There are moments in life when an ordinary experience interrupts ordinary thinking. Such moments are often dismissed because they are unexpected, difficult to describe, or appear to border on the extraordinary. Yet some of the most profound observations emerge not from the supernatural, but from the careful examination of nature itself.

This is one such experience.

While watching a Reiki video on a monitor, I noticed something that immediately challenged my assumptions about perception. At first glance, I was tempted to interpret the phenomenon through the language often associated with mystical experiences.

The visual display was so intricate and so unlike anything I had consciously seen before that it briefly felt as though my vision had somehow "opened" to a previously hidden dimension of reality.

Within moments, however, a more disciplined line of reasoning prevailed.

Rather than concluding that my visual system had suddenly acquired new abilities, I became increasingly convinced that what I was witnessing was an optical phenomenon—a highly specific interaction between sunlight, the monitor, and my position relative to both.

That realization did not diminish the experience.

It made it significantly more fascinating.

The Observation

The circumstances were deceptively simple.

The sun was positioned to my right while a monitor partially obstructed it. The remarkable visual effect did not appear uniformly across my field of view. Instead, it emerged predominantly from the left side of the monitor, extending outward until it gradually faded into invisibility. Curiously, I observed nothing comparable above the monitor.

What I saw were not the broad curved bands characteristic of an atmospheric rainbow.

Instead, I saw what can only be described as countless perfectly straight strands of colour.

The closest example I can offer is that of the bead curtains commonly found in homes during the 1970s—except that instead of decorative strings hanging from a doorway, there appeared to be trillions upon trillions of impossibly fine coloured filaments suspended throughout the air itself.

They looked like microscopic cables arranged in parallel, extending far beyond the monitor before gradually disappearing into the surrounding brightness.

Their colours were unlike anything I could adequately describe with ordinary language.

Not because they were supernatural.

But because our vocabulary for colour was developed to describe familiar visual experiences rather than optical phenomena of such remarkable complexity.

The experience lasted only while the geometry between my eyes, the monitor, and the sunlight remained favourable.

The Importance of Rejecting the Extraordinary Too Quickly

My first instinct was admittedly humorous.

For a brief moment I wondered whether I had somehow unlocked an advanced state of perception.

The thought was entertaining.

It was also unnecessary.

Scientific reasoning offered a far more satisfying explanation.

The colours were objectively produced.

My brain did not invent wavelengths that were absent from reality.

Rather, a highly specific arrangement of light caused portions of the electromagnetic spectrum—which are ordinarily merged into what we simply see as white sunlight—to become separated before reaching my retina.

This distinction is crucial.

The phenomenon was not evidence that my visual cortex fabricated impossible colours.

Nor was it evidence that reality had suddenly changed.

Instead, the geometry of light itself had changed.

Hidden Structure Within Ordinary Light

Sunlight is far more complex than our daily experience suggests.

White light contains a continuous distribution of wavelengths spanning the visible spectrum. Under ordinary conditions these wavelengths arrive simultaneously, and our visual system integrates them into the experience we simply call "white."

Yet physics has long demonstrated that light can be separated.

Prisms reveal it.

Soap bubbles reveal it.

Compact discs reveal it.

Water droplets reveal it.

The microscopic structures found on butterfly wings, insect exoskeletons, bird feathers, and even certain manufactured materials reveal it through diffraction and interference.

It therefore became increasingly plausible that either the edge of the monitor or its anti-glare coating—with its microscopic repeating structures—acted as a diffraction grating. Under precisely the right angle, incoming sunlight could be separated into distinct wavelengths, producing the astonishing field of coloured linear structures that I observed.

An equally plausible contributor is the optical structure of the eye itself. Tiny variations within the tear film or diffraction around eyelashes can generate remarkably geometric interference patterns when illuminated under extreme side-lighting conditions.

Neither explanation diminishes the phenomenon.

Both make it more remarkable.

The Colours Were Always There

The experience led to a simple but significant realization.

Perhaps these colours are always present.

In an important sense, they are.

Not because invisible rainbows permanently occupy the atmosphere in the form I observed, but because the physical information carried by sunlight constantly surrounds us.

The visible spectrum reaches our eyes continuously.

Most of the time it remains integrated.

