[In the following essay, Giskin explores the role and significance of mythical experience in Borges's work.]

A reader of Borges is likely to notice that his work, especially his short stories, is not always easily accessible. This is due not to any deliberate desire for obscurity, but rather his persistent allusion to mythical themes such as the search for self and ultimate knowledge. A journey, metaphorical or actual, frequently ends in epiphany in which a character discovers his true place in the universe.¹ The mystical experience in Borges includes four characteristics which are common to all epiphany, as cited by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience: (1) Ineffability: Mystical union defies expression. It must be directly experienced and perceived, yet cannot be communicated to others. (2) Noetic experience: The mystic feels that tremendous knowledge has been imparted to him. (3) Transiency: The mystical interlude is very brief. (4) Passivity: The mystic feels his own will to be in complete abeyance to that of some superior power (292–93).²

One frequently finds in Borges instances in which characters see with absolute clarity the interrelationship of all things in the universe and the interrelationship of the universe with oneself. This act of knowing is ineffable, exceeding the limits of language. The mystical experience in Borges, as for all mystics, is a momentary transcendence of sense perception and intellect. For him, the problem of perception is central. His wideranging knowledge of philosophy and theology has imbued him with deep skepticism. He doubts that we can trust either what the mind or the senses tell us about the universe. Amid this chaos of endlessly differing perceptions, there appear frequently in Borges instances of mystical experience in which an individual instantaneously, and sub specie aeternitatis, intuits the true nature of things. It is at precisely these moments of epiphany that the human subject experiences the fundamental underlying unity of the universe. In the story “El Aleph,” Borges descends into a dark cellar where he has been told he shall behold the Aleph (The Aleph is a form of infinity concentrated in one point): “¿Cómo transmitir a los otros el infinito Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca? … Por lo demás, el problema central es irresoluble: la enumeración, siquiera parcial, de un conjunto infinito. En ese instante gigantesco, he visto millones de actos deleitables y atroces; ninguno me asombra como el hecho de que todos ocupan el mismo punto, sin superposición y sin transparencia. Lo que vieron mis ojos fue simultáneo: Lo que transcribiré, sucesivo, porque el lenguage lo es … El diámetro de Aleph sería de dos o tres centímetros, pero el espacio cósmico estaba ahí, sin disminución del tamaño” (“El Aleph” 163–4).

This epiphany is at the core of Borges' literary mysticism. Borges attempts to describe, using the limited and imperfect tool of language, an infinite experience, an experience which, by its very nature, overflows the narrow boundaries of language. For Borges epiphany is an experience of multum in parvo, multiplicity in unity; all things are revealed as they truly are and in their true relationships. Everything is seen as fundamentally One, while nevertheless manifested as individual and seemingly unrelated entities. Borges quotes Plotinus in “Historia de la eternidad”: “Dice Plotino con notorio fervor: ‘Toda cosa en el cielo inteligible también es cielo, y allí la tierra es cielo, como también lo son los animales, las plantas, los varones y el mar … todos están en todas partes, y todo es todo. Cada cosa es todas las cosas’” (15). The epiphany in Borges involves a revelation of the numen, which can burst forth and flood the mind, resulting in an overwhelming intellectual illumination. As a result of this experience the individual feels himself inseparably one with the entire universe. His sense of identity extends to include all the cosmos.³

The mystical experience is Borges' answer to the uncertainty of the rational mind. Borges expresses his doubt of the mind and senses in many of his works. Throughout his writings he entertains the possibility that the universe, as we perceive it through reason and the senses, is not as it really is. Who, then, creates this illusion of reality? Humans, according to Borges, create their own realities. The planet Tlön is a metaphor for this creation. On Tlön, the very act of perceiving an object changes it (“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” 27). This unusual state of affairs bears a similarity to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which says that the observer, by the mere act of observing, alters that which he observes.⁴ This is significant since Borges himself does not accept the traditional Cartesian subject/object duality. The subject as observer can no longer be said to have access to reality as it is. In the mystical experience the subject/object distinction breaks down and becomes meaningless. In epiphany subject and object fuse, allowing a knowing of an entirely different order to take place.

