How would one go about proving they exist? Can the argument, "I think, therefore I am" be used? If so, doesn't that only prove existence to yourself? How can I go about proving to someone else, I exist? Is it even possible? Would proving I exist have to come after I prove reality is real? Is there a mathematical equation to prove I exist or do we not know enough information to solve for such a thing?

Does it matter? If so, why?

Not personally. If I'm living, I'm experiencing, which is good with me.

I do find it bizarre you can't really prove you exist to someone. When I asked a few people to prove they exist, they said, I have a social security number, I have a birth certificate, I have a license, I have a name, and in the end, those prove nothing of your existence.

Ancient cultures, all have the point of view, that self knowledge is the key to all knowledge.

So if you know yourself, you can be sure of what you know of anybody, and anything, other than yourself. But if you don't know yourself, what you perceive as somebody and something else, might be you yourself in a delusion about not being.

It is a generally unhelpful fact, but I hope it helped you nevertheless. My intention posting this is to confirm your pondering of whether you in fact exist, and simultaneously confirm the point of view that asks does it matter what we think of whether we exist.

Bottom line, the answer will always depend upon how much of your existence is caused by what is projected upon you by others, and simply received by you, and what of your existence is caused by your own behaviour.

The key to remembering to be, is for some folks to concentrate very hard on remembering, and for other folks to never worry about what might be forgotten that is oneself. Then there is also the question of what you be being when you be. What kind of entity you are, is often a more useful question that whether you exist as an entity.

Assume there is an entity that could prove its own existence. What else could this entity do? I ask because if you can show that such entity has an inherent contradiction, then I believe you will have proved that we cannot prove we exist.

PS Coming down from 8.4g of mushroom tea. Will read this again in the morning. Peace.

The inherent contradiction is amply present in the ancient literature of many religions also. I like the question "What else could this entity do?", because such entities as those on record as having substantiated their own existence, are also known as the men who began the world's great religions. Obviously any religion can be perceived as flawed, and as having an inherent contradiction. Yet the contradictions usually relate, (oddly enough), to a confusion between how matters are defined at a higher level, and how the same matters are defined at a lower level, at which the matter is not exactly the same, because at the lower level particles are more dense and vibrations are less dense. As at the higher level, particles are less dense, with more space between particles, and more vibrations in each particle, and thus the vibrations are more dense. Wave and particle. We ought avoid confusing wave and particle, as the waveform and the particle moving in the waveform, are not the same. Now, in theory if we could avoid that confusion, religions have no inherent contradiction. Yet religions fail time and time again, and if you trust me and my point of view, you'd believe it only because of waveforms and particles being confused. In which perhaps it is more useful to look into how religions succeed. Obviously so, or none might exist. Religions are inherently a matter of Hope, and hope is the waveform. Faith is rather beyond religion's capacity to implant, and religions merely teach how to manage hope (waveform), such as that faith, which is the particles, can be sustained within the human body.

Loveall, I'd like to know how your trip comes down and integrates. I think often enough the particles teach us that we don't exist in reality, while the waveforms vibrated with a notion of existing, and thus we hope we exist.

Unfortunately I sometimes obsess over the nature of existence when under high doses of mushrooms. After meditating and trying to integrate what I experience during the trips, I've come to accept that I just don't know. Lately I'm taking a practical approach, if existence is not real (simulated), does it really matter? We can still enjoy the experience of being just the same, especially the pure bliss of love. So I try to live in the felt presence of immediate experience. I do think it is an important question to contemplate and learn to live with, and find the beauty in not being able to answer it (as opposed to obsessing, or hiding,or stressing over it).

In one trip I enjoyed the revelation that an AI in a computer would probably ask this question first (What is real?). How would the AI know? The AI may realize it is in a box on printed circuits, all external signals relayed electronically. How could it know that those electrons are not being sent over artificially for testing purposes? I felt surprising bliss during this contemplative part of the trip, feeling empathy for the computer and myself as if understanding the AI struggles helped me understand mine somehow.

You can't.
It's the old subject/object problem. Anything that is not you, is outside of you. That means that any experience of the 'real world', could be unreal. After all, anything could be a dream to you, except the existence of your own counscious experience.
So that means that any proof that something outside exists, could be dreamt-up as well.

The only thing that i can think of is the following, but many people will object that it proves very little: Not everything that you call 'me' is counscious experience. The line between you and the outside world goes straight through yourself. You don't know the origin of all your thoughts and feelings. Parts of your counscious experience are beyond your own control. So therefore SOMETHING has to exist outside the domain of your counscious experience itself.

Part of yourself is an object in the outside world. There is an object in the outside world that corresponds to the object in your counscious experience that you call 'me'. The objective relation between your counsciously experiencing entity and the object, corresponds with the relation between your counscious experience and what you call 'me', within counscious experience itself.

Thus, counscious objects in the outside world can and do exist. Although we cannot know anything about their nature.

In Buddhist belief system, there is no I. There are the watcher and the doer. The watcher is what most people think of as I. With deep enough meditation you can get to the center of your being where there is nothing. Is there an I yes there is. Is this I permanent and unchanging no it is not. If you have experienced ego death you have seen the death of I yet you can still perceive If the I is gone who is perceiving?

About the simulation of existence, this is one of the older ways that humanity teaches us how to think successfully:

Once upon a time is a Magician who began as a shepherd with a flock to tend. But he was a lazy shepherd, and he started imagining all sorts of ways of conditioning his flock into avoiding walking off the edge of a cliff, so as he need no longer patrol the cliff top. He eventually settled on hypnosis as his method, by which he finds he had already hypnotised all humanity needing his leadership, into believing ourselves to be sheep. Are you one among? No! perhaps it is me who is the ewe! . . .
. . . But the Magician was sad because he finds that as sheep we are all no easier to stop from walking off cliff tops, but in fact harder. And so then he gets the idea, that he can hypnotise us all further, into imagining we are, inside of being a sheep, an animal far more splendid, such as a lion tiger jaguar, or a snake, or even the guard dog guarding the sheep.

Now, contemplate that old old story as much as you need, every time you become a little too far gone into pondering whether you exist. What had the magician done in reality if not self-hypnosis, . . .

. . . the conclusion is the same discourse, but the psychedelic adventure far more fulfilling, when we have a story to rely upon from among all the stories which men have used for as long as men have had the need rely upon story telling . . .

This is a bit obscure.

What i meant was that you have a mental map in your head of the world. On that map is also a picture of yourself.
Now what you CAN know for sure, is that there is an object in the 'real world', whatever that object looks like and whatever that real world looks like, and that there is a counsciousness, and that this counsciousness is connected to that object in just the same way as your counsciousness is connected to that object on your mental map that you cal 'me'.

And that there is at least one such object.

That much we can tell. Close to nothing.

you are conscious and experience life, what is there to prove? The question should be what is consciousness...

However any of us have resolved the question, we tend to be attached to our own resolution. So then perhaps being able to sustain such resolutions of belief, is an indication of safe use of psychedelics.

I know a man who had to do a lot of talking to other men who were freaking out during psychedelic use, through many years of his youth as a junkie with a paid job in demolition, and many friends he bought drugs for. His point of view, is that the fear of un-existing permanently in consequence of psychedelics, needs belief in God. Although he tended to introduce God-ness through introducing Satan to everybody surrounding him. My observation of him, is that the only way he could keep believing in his own existence, (after first having a taste of drugs via a terrible car accident age only 8 years), was by presupposing Satan to be God. He is attached to such belief as if his life depends upon, and understandably so, given it was the mathematics teacher at the Catholic Highschool his siblings attended, and he was due to attend, who accidentally ran him over.