Occasionally, under highly specific optical conditions, it becomes spatially separated, temporarily revealing structures that ordinarily remain hidden within the uniform brightness of daylight.

My observation therefore was not,

"I imagined colours beyond reality."

It was closer to saying,

"A particular geometry allowed me to see the internal structure of light that is ordinarily concealed."

This conclusion remains entirely consistent with established optics.

The Economy of Human Perception

The experience also suggested a broader point regarding perception itself.

One cannot help wondering whether the human nervous system deliberately—or evolutionarily—limits the quantity of sensory information reaching conscious awareness.

Evolution offers a compelling explanation.

The objective of biological perception is not to maximise information.

Its objective is survival.

Imagine consciously looking at every infrared heat source, every ultraviolet reflection, every polarisation pattern, every microscopic particle suspended in air, every tiny fluctuation in atmospheric density, every diffraction pattern, every vibration across the audible and ultrasonic spectrum, and every subtle electromagnetic influence simultaneously.

The result would likely be perceptual paralysis rather than enhanced understanding.

Human cognition depends as much upon exclusion as inclusion.

Our brains continuously discard overwhelming quantities of sensory information before consciousness ever encounters it.

Modern neuroscience increasingly supports this interpretation.

The brain is not a passive recording device.

It is an extraordinarily selective filter.

Reality contains vastly more information than conscious awareness can economically process.

Other Species Live in Different Sensory Worlds

Humans often assume that our perception represents reality itself.

Biology suggests otherwise.

Bees detect ultraviolet patterns invisible to us.

Birds perceive polarised light that assists navigation.

Pit vipers detect infrared radiation produced by warm-bodied prey.

Dogs hear frequencies that remain permanently inaccessible to human hearing.

Mantis shrimp possess one of the most sophisticated visual systems known, containing numerous photoreceptor classes beyond our own.

Each species inhabits the same physical universe.

Yet each experiences a different version of it.

Reality has not changed.

Only the biological interface has.

The Hidden World Is Not Mystical

Perhaps the most valuable outcome of this experience was not the visual phenomenon itself but the intellectual discipline it demanded.

It would have been easy to construct an extraordinary mystical story around what I observed.

Instead, the experience became more meaningful through restraint.

The wonder remained.

Only the explanation changed.

Nature loses none of its beauty when understood scientifically.

If anything, it becomes infinitely richer.

The realization that microscopic surface structures, wave interference, diffraction, and the geometry of sunlight can suddenly expose a hidden architecture of colour is every bit as astonishing as any supernatural interpretation.

Indeed, it is more satisfying precisely because it is demonstrable.

It invites investigation rather than belief.

Conclusion

The experience suggests a principle that extends far beyond optics.

Reality often contains structures that remain invisible until conditions align to reveal them.

The revelation does not imply that something new has been created.

Rather, it demonstrates that perception depends profoundly on circumstance.

The colours I witnessed were objectively produced.

My brain did not invent wavelengths that were absent.

A specific arrangement of light made them visible to my visual system.

That distinction transforms an unusual personal experience into something much larger than anecdote.

It becomes a reminder that the world surrounding us is vastly more intricate than everyday perception suggests. We navigate reality not by experiencing all that exists, but by experiencing only that fraction of reality our biology has evolved to present to us. Occasionally, however, nature allows us a brief glimpse beyond the ordinary—not into another world, but into a deeper appreciation of this one.

Also cool:

Identification of the mode, polarization, wavelength and intensity of light using a one-pixel device on an optical fibre tip'

Abstract

The in situ monitoring of different parameters of light is important for the development of high-capacity information technology. However, the number of light states increases exponentially as parameters are added, and conventional detection systems must split light signals into numerous channels and photodetectors using bulky optics.

Here we report a one-pixel device that is integrated on an optical fibre tip and can simultaneously resolve the mode, polarization, wavelength and intensity of light. The device, which can generate spatially dependent responses, is based on twisted, dichroic layers of two-dimensional black phosphorus and black arsenic–phosphorus, as well as ring-grating-like electrodes.

The device generates six distinct photoresponses and we use it to achieve four-dimensional light detection with one-shot measurements, creating a large recognizable input-state space of around 104. We also show that the approach can be used for multidimensional image encryption communication. Article - click