Borges And I

Tom Ryle: Robert, thank you for your books and videos. I have read both books and viewed many of your chats and Zoom meetings. What you say rings true, but I am left with one question. You often discourage the idea of the witness or witness consciousness. You say that creating an observer of oneself is a kind of false move that you call splitting, but then you speak about yourself in the third person as if “I” and Robert were two different people. Why isn’t that splitting? In your BATGAP interview, you said, “Robert has opinions,” as if you are somehow not Robert, but outside of him observing him having opinions. Could you comment on that, please?

Nata Mudra, 1984

A: Hi, Tom. The feeling of standing outside of oneself and watching what “myself” thinks and does is a common, perhaps even universal, experience that seems to arise naturally and automatically for all of us. I do not deny that such experiences exist, nor do I think they should be suppressed or avoided. What is, is.

However, from my perspective, the perception of a division between the observer 'I,' who watches without involvement, and the 'I' who is the agent and doer, is an illusion arising from an overly narrow definition of “myself.”


That illusion is favored and cultivated by people who, understanding that bodies and brains are perishable and subject to death, prefer to imagine that what I “really” am is a deathless, timeless “presence,” independent of the physical body and existing prior to it. Consciously assuming the role of the observer as if it did not already arise automatically and choicelessly is a practice aimed at instantiating and concretizing one’s identity as a “presence.”

By my lights, what “I” am is best understood to be a human primate animal body/mind, including the perceptions, feelings, and thoughts that such body/minds—gifted with human primate nervous systems—experience without the necessity that some exogenous “presence” either take control or else stand aside in a posture of superiority as if the other “I"—the one who thinks, feels, and perceives—were the illusion.

Jorge Luis Borges, whose poems and essays I recommend, addressed this phenomenon in a way close to my experience. Here are Borges’ words in the original Spanish first, with an English translation following:

Borges Y Yo
Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario biográfico. Me gustan los relojes de arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo xviii, las etimologías, el sabor del café y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte esas preferencias, pero de un modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Seria exagerado afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir, para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mi podrá sobrevivir en el otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre de falsear y magnificar.

Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito, pero esos juegos son de Borges ahora y tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.

No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.

Borges And I
The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.