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I’m thinking that what you experienced could be hypnagogic hallucinations.
Hypnagogic hallucinations are what you see, hear or basically feel before you fall asleep. They can be more breathtaking than some dreams sometimes. 
Some lucid dreaming inducing techniques (such as WILD) use it in order to create direct entrance into the dream with conciousness.
In the first few stages, hypnagogic hallucination generally appear as blobs of color, moving circles or other sorts of abstract visuals. The closer you get to falling asleep, the more clear they become. Thus they form detailed shapes, such as buildings, everyday items or people.
Since you were meditating (which would increase vividity) and also say that you could hear what was happening IRL (which means you were actually awake), I think this is the likeliest option. 