The Night My Mind Disappeared

Belgium, 2002. Good spirits. Life was going well. I was just looking to have fun.

At the age of 20, I was in the prime of my life, experimenting with psychedelics since I was 15. I did mushrooms, Salvia, and started using MDMA when I was 17. I fell in love with electronic music and started DJing. I tried LSD for the first time at 18. My brother and I became a Psychedelic Trance DJ duo, and I was passionate about playing music and taking psychedelics.

One day, my friend F told me that his parents would be gone for two weeks and we could use his house for a psychedelic journey. It was a beautiful typical Belgian cottage farmhouse. F and I were close friends who had grown closer at university, where we studied cinematography. He wanted to invite L, who I wasn't very close with at the time. L was a great guy who became one of my best friends over the years after this experience. Unfortunately, he drowned around fourteen years ago. I love him dearly. He was a beautiful person.

We had acquired some new acid: Timothy Leary's, 12 by 12, showing his face from the side. I still have one in my fridge now. I always loved collecting good trips over the years.

We decorated the house with psychedelic art and turned on blacklights. F had two massive speakers, and I installed my music gear. It was going to be a night engulfed in music. We smoked some weed and took one tab of acid around six in the evening.

And off we went.

We talked, smoked, and listened to psychedelic trance. Psycraft, Infected Mushroom, Mystery of The 13 Crystal Skulls, Hallucinogen. Slowly the acid began to take hold, and auditory and visual hallucinations started to creep into my awareness.

F and L were talking about a book they had borrowed from a friend called The Book of Nothing by Osho. They were saying things like "thoughts are not real," "mind is an illusion," "there is no future or past except in your mind." Concepts that were new to me.

Inside, I felt that I could not join the conversation because I could not speak on the matter. I became an observer. When my best friend F spoke, I agreed inside: I felt that what he said was true. But when L spoke, I felt there was a mistake or fault in his reasoning. In my mind, I started to observe the conversation as right and wrong, true and false, in duality.

Then suddenly, my friend F turned his head, looked me straight in the eyes, and said: "Ha, K, AAAUuuuuum."

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I have to pause and fill you in. Aum is that Indian symbol that looks like a 30, which was typical to see at the parties we went to. I drew it everywhere: on my books, on paper while on the phone, or just made artistic drawings of mushrooms and this symbol. But when he turned his head, looked me straight in the eyes, and said "Aauuum," I heard the words, yet my mind had to admit that in reality, it did not know what Aum meant.

It was as if my mind got caught being an imposter. A generator of thought that cannot actually understand what this thing means. It humbled itself to reality.

And then, in a split second, the greatest experience of my life occurred.

My mind sank. Through the middle of my skull, through my spine, to my heart, where it exploded into infinite space. It totally disappeared in the vast ocean of being.

In this moment, three things happened that I can still remember as if they happened yesterday.

First, it felt like I had woken up from a dream. My entire life seemed like a dream.

Second, I had this inner sense that "it is so simple." If you don't have any thoughts, you don't have any problems, and everything is peaceful.

Third, I felt that F was my guru, because he seemed to have revealed this universal secret to me. Guru was a concept I had never heard of or felt before.

I was bathing in the deepest silence and bliss I had ever felt. The hallucinations were powerful. I saw kaleidoscopic Buddhas and Shivas twirling in front of my eyes. Lotus flowers were growing from the speakers and crawling over the ceiling. Colors were dripping from the furniture and sofa. But I felt so light, fresh, and clear-headed. It was as if I had been drunk all my life and had now become sober.

I sank into the silence, closed my eyes, and surrendered myself to the experience.

I don't know how long it had been when suddenly a thought took birth in my heart. I could feel it travel through my spine up to my head. And there it got projected into space. I saw the thought as if I were looking at a movie screen outside my head.

The thought said: "THIS IS ENLIGHTENMENT."

Again, a concept that was new to me. I looked at the thought and said: "No. What I am experiencing is not enlightenment, because enlightenment is just a word, and no word can capture this."

The thought folded back into my brain, traveled to my heart, and disappeared into infinity.

And that was it. Just this silence. Just this beauty.

I didn't say a word for the rest of the evening. I just couldn't. Any intention was collapsed into this silence. I now realize that many people have glimpses, but it is rare not to comment on it and let your ego truly die in that moment. I feel lucky it happened to me.

To be honest, after this, nothing can really be said. When the mind is gone, you cannot formulate any experience. If anything, I can only say: silence. Every sound, every sample in the music, every hallucination was the confirmation of the experience and silence itself. There was only one meaning that pervaded existence. I can only get close to it by calling it "beingness." Everything is. Everything exists. And this is what we are.

The remainder of the night was pure bliss, total synesthesia, and deep peace. I did not speak or communicate anymore. I did ask for food once, and my friend F was very happy to help me in the kitchen. I had a sandwich and went back to my seat and disappeared again.

Later in the evening, I left for bed. I did not say anything when I did. I slept very well and woke up in the same silence. The whole world looked so beautiful and peaceful and new. The colors seemed so vivid, and sunlight was shining through the window. I was just so peaceful. Everything was so beautiful.

I went downstairs and saw my two friends sitting at the breakfast table. They looked dumbfounded and confused. In that moment, I felt compassion for them, because they totally did not know why I was not speaking anymore.

And with all my power, I tried to create a thought. I tried and tried, and suddenly said:

The silence broke when I spoke. But it did not leave. For weeks and months afterwards, the world seemed like a theater, a play. I saw people speaking and it was as if everyone was just living in their own little dream world. There was no real connection in what they were saying. I could see through it all. It was bizarre. It took many months to come back to a normal kind of state.

I wanted to tell everyone what had happened. I ran into L the next day while driving. But it wasn't possible to explain. It was so mind-blowing, so total, that no words could carry it. That moment changed my whole life. Literally changed my whole life. It started a search that took twenty years and brought me everywhere in this world. Every step afterwards was directed by that night: seeking and searching, suffering and joy, love and bliss and suicide. Everything.

What happened after needs a book to tell the story.

I took more acid, more drugs, dove into shamanism, traveled to Peru drinking Ayahuasca for months in the jungle, went traveling to India, sat at the feet of many gurus and spiritual teachers, trying to understand and hopefully experience again what I experienced that night. You wouldn't be surprised if I said I went through hell and back searching for this.

I gave up all desire to reach success and gave up relationships for this. I even found myself on the brink of suicide at one point, after losing my connection with inner silence when I got tinnitus from playing loud music for so many years.

Now I live in a beautiful country, and I have a guru, Ganga Mira, whom I love very much. She is totally part of my life. She finally released me of that search. I have accepted that what I saw and experienced that night was always there, always has been, and always will be. It is the silent background upon which all of this creation is playing and manifesting. It is the true nature of our reality.

We need not look for it anywhere or in any substance. It is what we are and what everything is.

Enlightenment, or Nirvana, is accepting all as it presents itself. Silence or noise. It doesn't matter. This life is a dream. Make the best of it. You'll return to silence one day or the next.

I wish you love and peace.