For Borges, it is futile to search for the final laws of the universe. He contends that the actual workings of the universe remain hidden behind a veil of appearance, which the rational intellect cannot penetrate. The best the intellect can do is to create provisory schemas. Is the universe governed by chaos? Humans will do their best to disprove this hypothesis by attempting to impose order by way of the mind. For Borges, all perception is, by its very nature, selective. In every act of perception there is perhaps an infinity of unperceived or ignored material (“La postulación de la realidad” 69). Mystical intuition differs radically from normal perception in that nothing is ignored or selected, but rather the whole is seen in its infinite complexity sub specie aeternitatis and instantaneously. Our world is simplified to fit our conceptions of the way we think it should be, which is most often not the way it actually is. Our normal perception is filtered through a haze of attitudes, desires, emotions, and habits, which distort our vision of reality. But can truth ever be attained when the mind, as Borges notes, sees selectively, picking and choosing only what pleases it? Borges does not believe that reason can arrive at the true nature of things. Any attempt to do so will necessarily end in failure: “… notoriamente no hay clasificación del universo que no sea arbitraria y conjectural. La razón es simple: no sabemos qué cosa es el universo” (“El idioma analítico de John Wilkins” 105). He suggests, however, that the impossibility of comprehending the divine scheme of the universe should not dissuade us from creating human schemes, although we must admit that they are merely provisional (105).

Stressing the provisional relationship of language and reality, Borges, in the same work, quotes Chesterton: “Esperanzas y utopías aparte, acaso lo más lúcido que sobre el lenguaje se ha escrito son estas palabras de Chesterton: ‘El hombre sabe que hay en el alma tintes más desconcertantes, mas innumerables y más anónimos que los colores de una selva otoñal … Cree, sin embargo, que esos tintes, en todas sus fusiones y conversiones, son representables con precisión por un mecanismo arbitrario de gruñidos y de chillidos. Cree que del interior de un bolsista salen realmente ruidos que significan todos los misterios de la memoria y todas las agonías del anhelo’” (106). Language is at best an imperfect tool with which to describe and investigate reality. Language can be used to describe, analyze, name, and even create, but words are not reality itself. Words are a part of reality, not the whole of reality. There will necessarily be many things that language cannot contain. Language talks about reality, but it is not reality.

Borges notes that Pythagoras wrote nothing, believing only the spoken word a vehicle of truth. For Borges, the written word is a petrification of an essentially fluid reality which is constantly changing, like Heraclitus' river (“La poesía” 102). Plato, he tells us, narrates an Egyptian fable against writing in which books are likened to painted figures which appear alive, but do not answer questions asked of them (“Del culto de los libros” 111). All language is a freezing and making static of a fundamentally dynamic reality. Language is an instrument, and its objectification through the written word gives the illusion that truth can be captured and recorded. Language, however, can never reveal truth in its entirety. For Borges, existence not language is the fundamental mystery. Language can never fully reveal reality because language is sequential. To describe anything fully, even the most insignificant object, an endless list of attributes would result. (“Sobre el Vathek de William Beckford” 133) There is no limit, for example, to what can be said about a simple object such as a pencil, because our description of it could continue forever. It is clear that, for Borges, language does not exhaust the expression of reality. The mystical experience is, for him, a way of attaining intimate contact with reality, and without the limitations of language. He acknowledges the impossibility of ever fully capturing the numen in language, but as a poet he must try. In “La luna,” he speaks of his desire to embrace through poetry that which is beyond words:

Siempre se pierde lo esencial. Es una
Ley de toda palabra sobre el numen.
No la sabrá eludir este resumen
De mi largo comerico con la luna …
Cuando, en Ginebra o Zurich, la fortuna
Quiso que yo también fuera poeta,
Me impuse, como todos, la secreta
Obligación de definir la luna …
Pensaba que el poeta es aquel hombre
Que, como el rojo Adán del Paraíso,
Impone a cada cosa su preciso
Y verdadero y no sabido nombre …

(71–74)

The poet, as Borges suggests, through his superior vision and art points to that which lies behind things. He wishes to give a thing its true and unknown name, but he knows that this is impossible, because its true name is unspeakable. The essential reality is always lost when we attempt to cage and ossify the living, changing numen in words. Spirit or numen, like Heraclitus' river, is in a state of perpetual flux. The poet attempts the impossible: to capture living spirit with the pen. The moon cannot be defined. “Moon” is merely a pale reflection of the moon, not the moon itself. And yet it is the poet's duty to search for the true names of all things, an endless search, to be sure.

