"I think, therefore I am"

‘Ceteris Paribus’ – means ‘everything else unchanged’, a term often used to understand many otherwise inexplicable, inconsistent concepts. But in reality, one cannot assume every other factor to be a constant to understand the performance of a concept in isolation. In the ancient world, it was imperative for the human mind that was in its formative years, to build hypothesis and come out with theoretical explanations of both physical and cosmological processes to begin with, particularly to make way for ‘rationality’ against merely labeling everything as an ‘act of god’. But now, having moved far ahead in time, it is crucial for us to develop contemporary philosophies, based on the principle of relativity. Theories that do not provide factual information or guarantee the truth, but that are built up empirically on correct premises - based on scenarios and ever changing variables.

In the metaphysical world, ‘existence’ is a matter of fact, one of the perennial topics of the subject. ‘To be’ is to exist – simple. But ‘to be’ where? To be walking on the earth, or to be lying down, to be in the womb, in the sperm? Or ‘to be’ in a more abstract form - in thoughts, in mind or dreams? I’d like to believe that existence cannot be as lame as something that you can touch and that a human mind is capable of imagining anything, even something as complicated as a ‘feeling of touch’.

Continuing to think on the same lines, it could be possible that everyone and everything around one is nothing but a figment of one’s own imagination - the creative play of one’s mind.

For example, the loving family and friends, personal space and home - created to comfort and provide the feeling of belongingness. The positive and inspirational characters like teachers, books of knowledge – created to define all source of existing super awareness of the mind, only appearing to be arising from them. The wealthy and the powerful characters crafted for one to see the way up and decide which way to go. The poor and needy created to keep the feet grounded. The strength of the mind determines how one leads a life. The dreams and the hallucinations, nothing but the incomplete figments.

The ever changing technology, nothing but one’s own intellect – taking its form as soon as it reaches hands. The news – constructive or destructive, all fabricated according to the positive or negative state of mind. Pain, only a wake up factor, or a desire to remove boredom, and joy a means to remain in the moment.

If somebody else dies, the supposed being who has supposedly "died" is only a phantom of one’s imagination, or more plausibly – redundancy of a character. Death of a mind could just be a belief that ultimately one will break away from the otherwise infinitely long existence – which, according to me is a much scary possibility.

To sum up, the world as we see is one’s own universe.

I read about this online to see if there’s someone else who thinks like me and bumped into a concept called “Solipsism”, which is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. Solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind.

As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner.

There will be questions that the concept of Solipsism might not seem to resolve, but then even metaphysics has failed to resolve innumerable doubts on the concept of existence. However, my only question that remains unanswered is that if people and things  around are a figment of my imagination, is it possible that my own existence is someone else’s imagination?

To read more on Solipsism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism