But I experience a world.

Yes. But that experience takes place in the mind. There is no contact with a world of form. All experience happens in and with the mind. The eyes seem to see a world “out there”, but seeing itself takes place in the mind; the eyes merely return to the mind what the mind expects to see.

Are you saying that if I drive in a neighborhood I’ve never seen before, the houses I see in that neighborhood appear because I expect them to? What about the people who live there? Am I making them up?

You are accustomed to thinking of your mind as distinct and separate from other distinct and separate minds. There is only one Mind. The mind you think of as your own is part of that one Mind. What you see driving in that unfamiliar neighborhood is known within the one Mind, by the one Mind. Each person you see as you drive through that neighborhood is having their own experience of being a distinct and separate mind in that neighborhood, but in truth they are merely experiencing what is known within the one Mind.

Direct contact is never made with a world.The only object with which contact is made is the current object within awareness. Think of the experience of listening to birdsong. Conventional thinking says the sound comes from “outside” the mind. But where is the sound known? The body doesn’t know the sound—it’s simply a sensing apparatus by which a world can be experienced physically. The brain doesn’t know the sound—it’s an information-processing apparatus for the body. What is it which knows the object called “sound”, not in terms of information, but in the knowing of the object itself?

I guess the mind. But isn’t sound made of soundwaves?

Soundwaves, when they are known, are known by the mind. Outside of the knowing of them by the mind, they cannot be said to exist. They, too, are an appearance in the mind. Nothing more than that can be said about them with any certainty. Same with everything in the world of form: outside of the mind, nothing in the world of form can be said to exist.