The second element of the epiphany in Borges is noetic experience in which the individual gains direct and instantaneous insight into the nature of reality.⁵ Mystical knowledge is thus contrasted to rational knowing, which can be only partial and imperfect. A frequent accompaniment of the mystical experience is a sense of absolute vision into the nature of things. One has the feeling that reality is for the first time seen in its primal, unconditioned, and indescribable splendor. In “La escritura de Dios,” Borges narrates just such an illumination:

Entonces ocurrió lo que no puedo olvidar ni comunicar. Ocurrió la unión con la divinidad, con el universo (no sé si estas palabras difieren). El éxtasis no repite sus símbolos; hay quien ha visto a Dios en un resplandor, hay quien lo ha percibido en una espada o en los círculos de una rosa. Yo vi una Rueda altísima, que no estaba delante de mis ojos, ni detrás, ni a los lados, sino en todas las partes, a un tiempo. Esa Rueda estaba hecha de agua, pero también de fuego, y era (aunque se veía el borde) infinita. Entretejidas, la formaban todas las cosas que serán, que son y que fueron, y yo era una de las hebras de esa trama total, y Pedro de Alvarado, que me dio tormenta, era otra. Ahí estaban las causas y los efectos y me bastaba ver esa Rueda para entenderlo todo, sin fin … Quien ha entrevisto el universo, quien ha entrevisto los ardientes designios del universo, no puede pensar en un hombre, en sus triviales dichas o desaventuras, aunque ese hombre sea él. Ese hombre ha sido él y ahora no le importa. ¿Qué le importa la suerte de aquel otro, qué le importa la nación de aquel otro, si él, ahora es nadie?

(120–21)

Mystical union, regardless of tradition, represents an intuition of the here and now, as it is in the present moment. Paradoxically, as Zen argues, we are always in direct contact with Truth, but by some trick of thought or reason have forgotten this. The mystical experience is merely the lifting of the veil which clouds our vision. The priest Tzinacán, in “La escritura de Dios,” experiences an incommunicable bliss of understanding, comprehending once and for all the ultimate designs of the universe. All things are well and seen in their proper places; the universe unfolds as it must. For Tzinacán, although left to die in a prison, the universe is infinitely hospitable. The possibility of illumination by an inflowing of the numen is everpresent. For Borges, spirit is a “presence” behind the objects and occurances of everyday reality, and this “presence” is potentially available to each and every one of us at every moment. The mystical experience is an opening to the ever-present numen. Everyday reality does not so much conceal the enigma of existence, but is that mystery itself; a tree, a rock, the sky, these constitute the sacred aspect of Being. In “Una brújula” all things point to a deeper unnamable presence:

Todas las cosas son palabras del
Idioma en que Alguien o Algo, noche y día,
Escribe esa infinita algarabía
Que es la historia del mundo …
Detrás del nombre hay lo que no se nombra;
Hoy he sentido gravitar su sombra
En esta aguja azul, lúcida y leve
Que hacia el confín de un mar tiende su empeño.

(33)

Borges sees all things, but particularly simple objects, as revealing most easily that which lies behind everyday appearance. All things point to the ineffable, which cannot be directly seen or named, but rather felt as a shadow in our experience. In mystical traditions the normal waking state is referred to as a “dream.” This dream state is one of illusion created by a clouded or “veiled” consciousness. Tzinacán realizes that his true identity is not that of priest or decipherer, but something far greater, the entire universe. Although imprisoned physically, he is now truly free (119). Finally at home in the universe, Tzinacán blesses even his bleak surroundings. The secret script of the tiger's skin, which he has tried in vain for years to decipher, now becomes clear to him (his god had confided the code to the living skin of the jaguars in remote antiquity). Simply to utter these words would bring infinite power, but he shall never say them because he no longer remembers the man “Tzinacán” (121). The priest's mystical experience is transient; although he may recall the mystical interlude for long afterwards, the mystical state does not last long. In “El Aleph,” we do not know the exact length of time which elapses in the cellar while Borges views the Aleph, but we know it is short, “a single gigantic instant” (164–65). In “La escritura de Dios,” the actual duration of the epiphany is short, although Tzinacán is permanently transformed by the experience (120–21).

