It wasn’t in a temple, nor in meditation, nor in a dream...
The first time I left my body was in an ordinary bar, on a night like any other. I was barely eighteen. I was with my usual friends, entering the same place we always went to. I hadn’t had a drink or anything. I only remember that, as I crossed the threshold, I saw her. She was the girl I had fallen in love with for the first time. I wasn’t expecting her, nor did I intend anything, but something strange happened: a sudden dizziness, like the pressure had dropped all at once. I felt bloated, almost absent.
I told the guys I needed to sit down. One of them offered me a glass of water, but I refused. I wanted to believe it was temporary. By the windows, to the left of the entrance hallway, there was a lonely chair.
So I sat down... and I left.
Without transition, without warning, I saw myself from above. From the ceiling. My body was still there, motionless, with a vacant stare. But “I” was somewhere else, suspended. An ethereal version of me floated a few meters above the ground, observing everything from a bird’s-eye view.
Using my physical body as a reference, within a two-meter radius, everything was sharp: the chair, my hair, my clothes, even my sneakers. But beyond that, the world seemed blurred. People were nothing more than shapeless silhouettes, wrapped in thick, dark mist, swaying to the rhythm of muffled music. The atmosphere was dense and the light intense. At the edges, the bar dissolved into a nothingness that wasn’t black, but white.
I assumed something had ejected me from my body. Everything moved in slow motion, but my mind worked with a clarity I had never experienced. Deep thoughts emerged effortlessly, chaining into an uninterrupted sequence.
I reflected on ego, consciousness, life, death. On chaos, harmony, the moment, and the beyond. Each concept unfolded with unsettling precision, as if some universal truth was being dictated to me. I felt I was being shown something — or everything — and that knowledge pushed me into an absolute existential vertigo.
For an eternal instant, I believed this was the end. Time dissolved. There was no up or down, no past or future. The fear of death was insignificant compared to a much heavier anguish: What if none of this is real? What if I don’t exist? What if I never have existed and never will?
Then a voice arose. It wasn’t an external voice, nor a mental one, but something deeper: a whisper, an intention. I told myself: I can end it now, or continue... but continue where? For what?
Behind me, I felt a presence. It was neither deity nor demon, not even an entity. It was neither singular nor plural. It was an immeasurable force... so intimidating, so omnipresent. The very thought of turning my head paralyzed me. I didn’t want to see. It wasn’t the time.
Like an echo, the answer came:
If I cease to exist now, I give up learning, teaching, creating, helping, sharing, loving.
Then my mind switched off.
Everything turned white.
And I came back.
I opened my eyes. I was sitting in the same chair. The music was still playing, people were laughing, singing, dancing. My friends were scattered among the crowd. The watch on my wrist barely showed a few minutes had passed, but for me, hours had gone by. Many hours.
I got up, somewhat dazed, and walked to the bar. Nobody seemed to notice anything.
As I left the bar, a friend came up to ask if I was okay. With a vacant look, I stayed silent. I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.
He took me by the shoulder and said:
—Let’s go home.
We walked in the middle of the night, crossing one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the south zone of Buenos Aires. I just followed his steps until we stopped in front of his house. He offered me to stay the night. Without answering, I turned around and kept walking. It wasn’t pride. I felt like a shadow without a body. Something inside me had died.
When I got home, I locked myself in my room for three days.
It took me months to process it, years to be able to tell it.
More than a decade has passed.
What was once fear of non-existence,
today is absolute gratitude for existence.
