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indeed reflect just such failure to unify thought and action. Their protagonists’ heroic qualities
are more on the Eastern model, innate, emanating from the soul which is obstructed by layers
of masks. The heroic nature in man can be revealed, but only through a process of self-
revelation which is painstaking and even dangerous since underneath each mask lies another,
each layer hiding mysteries heretofore unsuspected by the individual. Whether a mask is
formed as a shield against the feared or an invitation to the attractive, it functions equally to
obscure the reality of being which lies within.
What remains of the individual once all masks are shed is mysterious and difficult even
for Indian literature to describe, but that is not the concern here. Koch and d’Alpuget are not
writing so much about prospective Buddhas of Australian society—though both Alexandra
Wheatfield and Mike Langford are partly fashioned after sacred Indian archetypes (discussed
respectively in chapters 11 and 13)—as of the individuals who are made aware of the masks
and their illusory effects through encounters with the Asian world. Commenting on his
fascination for the workings of personality, Koch says,
I believe that at the heart of life there is a mystery, and at the heart of every
human personality there is a mystery. There is no way in which I will ever
know you fully, or you will ever know me. And the most surprising things can
happen with personality. Someone whom you feel you know, and have known
for years, may suddenly be transformed. They may suddenly be unfamiliar. In
that moment, one sees a mask. (Hulse, 25)
Koch adds that individuals are always striving to perfect their personalities, but he doubts the
personality can ever be complete, and believes that there are penalties for trying ‘to be all
things’ to oneself or to others, or to live one’s life through another person (Hulse, 19).
Seeking to perfect the personality by ‘completing’ it is a decidedly Western attitude, and
represents adding to or setting masks against one another. Success, however, in getting
through the smoke to the fire—through the phenomenal masks to the Transcendent Soul—is
Enlightenment. The danger, Koch and d’Alpuget point out, is that partial success leaves an
individual weakened by the loss off the psychological protection for which the shed masks had
been responsible; an individual who has tried but failed could be doomed to living as an
animalistic, less-than-human creature.
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