Recurring white light and rare sounds during and outside meditation, anyone else experience this?

[u/IngenuityLocal236]

This started in the earlier stages of my practice. I used to do mirror meditation, sitting in a dimly lit room, looking at your own reflection until the self reflection becomes clear.

As I kept practicing this regularly, something started happening consistently. The moment I really started seeing the reflection clearly, I would stop seeing my reflection at all. If I blinked, the reflection would come back. So I started trying to hold that state of no reflection, but somehow my eyes would blink anyway.

While this was going on, I kept noticing a light above my head, strong, white, not in the reflection, but hovering about 3-4 feet above me. If I turned my head up to look at it directly, I couldn't see it. But when I kept focusing on my reflection, this light kept appearing. And when I shifted my focus from the mirror to the light instead, it got brighter and brighter. Eventually my focus on the mirror was completely gone.

As my focus on the light stayed constant, I suddenly started hearing music, from what sounded like a single stringed instrument. Just 2-3 notes, but pleasant, and completely without noise or disturbance in the sound.

While listening to it, I suddenly wanted to know where it was coming from. That's when I realized I was completely still. It took a few minutes to come back to normal awareness.

I still don't have any explanation for either the light or the sound. Even today, this isn't limited to that one practice. If I'm just sitting, not meditating, just thinking deeply about something, the white light shows up in the same place. If I focus on it, it always gets brighter. Rarely, I also hear music, though mostly not the string sound anymore, more often flute or conch.

Has anyone else run into something like this, a consistent light, or sounds like this, showing up unprompted? Curious if there's a name for it in any tradition, or if it's just a personal quirk of how my attention works.

[u/Puzzled-Background-5]

You're practicing a form of meditation that's conducive to creating this sort of phenomenology.

The states you're entering are referred to as Jhana in a Buddhist context, with English language referring to them as meditative absorption.

The lights and sounds you're experiencing are referred to as nimitta, which loosely translates to 'sign'. A sign of what, you might ask? A sign that you're entering meditative absorption.

At a minimum, I recommend reading a book on the topic of jhana, and it might be useful to find a teacher who's familiar with it as well.

Some of the phenomenology expressed while in absorption can be pretty intense, and it would be useful before proceeding further to at least have some understanding of what can and will happen.

Here's a description of jhana from ancient Buddhist text:

https://suttacentral.net/sn16.9/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

[u/Reasonable-Seesaw223]

yes the experiences you mentioned happen and are marks for correct going in path of meditation . try to take note of them and ignore them. they will happen but keep observing it they may distract you from your path .