Ibiza is an island that has succeeded in putting a price on the night.

Club admission, VIP tables, champagne, massive sound systems, gastronomy, and music timed to the sunset. This island has transformed the hours between sunset and sunrise into one of the most expensive commodities in the world.

But that day, a sunset arrived in Ibiza that no one could buy.

Over the waters off the island of Ibiza, the setting sun, barely above the horizon, was covered by the moon. It was a total solar eclipse. The Sun stood at an altitude of just three degrees. Even after totality ended, the Sun remained deeply obscured, eventually becoming a thin, horn-like sliver of light before sinking into the sea. In other words, it was an extraordinarily rare “sunset eclipse”: a sun already sinking toward the horizon was swallowed by the moon before it could set, and then disappeared into the sea while still partially eclipsed.

I have chased total solar eclipses around the world many times. I have driven for hours from airports, changed observation sites the day before in search of gaps in the clouds, and even flown to the other side of the planet for just a few minutes of totality. I have seen the Sun become obscured high in the sky, with the corona emerging around a black disk, many times.

But this was the first time I had ever seen totality coincide with sunset.

And even after totality ended, the show was not over. The deeply eclipsed Sun continued inching toward the sea, touched the horizon while still partially eclipsed, and disappeared while still partially eclipsed. Totality itself lasted just over a minute, but the “sunset under an eclipse” continued for several dozen minutes, leaving everyone speechless.

There was not even applause.

Come to think of it, there could hardly have been a more fitting island for this.

Ibiza is an island where people “worship” the sunset. Every evening along the coast of San Antonio, people gather in front of Café del Mar, and when the Sun touches the horizon, applause breaks out. It is a daily ritual that has continued for nearly half a century since the café opened in 1980. For all the world, there may be no other place where sunset itself has become a daily religious ceremony quite like this.

And on the sky above an island that has spent half a century performing this ritual of seeing the Sun off, the Sun set while still eclipsed.

It was a truly strange sight.

The Sun is not merely a star.

It is the arrival of morning, the growth of plants, the passage of time, the fact that the world we knew yesterday continues into today. If the Earth system is an operating system, then the Sun is the BIOS that guarantees all of it.

And suddenly, that order is broken.

Some people cry when they see a total solar eclipse. Others cheer. Some become completely silent. People who were taking selfies only moments before suddenly stop moving their hands.

It is not simply emotion.

Psychology calls this feeling “awe.”

A study analyzing approximately 2.9 million social media posts surrounding the 2017 total solar eclipse found that people within the path of totality used more language expressing awe, while using fewer self-focused expressions and more words associated with humility, solidarity, and concern for others.

In other words, a total solar eclipse makes the “I” smaller and the “we” larger.

What a total solar eclipse confronts human beings with is not the vastness of the universe, but the smallness of the self.

Our daily work, wealth, titles, follower counts, political positions, and problems in our relationships. Things that normally appear enormous suddenly seem irrelevant simply because the Moon and the Sun have lined up in a straight line.

Politics, religion, and advertising all try to bring human beings together into groups. But there is no other mechanism that can strip away the ego from people around the world so quickly, and without using a single word.

Rich and poor alike look up at the same sky.

There are no VIP seats, no backstage, no guest lists, no sponsored sections. No amount of money can extend totality by even a second, and no amount of power can change the schedule of the universe.

In reality, neither the Sun nor the Moon knows anything about human affairs.

Whether we succeed or fail, fall in love or break up, whether a nation prospers or collapses, the Moon follows its prescribed orbit and covers the Sun at its appointed time.

Then, when the light returns, the world appears to return to normal as if nothing had happened.

But on our side — inside our minds and in our sensibilities — we do not return completely to where we were.

It is as though the “I” has changed, like after a psychedelic experience.

And perhaps that is why I will go somewhere beneath another sky again.