Now, Or Not Now: That Is The Question

I’m borrowing a line from the bard, but taking the question in a very different direction. Indeed, my question relates more to Byron’s anguish than Hamlet’s angst:

But 't is not thus—and 't is not here—

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now

Before coming to terms with his imminent death in Greece, Byron faced what everyone who has worked to ignite a revolution in consciousness had to face.

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some Volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze—

A funeral pile.

For Shakespeare, the question in Hamlet’s soliloquy refers to living or dying, whether “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” or “the dread of something after death.”

“To be or not to be” struck a chord in people when “conscience does make cowards of us all.” But few people are guided by conscience anymore; the lure of the self’s trivial pursuits is too strong.

Of course, Byron’s anguish over the fire in his heart going out with him seems even more remote and anachronistic than Hamlet’s question of whether to live or die. But even as a young man, it spoke to me with subtle foreboding. And his resolution never offered much solace:

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,

Glory and Greece, around me see!

The Spartan, borne upon his shield,

Was not more free.

We have a lot fewer choices than we think we have, and the important choices we face aren’t a matter of choosing at all, but whether we’re clear or unclear in the moment we’re presented with them.

It isn’t just the fine line from some American movie -- “I’ve spent my whole life only recognizing my lucky breaks after they were gone.” It’s that seeing is the whole thing, and choosing is always confusing.

It’s long been clear to my mind that consciousness as we know it, consciousness based on memory, identification and image (in other words, thought and its contents) is the problem, and that leaving the stream of the known is the remedy.

That happens without seeking it when one meditates without method or goal. It’s a phenomenon, as real as any physical phenomena. Passive watchfulness in nature gathers non-directed attention, which intensifies “the fire that on my bosom preys.”

In the moment however, the fire of attention burns away everything, without smoke or ash. Then attention isn’t mine, or anyone else’s, though it can only ignite within the individual. It is the fire of life and death inseparable.

What does all this have to do with the question, now or not now?

“The perennial teachings” don’t just pertain to the individual, much less the self, as our solipsistic age of meditation teachers and retreat businesses sell them. They pertain to the individual inextricable from humanity as a whole. They pertain to psychological revolution.

When an individual attains enough insight to understand that consciousness is the problem and transmutation is the remedy, he or she naturally wants to see the flame ignite in others and in human consciousness per se.

That’s why Byron’s line from 200 years ago echoes with such poignancy – “But 't is not thus—and 't is not here—nor now.” And that’s why, as one contemplates one’s own death, “Such thoughts should shake my soul.”

They reflect the realization that the fire within the human being is not spreading, but the smoke and ashes of the old consciousness are choking more and more people to death inwardly. 

In the region where I live, the outward devastation of the “Park Fire,” which has consumed nearly half a million acres and is still less than 50% contained, has an irrefutably inward source and effect. Not just because some cretin deliberately started it, but because man is decimating the earth, and to this point there isn’t the radical change essential to halt it.

So can the inward fire that incinerates the detritus of the old consciousness ignite now in enough people to overtake the outward conflagration that’s destroying the earth and humanity? There’s no evidence of it.

Perhaps the solace is in the “parent lake” of insight that Byron referred to in his last poem, though it is the sum of both ancient Greece and ancient India. And in the faith that the human heart will catch fire at some point, and change the disastrous course of man.

Even so, there is tremendous urgency. For there are a finite number of chances to change course, and we won’t know until we’ve made the turn, or blown by the last crossroads, whether this was the last one.

Martin LeFevre
lefevremartin77@gmail

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