Perception

"Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience"

If we were to list down one thing that we never doubt and which defines reality for us it will be perception how we perceive ourselves to be and how we perceive the world around us to be. We feel our emotions, sensations, voices, movements are real. What if its not ? What if instead of having 2 arms and two legs all we are is actually a yellow colored blob ?

“Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.” 

Their are certain people who feel certain things which others don't. A guy who lost his arm could still feel its presence, he could even move it and feel like picking up things with it. A person whose brain was excited in a certain region could feel the table placed 6 feet away from him to be a part of his body. These are some of the examples given in   Phantoms in the brain : V.S. Ramachandran

This book deals with the mysteries of the brain, how our brain manipulates us. It is possible that all our responses, our actions, our feelings are part of a large complex algorithm and the thing we call our will or choice might not actually exist. It tries to explain the usual behavior by studying the people who depict unusual behavior. Can you actually believe that their is a certain portion of brain which can make some people more religious ? Why do we smile when we see some one ? The origin of laughter ?