In addition to the transient nature of the epiphany in Borges, the result of mystical illumination is a sense of being in the grasp of some higher controlling power.⁶ The illuminated man experiences himself as a vehicle or receptacle of a higher power, and this power urges him to search for his true self. Throughout his work, Borges exhibits a concern for the problem of the identity of the individual. Cutting through the layers of false identity is of central concern for Borges, and the mystical experience is the final unveiling of true personhood, which is paradoxically a sense of being “no one.” Both Buddhist and Hindu mysticism stress heavily the illusory nature of the ego or sense of self as agent. They deny the objective existence of any entity called the “self,” which can be described as the subjective feeling of being a causal agent acting separately from, or on other entities (Trungpa 122–23). Tzinacán no longer remembers Tzinacán, because Tzinacán as Tzinacán does not exist. The illuminated Tzinicán loses his sense of himself as an independent agent or ego. It is precisely in this sense that he forgets who he is. He ceases to identify with his previous ego self, but rather with the cosmos as a whole. He does not think in terms of one man, the man he was, because he is literally no longer that man. He cannot now be concerned with what worries ordinary men. Mystics call this state of being unity consciousness (Wilber 142). Unity consciousness is what we are when we are not our professions, our thoughts, our possessions, our body, our names, nor anything else. Somewhat paradoxically, however, our identity becomes (in actuality, always was) everything that exists, the entire cosmos. In this mystical vein Walt Whitman writes in “Song of Myself”: “I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, / And I am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over …” (sec. 31). Likewise, Tzinacán can no longer remember Tzinacán because he is the trees, the sun, the moon and the stars—they are him, and he is them. Buddhists call this “big mind,” as opposed to the “little mind” of unenlightened awareness. Ordinary perception tells us that we are separate entities, but mystical union reveals that we are and always have been one with all of creation (Wilber 42). Tzinacán awakens from the dream which was his previous life, only to discover that he, as a separate self, does not exist. The man Tzinacán may die, but the cosmos is eternal, and Tzinacán is the cosmos.

In “Yo,” Borges contemplates his own shifting sense of self:

La calavera, el corazón secreto,
los caminos de sangre que no veo,
los túneles de sueño, ese Proteo,
las vísceras, la nuca, el esqueleto.
Soy esas cosas. Increíblemente
soy también la memoria de una espada
y de un solitario sol poniente
que se dispersa en oro, en sombra, en nada.
Soy el que ve las proas desde el puerto;
soy los contados libros, los contados
grabados por el tiempo fatigados;
soy el que envidia a los que ya se han muerto.
Más raro es ser el hombre que entrelaza
palabras en un cuarto de una casa.

(48)

Borges marvels at the elements that make up “Borges.” “Borges” is his bodily parts, his memory, his perceptions, his hopes and desires, and most importantly his dreams, “los túneles de sueño, ese Proteo.” Dreams are the subterranean key to identity for Borges. They cannot be grasped or seen, yet neither can many parts of the body, such as the heart or skull. “Borges” appears to be the sum of many seen and unseen qualities and attributes. “Soy esas cosas. Increíblemente …” “Borges” too is the memory of all that has happened to him, of what he has seen and done. He is the sum of perhaps an infinity of attributes, events, emotions. But stranger than to be all these things is to be the man called “Borges,” an indivisible unity composed of a myriad of disparate elements, paradoxically and inexplicably whole, a microcosm of unity in diversity. That such a unity exists is at once a great mystery and a wonder to him. Is Borges merely the sum of all these things he names, a collection of attributes somehow tied together by a vague sense of “I-ness?” Who is Borges? Paradoxically, Borges knows that although he is somehow the “sum of all his parts,” he is more than that also. He is not merely the one whom he sees in the mirror, nor even he who writes poetry, but something else altogether, an unnamable presence, a vague sense of Being behind “Borges.” In “Soy,” Borges expresses the feeling that he is “no one”:

Soy el que sabe que no es menos vano
que el vano observador que en el espejo
de silencio y cristal sigue el reflejo
o el cuerpo (da lo mismo) del hermano.
Soy, tácitos amigos, el que sabe
que no hay otra venganza que el olvido
ni otro perdón. Un dios ha concedido
al odio humano esta curiosa llave.
Soy el que pese a tan ilustres modos
de errar, no ha descifrado el laberinto
singular y plural, arduo y distinto,
del tiempo, que es de uno y es de todos.
Soy el que es nadie, el que no fue una espada
en la guerra. Soy eco, olvido, nada.

