Imagery in Meditation

by Aidan Ouelette

I wonder sometimes—just walking through town or sitting behind someone in the co-op line—how many people in Vermont meditate. I don’t mean the app-on-your-phone, breathwork-for-a-flat-stomach kind. I mean real meditation. The kind that makes your thoughts get slippery and weird, like they’ve slipped into a different layer of the mind. I’ve felt it—sitting cross-legged on a mossy rock at Moss Glen Falls, trying to quiet my brain and ending up face to face with a sky full of color even though my eyes were closed.

Turns out, this isn’t new. People have been seeing lights behind their eyelids and shapes in the dark for centuries. The alchemists wrote about it. Mystics lived for it. Scientists now call it “hypnagogic imagery” or “phosphenes,” which sounds like something out of a dystopian novel. But what they really are, I think, is a glimpse of whatever lies just past the filter we call ordinary consciousness.

The Strange Lights Behind Our Eyes

Phosphenes are those shapes and sparks you see when you rub your eyes or sit in silence long enough to forget where your body ends. Some say it’s the brain firing off random electrical signals. That might be true. But it doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. I don’t buy the idea that because we can name something, it becomes less sacred. If anything, naming it just means we’ve circled it long enough to admit it’s real.

Alchemy talks about these lights like they’re signposts on the spiritual trail. Antoine-Joseph Pernety, one of those old French alchemists I didn’t expect to be quoting post-grad, called it “Nature aided by Art.” That’s how he saw transformation. The lights, he believed, weren’t glitches in the system—they were sparks of divine intelligence waking up inside us, lighting the path inward.

The Vision That Split the Sky

Jacob Boehme, another mystic from way back (and yes, I read this stuff on weekends now), said he saw the structure of the universe break open in a flash of inner light. Not a metaphor—like, literally, a vision that turned his life upside down. And while my own experiences haven’t exactly been cosmic revelations, I’ve had moments—usually alone in the woods, sometimes in bed at 3 a.m.—where light patterns flow across the dark like they’re trying to tell me something. I haven’t figured out the language yet. But I’m listening.

Crossing the Threshold

Hypnagogic imagery is what happens as you’re falling asleep but haven’t quite crossed over. It’s surreal, symbolic, and often completely bizarre—like watching a dream get made in real time. Paracelsus (yes, that Paracelsus) called this True Imagination. Not fantasy. Not delusion. A kind of inner seeing that could pull meaning straight out of the dark and give it form.

I used to think these images were just my brain purging weird data, but lately I’ve started treating them like messages. Not because I think every flash of color is divine—sometimes it’s just your neurons being dramatic—but because these moments feel different. Like slipping through a crack in the wall between what we know and what we might be ready to learn.

Teresa’s Ecstasy

St. Teresa of Ávila, a Catholic mystic who wrote about being lifted out of her body in radiant light, wasn’t all that different from the alchemists. They all used different language—God, the divine, the Azoth—but what they were pointing toward feels the same. A place beyond words where something true is waiting, if you’re quiet enough to notice it.

What Alchemy Really Means to Me

When people hear “alchemy,” they still think of guys in robes trying to make gold in basement labs. And sure, there was some of that. But the deeper tradition? It was never about literal gold. It was about refining yourself. Becoming light. The Azoth of the Philosophers—the mandala that came from Basil Valentine’s vision—is one way to map that inner terrain. It’s full of symbols that don’t explain—they remind.

Is It All Just the Brain? Maybe. But I Don’t Think So.

Look, I’ve read the neuroscience. I’ve watched the lectures on quantum entanglement and consciousness theories like Orch-OR. I get that there are rational explanations for what happens in our minds during meditation. But honestly, so what? Understanding the instrument doesn’t mean you’ve written the music. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you’ve grasped its meaning.

Eliphas Levi said, “The Great Work is, above all things, the creation of man by himself.” Meditation—the real kind, the deep kind—is part of that work. It’s not about stress reduction. It’s about listening in a way that rewires your perception of reality. Every swirling light and strange vision might be a kind of compass needle, spinning toward some forgotten truth you were born knowing but forgot along the way.

Sitting With the Mystery

In Vermont, I think the land helps. It’s quiet enough here to hear your inner static. On a still morning at Moss Glen, the roar of the falls sounds like white noise for the soul. And when I sit there and close my eyes, I don’t always find peace. But sometimes I see light. Sometimes I see movement. And every so often, something shifts just slightly, and I come away different.

Call it phosphenes. Call it the subconscious. Call it a side effect of being a 20-something trying to find meaning in a world that feels both too full and too empty. Whatever it is, I’m following it.