Altered Reality in Heart of Darkness The world of darkness that Marlow finds himself in is directly comparable to what Leary describes of the bardos (phases) that occur during a journey induced by drugs or psychedelic substances. experience. «The basic problem of the Second Bardo is that any form – human, divine, diabolical, heroic, evil, animal, thing – that the human brain evokes or that the past life remembers, can present itself to consciousness: shapes and forms and the sounds swirl without end" (48). An example of such a presentation is Marlow's perception of the jungle as a palpable force that has the power of human gestures. Call, invite, attract, etc. Leary writes that accompanying the moment of ego loss is the perception of the "wave-like flow of energy": "the individual becomes aware of being part of and surrounded by a field charged with energy, which seems almost electric... the attempt to control or rationalize this flow of energy… is indicative of ego activity and First Bardo transcendence is lost' (41). transcendence, but his ego activity rationalizes his feeling of the jungle's physical awareness. He colors the Congo dark rather than light and chooses to reject, not embrace, the jungle's strength, so his rationalizations are negative and he thinks it force is evil. The negative and wrathful counterparts of this vision occur if the traveler reacts with fear to the powerful flow of life forms. Such reaction is attributable to the cumulative result of the game (karma) dominated by anger or stupidity. A nightmarish hellworld could result. Visual forms appear as a confusing mess of cheap, ugly, brazen, vulgar and useless objects. The... center of the card... all truth and all sincerity are simply compressed into that imperceptible moment of time when we cross the threshold of the invisible" (Conrad, 113). CitedConrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Editor Robert Kimbrough. New York: Norton, 1988. Cox, C. B. Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and Under the Eyes of the West. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1987. Guetti, James of the Imagination", Sewanee Review LXXIII, no. 3 (Summer 1965), pp. 488-502. Ed. CB Cox.Leary, Timothy, Metzner, Ralph, Alpert, Richard The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the deadRuthven, KK 'The Savage God: Conrad and Lawrence,' Critical Quarterly, x, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring and Summer 1968), pp. 41-6. Ed. CB Cox.Watt, Cedric . Essex: Longman Group UK Limited, 1993.