Questions such as these pop up, at least for me, after reading this Jorge Luis Borges tale. Why is this? Why can’t we think in terms of an alternating between various frequencies or modes of awareness, perhaps even with an occasional shift into oblivion? And these questions are compounded if we also think of our bodily existence on planet earth continuing forever, if we became part of the race of the immortals. Yet when it comes to describing or imagining the afterlife, I’ve read very few accounts postulating how awareness could shift between various levels rather, life (or lack of life) after death tends to be portrayed as an uninterrupted hum all at one frequency, the three major frequencies: 1) awareness within a specific form, like a light body 2) formless awareness, that is, our consciousness merging with undifferentiated oneness, an ocean of universal conscious 3) complete obliteration without a trace of conscious awareness.

We have all experienced different dimensions in our life, to name just three: waking, deep sleep and dreaming. Coetzee said of Borges: 'He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.' His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He was a target of political persecution during the Peron regime, and supported the military juntas that overthrew it.ĭue to a hereditary condition, Borges became blind in his late fifties. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals.

In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, usually referred to as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: ), was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires.

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