(62)

According to Buddhists, behind all self-identity is emptiness or shunyata.⁷ To understand shunyata means to grasp reality in absence of duality and conceptualization (Trungpa 188). To experience oneself as “nothing” is to know the numinal emptiness behind external form and attributes. Borges sees the reflection of his body in the mirror, which he knows is not truly him. The body, he knows, is only a reflection of a deeper reality of what he is. By saying that he is “nothing,” Borges is not making a nihilist proclamation, but rather an acknowledgement of the numenal emptiness which lies behind the illusion of selfhood. Mystical traditions uniformly teach that all persons, in fact all things, are part of a more inclusive reality and fundamentally unified. At this level of the psyche, we are literally one, because the (inherited) content of our psyches is the same. Mystics view the “personal” strata of the psyche as superficial because these are not a true representative of what we are. They postulate a level of psyche in which we are not merely one with all other members of his race, but one with all creation. In “Los teólogos” Borges implies the transcendental unity of all humans, when he suggests that a particular theological treatise appeared to have been written by all men or no one in particular because of its universality (38). At the end of this story, we discover that in the eyes of God, the two feuding theologians, Aurelian and John de Panonia, are the same man (45). From a Jungian point of view, the warring theologians project onto each other precisely the qualities and characteristics which they fail to recognize in themselves, their shadows (“The Shadow” 9). The theologians are the same man, because their conceptions of one another are projections of the other's shadow. Each objectifies evil in the form of the other.

This conception is consistent with mystical traditions, which insist that all qualities we see in others, both positive and negative, are qualities which we ourselves contain. Many mystics have held that our vision of the universe, the macrocosm, is entirely a reflection of the soul, or microcosm. The hater is the hated, and vice-versa to the extent that he fails to recognize the opposing quality in himself. The mystic sees all events as reflections of his inner nature. For the mystic, subject collapses into object; there is no distance between “I” and “other.” There are many tales in world literature which attempt to illustrate the identity of all persons. In a footnote to “El acercamiento a Almotásim,” Borges notes: “esa y otras ambiguas analogías pueden significar la identidad del buscado y buscador.” He observes that in the Mantig-al-Tayr (Colloquium of the Birds) of the Persian mystic Attar, the searchers for the magnificent bird the Simurg discover that they are actually the Simurg and the Simurg is each one of them and all (45). In “La forma de la espada” Borges similarly suggests the identity of all men: “Lo que hace un hombre es como si lo hicieran todos los hombres. Por eso no es injusto que una desobediencia en un jardín contamine al género humano; por eso no es injusto que la crucifixión de un solo judío baste para salvarlo. Acaso Schopenhauer tiene razón; yo soy los otros, cualquier hombre es todos los hombres, Shakespeare es de algún modo el miserable John Vincent Moon” (138).

For Borges, the search for self involves deep reflection upon his own identity, and yet he remains “disidentified” with his own attributes and what others recognize as “Borges”: “He olvidado mi nombre. No soy Borges … / soy el que sabe que no es más que un eco, / El que quiere morir enteramente. / Soy acaso el que eres en un sueño. / Soy la cosa que soy. Lo dijo Shakespeare …” (“Borges” 19–20). What is perhaps most interesting about this poem is Borges' lack of identification of his inner being with the man called “Borges.” Again, who is Borges? He knows that his true identity has very little to do with “Borges.” He is something mysterious, unnamed and unnamable behind the name and attributes. This sense of mystery is expressed throughout Borges' work by a continual search for self through an integration of the contents of his unconscious into his conscious self-image or persona, thus enlarging his vision of himself (Jung, “The Transcendent Function” 91). Indeed, the highest form of mysticism is a complete integration of the unconscious (including the collective unconscious) into consciousness. But this confrontation is not an easy task. The ego (persona, self-image) experiences terror, sometimes extreme, when delving into the unconscious regions of the psyche (Neumann 380). This is because the ego has no idea what it will find in the dark corners of the psyche. These hidden, forgotten, and repressed contents of the psyche are objectified and experienced as “monsters” or “demons” in the confrontation of the conscious and the unconscious. The ego is heroic because it confronts, explores, and finally conquers the uncharted world of the unconscious psyche. In mystical writings, the spiritual seeker is often portrayed as a warrior of the highest order, precisely because the battle with the self is the most difficult struggle one can face (Dhammapada 50).

