Rohit Nalluri

I just had a moment – at the end of a guided meditation session, as I held on to the undulating thread of my breath, the guide ended the session with a single, ringing bell… And a light burst through my closed eyelids. I observed it in surprise as the light shone like a dazzling yellow star from the upper left corner of my left eyelid, and as brilliantly as it existed it began to fade with the disappearing sound of the bell.

The sound and light both subsided, and I hung on to that uncanny moment in the tender silence that followed. It had almost felt like a window had opened in my eyelid and a small sun had risen, but as the brilliance and the bell faded I realized that just behind my closed eyes, exactly where the light had appeared, outside in the room – was an actual lamp.

I enjoyed the moment for a few seconds more and gently opened my eyes, by now knowing fully well that the place where the light had shone from, the location of which was now burnt into my memory, was exactly where the actual lamp was in the world outside my eyelids. And with a smile I noted that it indeed it was.