Dear Toni,

I am so happy that you are aware of yourself - the one who is beyond all doubt!

That you ARE is beyond controversy, but that you are some-thing is only a speculation: only things, or objects, exist. Objects can also be destroyed thereby becoming non-existent.

Existence is only an interpretation of reality, a misinterpretation that assumes duality, at least between subject and object.

You, however, are not an object - you ARE. Nothing can ever make you not-ARE, nothing can make you different: you are the immutable, eternal, the subject, not an object - you are God!

*YuYuTsu*
There is an interesting fork in the road of belief though isn't there between those that subscribe to a belief system that holds that the Divine also has an internal, very personal and intimate aspect to it as distinct from it being a purely an external thing.

*DavidF*

I have sufficient experience of some modern languages to put a big question mark on some of the translations. To be convinced of their "accuracy" I would have to want to make a study of it. That's not to say that I know that all of the works are of sub-standard quality, but certainly of the material that I have seen much of it is is pretty shoddy.

To look at the sub-titling on some movie media, sub-titles on TV etc etc and I would say that a lot of it is less than ordinary. Conversely, in the digital and on line worlds great development clearly is being done and an ongoing work in progress.

See, even if you get a handle on the mechanics of a language, to wield it and deploy it as a native speaker would is a whole other storey involving learning new ways to think and new ways to generate meaning. On top of that, the jump from a modern language to an ancient language is no small intellectual undertaking.

..

I am also wondering about what may be an increasing population of drug induced, paranoid schizophrenics

(and a whole lot more variant and other psychiatric conditions)

in the form of ISIS, being lined up for mass extermination.

..

And I wonder if those in priest's robes did actually try and Exorcise some of the paedophiles before they cut them loose, and their abject failure in that regard is what they were also trying to cover up?

Yuyutsu

"That you ARE is beyond controversy, but that you are some-thing is only a speculation: only things, or objects, exist. Objects can also be destroyed thereby becoming non-existent.

Existence is only an interpretation of reality, a misinterpretation that assumes duality, at least between subject and object."

You make this distinction between (A) 'ARE-ness', which is 'beyond controversy', and (B) 'existence', which is 'an interpretation/misinterpretation' of reality.

According to your (B), we interpret reality, such that, for example, the 'thing in itself' as proposed by Kant is a chimera. I see this as an analogue of the kind of (cognitive) model-dependent realism theorised by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, which is quite well supported by what neuroscience tells us about the brain's mechanisms.

(A), which is for you an a priori ('beyond controversy'), looks to me like the same foundational Cogito, the experiencing, thinking self, that Descartes thought he had pinned down and exempted from controversy, but it's not clear to me how your phenomenologically identified (A) is any less subject to interpretive model-dependent realism than (B). The same brain mechanisms are required for both operations, and they carry no warranty. The innaccuracy of memory, and even confabulation about past 'selves', is quite well attested in psychology..

I suspect for these reasons that a speculative distinction between 'ARE-ness' and 'existence' is gratuitous.

If one wants to prove one's existence one only has to refuse to pay taxes.
Or if you want a more immediate proof just kick the door of a police car.
If however you hold that the repercussions from these actions are illusions, then lend me a few hundred dollars.

In a court case in the 1950's a person of Christian science belief had a serious car accident and the Insurance Company was able to use their belief to prove they had not been injured in reality so lost a huge compensation case. The religion is neither Christian or scientific, but merely a belief.

Dear Pirate,

ARE-ness (or in its alternate grammatical forms, AM-ness and IS-ness) only requires one. No differentiation, no comparison. Existence on the other hand, implies a relationship between at least two: subject and object - the property of being and something that complies (or doesn't comply) with that property. It also suggests space (where this objects resides), time (when it appears) and causality (why it appears).

The latter differentiation is a much-stronger assertion, which doesn't follow from the experience of 'cogito'.