order to participate in a life of higher consciousness, as is the case in shamanism.
I n this passage the world is essentially no different but Ovid is as one with it. I t is
also not unlike the common message woven throughout many of humanity’s sacred
texts in its epiphanic tone but it also is very similar to the bardo state described in
the Tibetan Book of the Dead which suggests that the unconscious psyche does not
perceive death as a total ending but as a radical change of consciousness from the
ego’s familiar frame of reference. The process of dying, hence, presents or depicts
itself like birth into the other world of spirit. The passage certainly indicates an
altered state of consciousness.
(c) Transformation
These epiphanies or transformational episodes are a common motif in
Malouf’s writing and are found throughout the corpus. Significantly, they seem to
occur in ‘in-between’ places which again substantiates the idea of them as a
temenos or sacred place. For example, Jock McI vor in Remembering Babylon, lives
in a place where:
The sense then of being submerged, of being hidden away in the
depths of the country, but also lost, was very strong ... out there
the very ground under their feet was strange ... and gave no
indication that six hundred miles away ... this bit of country has a
name set against it ... just nine years back, this very patch of
earth you were standing on had itself been on the other side of
things, part of the unknown (Malouf, 1994:9).
And he describes his epiphany thus:
I t was as if he had seen the world till now, not through his own
eyes, out of some singular self but through the eyes of a fellow
who was always in company, even when he was alone, a sociable
self, wrapped always in a communal self that protected it from
dark matters and all the blinding light of things, but also from the
knowledge that there was a place out there where the self might
stand alone. Wading through waist high grass, he was surprised
to see all the tips beaded with green, as if some new growth had
come into the world that till now he had never seen or heard of.
When he looked closer it was hundreds of wee bright insects, each
the size of his little finger nail, metallic, iridescent, and the
discovery of them, the new light they brought to the scene, was a
likeness in him – that was what surprised him – like a form of
knowledge he had broken through to. I t was unnameable, which
disturbed him, but was also exhilarating: for a moment he was
entirely happy (Malouf, 1978:106-107).