At any given point on a reflective or illuminating surface, photons are travelling in all directions from it (where they aren't blocked) and one of those lines of photons will strike a point on your retina, as placed by your eye lens. Do that for the whole surface from all positions of the object you get an (inverted) image of that object on your retina. You don't receive parallel rays, you receive the converging ones from all points of that viewed object. if you ask "How can we see stars as we do?",all you are seeing is a white dot which is a single rod being fired on your retina... it has no spatial dimensional value other than your eye is detecting a single line of photons from that star.