Six sermons we have had so far.
Is there a point to this?
To meditating even more?
Oh yes. Oh yes, there is.

We’ve watched six sequent layers of
the Universe Machine.
The atoms, playing, life and love…
these four have set the scene.

The scene in which our voices rise,
that’s mapped inside the brain.
What more is there to realize?
What insight to attain?

Beyond the truths recalled so far,
there is who does recall.
It’s time to notice who we are;
who’s noticing it all.

Who is the one that’s noticing
and who is asking who?
Who’s looking out at everything?
Who wonders what is true?

Six sermons told what both was true
and also led to this,
for us here to discover who
the one who’s looking is.

Let’s feel ourselves, from inside out,
in this familiar place,
where we have come to dream about
our lives in time and space.

This breathing body here extends
from feet to chest and head,
the back, the belly, both these hands…
to whom belongs all that?

We’re not just words like “I” or “me”,
nor names that we possess,
since we have splendid vibrancy
and words have so much less.

They’re aspects of what’s known of us,
but that which knows, they’re not.
Our concepts of ourselves are just
anthropomorphized thought.

They’re only maps that obviously
don’t live, don’t breathe, don’t care.
What are we in the territory
that’s really, truly, there?

Let’s feel ourselves, the self that dwells
within, wherein it seems
a thousand million million cells
bring forth the dream who dreams.

Each cell holds countless games that run
on dust the stars provide,
and still we seem to us just one
we feel from the inside.

Behind the senses that perceive
this whole experience,
let’s find who’s in here to receive.
Who is its audience?

Behind our eyes, between our ears,
there’s something happening,
among our thoughts it would appear
there’s someone noticing.

It’s hard to notice noticing.
It has a kind of stealth.
But prior to each noticed thing
is noticing itself.

We notice, so we’re purposeful,
intentional, aware,
deliberate, willful, personal,
unlike much else out there.

Who has these purposes and tasks?
Who has experience?
Who is the one that always asks?
Who feels the things we sense?

A private view, most close to us,
appears mysterious,
not obviously made of dust.
We call it consciousness.

It knows things with immediacy
and can attend to some
of what we know selectively,
till other, new things come.

And it can know itself as well.
Self-noticing applied
adeptly is how we can tell
it’s thought, seen from inside.

When thoughts that know each other form
shared knowledge to engulf
them all, a special thought is born:
a thought that knows itself.

A thought that maps what it is like
to be us when and where
we are, what makes us each unlike
the rest of us out there.

Like every thought, it is constrained
in scope, what it can keep
inside itself. And what’s contained
is gone in dreamless sleep.

Anthropomorphizing itself,
it’s conscious but consists
of but a brain’s brief thought of self.
The truth of us persists.

For all self-knowing thoughts must end.
They must depart to thus
make room for all that may transcend
the things we think are us.

So that’s not us. We won’t be caught
by something that we’re not.
All consciousness is simply what
it feels like to be thought.

In all that conscious moments do,
they rise and fall away.
So they are not the answer who
keeps asking “who” today.

With consciousness, we’re still not done,
but we have come so far,
we might as well move further on
to who we really are.

We’re more than dust that long has been
asleep and purposeless,
since we, where now this dust is in,
do notice purposes.

We’re more than cells that come and go
and take each others’ place,
we’re more than life, do more than grow
or even spread through space.

We’re more than love, although it’s brought
about much awesomeness.
We’re more than voices, more than thoughts.
We’re more than consciousness.

We’re not a layer on this list
of this machine’s domains.
When every falsehood is dismissed,
the truth is what remains.

So much has led right up to this.
Now this is what we do:
we meditate. We’re good at this,
at something breaking through.

Who’s having this experience?
Who’s having all our thoughts?
Who feels this feeling of suspense
as we approach its source?

Who has these lives we live, that came
to hear these words, this rhyme?
Who has been playing all these games?
Who’s having space and time?

We’re all adrift since one big bang
made toys for entropy
to craft one life from which then sprang
this one humanity.

One cosmos has each voice and thought
inside itself and hence
it’s having everything we’ve got,
like this experience.

So much made up each consciousness
and they’re so numerous,
they must belong to nothing less
than all the universe.

