Yesterday in my psychology class, we learned about the nature of vision and perception — some of you probably knew all of this earlier, but the information was new to me — our experience of the world is not only entirely subjective, it is basically entirely created by our mind! For example, we all should see a large hole in certain parts of our vision (the blind spot) because this is the place where the optic nerve connects to the brain; however, our brain just fills in the spot based on the characteristics of rest of the image it is seeing. Our brain fills in shadows where it thinks we should be seeing them, inserts sounds it thinks we should be hearing, and essentially is the basis for why we see the world the way we do.
What is this other than the Hindu concept of maya (illusion)? Just as psychology suggests that our perception of the world is a construction of our minds, Hinduism, too, suggests that this world is illusory and impermanent. While I do not know much about the theory behind maya, it is definitely a fascinating parallel to examine.
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