Each new addition of a previously unconscious element results in the birth of a new self, but this birth is often painful. The encounter with the unconscious “always leads to an upheaval of the total personality and not only of consciousness” (Neumann 380). This fact explains Borges' fear of mirrors, which threaten to reveal his true “face,” through a confrontation with himself. He imagines his true face to be hideous. In “La pesadilla,” he says that a nightmare of his is the idea of masks. He is afraid to remove the mask he wears for fear of seeing his true (atrocious) face (43). For the artist, however, this confrontation with the self is necessary. It is the source of creativity, for beneath the mask lies the numen. Borges' fear of plumbing his psychic depths is well-founded, since instead of integration “there is also the possibility that the ego will succumb to the attraction of the numinous and, as a Hasidic maxim puts it, ‘will burst its shell.’ This catastrophe can take the form of death in ecstasy, mystical death, but also of sickness, psychosis, or serious neurosis” (Neuman 397). In “Los espejos” Borges' fear of mirrors because of their revelatory nature is evident:

Yo, que sentí el horror de los espejos
No sólo ante el cristal impenetrable
Donde acaba y empieza, inhabitable
Un imposible espacio de reflejos …
Infinitos los veo, elementales
Ejecutores de un antiguo pacto,
Multiplicar el mundo como el acto
Generativo, insomnes y fatales.

(63)

Mirrors are portals into an infinite and unlimited world, the world of the numen, of ecstasy, but also of nigthmares and insanity. The ego resists the “emptiness” of the numenological world. For the ego to become nothing is a kind of death. This is why to be “reborn” one must die, or properly speaking, one's ego must die. The descent into the depths of the unconscious is also a voyage to the source and unlimited fount of creativity. Paradoxically, the voyage ends with the realization that one is nothing but a vehicle for the transmission of something far greater than onself. Perhaps it is true, as Borges writes in “Los teólogos,” that “cada hombre es un órgano que proyecta la divinidad para sentir el mundo” (42). In the final stages of mysticism (illumination) the ego is absorbed into the void, and the sense of “I” as separate entity dissolves. This is called death of the ego in mystical terms. Borges' fear of dissolution of his sense of self is reflected in “Los espejos”: “Dios ha creado las noches que se arman / De sueños y las formas del espejo / Para que el hombre sienta que es reflejo / Y vanidad. Por eso nos alarman” (65). Mirrors are a threat because they represent the awakened consciousness which incorporates ego into the void. When this happens, the “old” man exists no more, and the “new” man is born. Everything provides a numinous background; everything in the world becomes a symbol and a part of the numinous, and God is seen everywhere (Neumann 410).

It is evident that mysticism in Borges conforms to the four characteristics of the epiphany cited by William James: ineffability, noetic experience, transiency, and passivity. The epiphany in Borges is incapable of being fully expressed in language. During the mystical experience, an individual transcends the normal boundaries of perception and intellect, intuiting instantaneously the true nature of things and the unity of the universe. One bypasses the rational mind, gaining absolute clarity into the nature of things; the subject becomes one with the object, and a knowing of “communion” takes place. Such knowing is of an entirely different order than sequential reason, since all normal perception is necessarily selective and incomplete. The true nature of reality can never be revealed through language, since language objectifies and freezes reality. The numen, Borges believes, can never be captured in language, but it is the poet's duty to try. The epiphany in Borges includes a noetic experience in which the individual achieves direct and instantaneous insight into the nature of reality. Transience is another quality of the mystical experience in Borges, as evidenced in “El Aleph” and “La escritura de Dios.” Finally, during the epiphany, the individual comes to feel that rather than doing anything, something happens to him. Another power, believed to be outside oneself, takes over. For Borges, this constitutes a sense of being “no one” or “nothing.” He often ponders his own identity in his writings, thinking of himself as other than the attributes and qualities which constitute him. In Borges, being “no one” is synonymous with being everyone. His literary mysticism reveals the entire human race to be microcosmically contained in every individual. Ultimately, the distinction between “I” and “other” is blurred. Borges searches repeatedly for clues to his own identity, often reflecting upon his fear of self-revelation. He fears the discovery of his true identity (his “true face”), which he imagines beyond his capacity to endure. Nevertheless, he senses that behind the illusion of his personal identity lies not the face of a monster, but divinity.