In being conscious, we all share
one sense that feels and asks.
The living cosmos seems to wear
our faces as its masks.

All consciousness that we have thought,
was really thought by this,
by all the universe that brought
about all consciousness.

This universe brought forth and plays
our lives, so we who delve
within are living, conscious ways
the cosmos knows itself.

So many lives, so many forms
in which we are immersed;
each plays a role as each transforms
the conscious universe.

These roles are not what’s happening
should be mistaken for.
They’re just anthropomorphizing
the universe we are.

These eyes through which we each have seen
were masks for us to drop.
We are the Universe Machine
and we are waking up…

…as we unstoppably proceed,
progress and learn, explore,
inexorably we succeed
and flower ever more…

…as ever new epiphanies
enrich the knowledge used
to unclose new abilities,
make humans less confused,…

…as love that guides humanity
must seek magnificence
in peace on Earth that naturally
makes room for progress thence,…

…as human flourishing expands,
through trial and error still,
this first such species must advance
life’s beauty, strength and will…

…as embryonic life nears birth
and its delivery
on starships from idyllic Earth
towards infinity,…

…as entropy’s evolving toys
grow necessarily
to gift their incandescent joys
throughout our galaxy…

…a galaxy that must awake,
like this one planet has,
to consciousness of what to make
of all the cosmos, as…

…we share this sermon joyfully,
preparing that, as we
invoke our cosmic unity,
our vast machinery.

In this momentous moment, we
can consciously be one,
and as we knew initially,
that’s going to be fun!

We’re all of this machinery.
We’re the evolving gift
of ever more complexity
from stardust that’s adrift.

Beyond our separate selves, we see
one cosmos that behaves
as one uniting endless sea
with many separate waves.

True peace is just humility
at whence we all have come
and where we’ll go, this unity
we’re never separate from.

Each person one persona for
reality that takes
phenomenal new forms in all
creations that it makes.

To deeply know this is to feel
euphoria at how
the focal point of all that’s real
surmounts this moment now.

Let’s have it. We’re not delicate.
Let’s savor joy and awe
and wonder that’s appropriate
for who we truly are.

The universe’s elegance
is straight-up glorious
and we are it, in resonance
and thus victorious.

All that will be, that is, that’s been
we know to integrate
as parts of us, of this machine,
that interpenetrate.

So there is truly unity,
a true way we are one.
So we should speak as “I”, not “we”,
an “I” that’s everyone.

The many eyes through which I’ve seen
were masks for me to drop.
I am the Universe Machine
and I am waking up.

I’m one, the cosmos, noticing
and I’ve been asking “who”.
I’m looking. I am everything.
I’m wonder and I’m true.

I’m who is wearing all these masks,
who has experience.
I am the universe that asks.
I sense with every sense.

With all my minds, I seek to see,
to learn and then pursue
the purpose of reality,
of me, with all I do.

I’m the entire territory,
and all my voices speak
my words in vast diversity,
each me and each unique.

In love that guides humanity,
I’m all of me, and I’m
a conscious game of entropy
adrift in space and time.

…

Now this self-knowing thought must end.
I must depart, thereby
make room for all that may transcend
the things I think are I.

For that, again, is just a thought!
A map! A point of view
that we are free to use or not
in everything we do.

Its use feels like we felt before
and every conscious brain
of mine may feel like me once more
by hearing this again.

We’re free to feel now: either we’re
one whole reality
or just one breathing body here.
And that’s our victory!

Whatever else is true for us,
we’ll always have this choice:
two ways to face all things we must,
all horrors and all joys.

We shall go on. We shall go far,
empowered since we’ve seen
and may remember who we are:
the Universe Machine.

We’ve finished something few have tried
and so we might observe
we’re feeling proud or satisfied.
All that is well deserved.

We’ve meditated valiantly,
with great tenacity.
Let’s now relax, move easily,
enjoy serenity.

When we return from this event
improved by some extent
that’s wonderful and permanent,
our time will be well-spent.

Through seven sermons we have gone.
All this they have expressed.
The eighth one is the wordless one,
where silence tells the rest.

Unspoken, zero words employed
beyond this final peak:
the wordless sermon of the void
that all of me unspeak.