collectively—than generally accepted.
Perhaps it is time for us to recognise the Human-Derived World for what it is: human-derived, human-maintained, and therefore subject to change through clearer vision, deeper accountability, and more conscious action.
Here, I believe, is where the real journey of being and becoming a more well-rounded, consciousness-based human begins.
Will you join me?
Suggested Practice
Over the coming week, take a quiet moment to reflect upon the environments through which your own life unfolds.
Consider not only the physical environments you inhabit, but also the institutional, emotional, social, and psychological ones.
Ask yourself:
What behaviours do my environments encourage?
Which aspects of myself emerge more readily within certain spaces and relationships?
Where do comfort, scarcity, hierarchy, or image shape my decisions more than I realise?
In what ways do I unconsciously contribute to the environments surrounding others?
What would a more ethically coherent environment look and feel like within my home, work, community, or spiritual life?
As you reflect, resist the temptation to move immediately toward judgment—either of yourself or others.
Instead, observe carefully.
For awareness itself is often the first alteration of environment.
—
About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a scholar of consciousness, researcher of human development, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work explores the relationship between Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems, and how deeper awareness can inform both personal growth and institutional transformation.
He is the Founder and Chief Meditation Officer of Transcendental Brain, an initiative examining the intersection of consciousness research, cognitive science, and high-performance decision-making. He is also President of Serat Group Inc. and Founder and Director of Radical Scholar Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to consciousness-based research and public scholarship.
Alongside his wife and teaching partner Mina, he co-directs the Transcendental Meditation program for Cambridge and the Greater Boston area. He is also the host of the On Transcendence Podcast and Founder of International Meditation Hour, a quarterly global gathering dedicated to the unifying power of silence.
His writings—spanning frameworks such as The Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and The Seven Layers of Manifestation—explore the evolving relationship between consciousness, leadership, and society.
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.
To learn more about him, visit: https://barutikmtsisouvong.com/.