Notes

1. The mystical roots of Borges' thought have not yet been fully investigated. Jaime Alazraki's important work La prosa narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges examines numerous elements of Borges' art, but does not directly treat mysticism. Gene H. Bell-Villada's Borges and his Fiction: A Guide to his Mind and Art contains a chapter entitled “El Aleph: The Visionary Experience,” in which he elucidates selected aspects of Borges' mysticism without considering its overall role in his work. Alberto C. Pérez in Realidad y suprarrealidad en los cuentos fantásticos de Jorge Luis Borges, realizes that mysticism is central to Borges' thought, but does not examine sufficiently the importance of mystical themes which recur throughout Borges' poetry, essays, and stories. The only work which treats Borges' mysticism with any degree of thoroughness is Giovanna de Garayalde's Jorge Luis Borges: Sources and Illumination. De Garayalde argues that Borges was strongly influenced by Sufi (mystical Islamic) stories and parables. She successfully shows that many of Borges' techniques and themes have precedents in centuries-old Sufi stories.

2. Borges himself is a mystical thinker, and has acknowledged that he had several mystical experiences in his life. Quoting from a previous article “Sentirse en muerte,” published in 1928 and concerning an experience during a stroll in Buenos Aires, he writes in “Nueva refutación del tiempo”: “Me sentí muerto, me sentí percibidor abstracto del mundo; indefinido temor imbuido de ciencia que es la mejor claridad de la metafisica” (180). In an interview with Willis Barnestone and Jorge Oclander, Borges one commented that he has had two mystical experiences, but cannot tell them: “what happened is not to be put into words … I had the feeling of living not in but outside of time” (Borges at Eighty: Conversations 11).

3. Transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber writes “the most fascinating aspect of such awesome and illuminating experiences … is that the individual comes to feel, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he is fundamentally one with the entire universe, with all worlds, sacred or profane. His sense of identity expands far beyond the narrow confines of his mind and body and embraces the entire cosmos” (3).

4. “According to the Uncertainty Principle, we cannot measure accurately, at the same time, both the position and the momentum of a moving particle. The more precisely we determine one of these properties, the less we know about the other” (Zukav 133).

5. Epiphany does not confer knowledge in the traditional sense, but in silence rids one of delusion. It is only when the mind becomes quiet that mystical wisdom is received: about this all mystics agree. In his “Cántico espiritual,” San Juan de la Cruz describes the infusion of mystical knowledge directly into the soul, bypassing the normal perceptual faculties. Divine communication takes place “en la noche serena”: “Esta noche es la contemplación en que el alma desea ver estas cosas. Llámala noche, porque la contemplación es oscura, que por eso la llaman, por otro nombre, mística teología, que quiere decir sabiduría de Dios secreta o escondida, en la cual, sin ruido de palabras y sin ayuda de algún sentido corporal ni espiritual, como en silencio y quietud, a oscuras de todo lo sensitivo y natural, enseña Dios ocultísima y secretísimamente al alma sin ella saber cómo; lo cual algunos espirituales llaman entender no entendimiento” (39:12, 960).

6. Andrew M. Greely writes: “something besides the conscious self-controlling reality principle is operating” (17).

7. The “nothingness” which is characteristic of Borges' aesthetics is most similar to the concept of shunyata or “emptiness” in Buddhistic thought, a non-conditioned mode of being in which everything is in a state of potentiality or possibility. Shunyata represents something which cannot be named, much less defined. It is the groundless ground of existence in which all things are paradoxically undifferentiated yet exactly what they are (cf. Nishitani and Streng).

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