How to Change Your Mind

again . . . wars would be impossible to wage. The room and everything in
it was beautiful. Tony and Krystallia, sitting on [their] pillows, were
radiant!” They helped him to the bathroom. “Even the germs (if there
were any present) were beautiful, as was everything in our world and
universe.”
Afterward, he voiced some reluctance to “go back in.”
“The work was considerable but I loved the sense of adventure.”
Eventually, he put his eyeshades and headphones on and lay back down.
“From here on, love was the only consideration . . . It was and is the
only purpose. Love seemed to emanate from a single point of light . . . and
it vibrated . . . I could feel my physical body trying to vibrate in unity with
the cosmos . . . and, frustratingly, I felt like a guy who couldn’t dance . . .
but the universe accepted it. The sheer joy . . . the bliss . . . the nirvana . . .
was indescribable. And in fact there are no words to accurately capture
my experience . . . my state . . . this place. I know I’ve had no earthly
pleasure that’s ever come close to this feeling . . . no sensation, no image
of beauty, nothing during my time on earth has felt as pure and joyful and
glorious as the height of this journey.” Aloud, he said, “Never had an
orgasm of the soul before.” The music loomed large in the experience: “I
was learning a song and the song was simple . . . it was one note . . . C . . .
it was the vibration of the universe . . . a collection of everything that ever
existed . . . all together equaling God.”
Patrick then described an epiphany having to do with simplicity. He
was thinking about politics and food, music and architecture, and—his
field—television news, which he realized was, like so much else, “over-
produced. We put too many notes in a song . . . too many ingredients in
our recipes . . . too many flourishes in the clothes we wear, the houses we
live in . . . it all seemed so pointless when really all we needed to do was
focus on the love.” Just then he saw Derek Jeter, then the Yankee
shortstop, “making yet another balletic turn to first base.”
“I was convinced in that moment I had figured it all out . . . It was right
there in front of me . . . love . . . the only thing that mattered. This was
now to be my life’s cause.”
Then he said something that Bossis jotted down at 12:15: “Ok, I get it!
You can all punch out now. Our work is done.”
But it wasn’t done, not yet. Now “I took a tour of my lungs . . . I
remember breathing deeply to help facilitate the ‘seeing.’” Bossis noted