I'm not talking about spirituality though. All I'm saying is that describing the mechanism by which something is perceived doesn't tell us anything about the object of perception. It doesn't explain it OR explain it away.

Either there are objects of perception or there are no objects or perception. If you are going to say that sometimes there are no objects of perception but other times there really are objects, then the you have to show WHY people are perceiving objects that aren't there, not just how.