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Awareness & Reality

How do we know that we exist?

My first, automatic response: What a strange question. Intriguing, though...an interesting topic. I think I'll write an article about this.

Oddly enough, I've actually asked myself this question before. Truly and honestly, we don't. We will never actually know if we exist or not, because for all we know, this is all just a dream. An illusion. Something unreal, as if we're staring off in a daze. But then, how could we see a dream or an illusion without existing? Simple. We may be a fleeting image, something that does not really exist as a life form but it thinks that it does; something so small and insignificant that it is hardly even notices as a whisper to the true, existing society. Of course, that, too, is existance. Again, this life could not be here at all, except for in our own, nonexistant minds. This world, this universe...it could be empty of all life, or it could not be present at all. How, then, would we know it? Well, perhaps we don't. It may be a trick of the senses, unnoticable by those who are obliviously part of it. Pecuilar thought, isn't it? To not truly be alive, even as you sit here reading this article? For all you know, this article could not even exist! Then how could one read it? Another trick of the mind, I'm afraid. This possibility of not existing could bother the mind of humankind for the rest of eternity, but will we ever discover a true answer? Probably not. I mean, face it: Is there truly a way for a nonexistant being to discover that he does not exist? Unlikely.

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