Did you know we all have blind spots! See for yourself. Just cover one eye and stare at the central smiley, but observe all three, then slowly move your face closer to the screen.

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At a certain distance (about 15cm) the left eye cannot see the left smiley and the right eye cannot see the right smiley.

These are localised points of blindness and their dimensions are apparent if you rotate your head.

These blind spots occur because at the point where the optic nerve attaches to the retina there are no retinal receptors.

This means that there are holes in our visual perception. But these holes don't show up in our experience! This is an important fact. Think about it!

There are holes in our visual perception, but there are no holes in our experience of visual perception.

This is because we don't experience the raw visual input itself, it is photons and neural signals.

The subconscious mind experiences the neural signals and interprets them and filters them for meaning in terms of the current content of the mind.

This means that the mind experientially 'looks' through the mind like through a lens.

Over time the experiences influence the mind so the lens changes and so the experience changes and on and on.

The experience itself is a complex cognitive impression that the conscious mind becomes aware of and assumes that it is experiencing the actual reality (naïve realism).

We never see the world “out there”. We only ever experience the response of the mind to incoming information, which is heavily filtered and processed.

This simple experiment allows you to see for yourself that the visual field that you experience does not provide direct access to an external world.

All of our lives these blind spots have been there, yet the mind seamlessly fills them in and covers them over. Most people go through their whole lives never realising that the world that they are looking at is a reflection within their mind.

Take another look at the smileys and contemplate what this phenomenon really means. Can you still have the same relationship with your visual field as you have always had?

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One of the principal structures in the lens of the mind is a centralised thought-complex (memeplex) that calls itself 'I' or 'me' (the ego). The ego further succumbs to naïve realism and assumes that it is a "being in a world".

The ego crystallises into a cognitive lens through which the mind filters and interprets all information.

The consciousness then experiences itself to BE a "being in a world".

Coming back to the above example, because the mind assumes that this is a flat white screen - when one of the smileys disappears into a blind spot the subconscious mind just fills it in - it is always just filling in this spatial region by morphing the experiential and conceptual region.

The mind morphs the points of awareness that surround the blind spot into a single point that is inconspicuous.

Because these regions are not part of central vision the degree of conscious awareness that is available within them is not very high.

Furthermore, because the perceptual anomaly is permanent and unchanging the mind has "grown around it", not just visually but also conceptually. We do not experience any distortion or disruption to our overall experience.

The line below isn't noticeably broken even when the smiley vanishes so the concept of 'continuity' has also grown around the anomaly.

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 -<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>--<#>-

So look again and when the smiley disappears be very aware of that region. Know for a fact that what you are looking at is a construct of your subconscious mind. Your entire sensory field is a construct of the subconscious mind. It is not reality "as it is", instead it is a construct of your own mind.

The content of your mind is a lens through which the mind perceives the raw sensory signals. Every experience is a cognitive response to sensory stimuli.

Everything that we know via experience, assuming it to be experience of reality (naïve realism) is ultimately only accurate knowledge about our cognitive experience of reality.

Empirical knowledge only reflects our cognitive impression of reality and does not reflect the true nature of reality.

For example, whilst running through the streets, fields and corridors of a virtual reality game it seems to the mind that the world exists in a very real and tangible sense.

We can meaningfully operate in that world by simply treating it as a 'world'.

But it is not accurate to say that the empirical knowledge gained from operating in the virtual world describes the 'actual' nature of that reality, which is an information process.

We don't see things like quantum wavefunctions, we see objects or people or places or events. We see ourselves as a centralised point of experiential awareness that is embedded in an object (the body) that is located within a world of objects all changing in space and time.

To play the game of life well we need to understand what the game is and not confuse it for something that it is not.

To reinforce this understanding, try these other experiments: Café wall illusion, Scintillating Grid Illusion, rotating dot illusion and many different illusions.

Best Wishes : )
John Ringland