cardboard adolescent

Well, according to modern physics everything is 'energy' moving about in predictable 'patterns.' Now switch 'energy' with 'God' and 'pattern' with 'thought' and you get idealism. Switch pattern with 'logos' and you get the intro to the Bible. Switch 'energy' with 'blah' and pattern with 'boredom' and you get nihilism. What does it mean to ask 'do we exist?' If I take 'Tom' to mean a static entity with a permanent essence, then no, Tom does not exist, because the entity which others refer to as 'Tom' is constantly changing and reinventing itself. However, this entity does have a certain degree of continuity and to some extent contains previous versions of itself within itself. The same can be said for the environment which 'Tom' is a part of, as well as the components which are a part of Tom. Hence something exists, and this something seems to continually overcome itself through self-reflection. Any existent which is not self-reflective has no experience, and hence only exists through other existents--that is, it is nothing. This means that there is no dichotomy between the 'mental' and the 'material,' since 'material reality' is just a mental schema for organizing experiences. Regardless, there is still a duality--subject/object, self/other, whatever. For language and experience to be possibilities, there must be at least two 'entities.' However, this does not rule out the possibility of a primal emptiness, Godhead, or sunyata as it is known in mahayana Buddhism, which lies somehow 'beyond' the sensory realm of existenz.

Here are some interesting dialectical patterns in reality
quantum mechanics v general relativity
(wave v particle) &&& (space v time)

in philosophy
materialism breaks down into those who believe reality can be fully understood through reason, and those who think reality cannot be fully understood (skeptics)
v
idealism breaks down into those who take a positive attitude of 'will' (god, energy, whatever) where beauty and bliss are its fullest expression, and those who take a negative attitude towards 'will,' where our true purpose is to renounce it and slip back into nothingness.

philosophy itself breaks down into those who are more concerned with perfecting and helping themselves, and those who want to perfect and help society/mankind.

now if you take a hegelian standpoint (thesis/antithesis/synthesis), all these dichotomies will purposely resolve themselves and ultimately lead back to the unity of reality.

i hope that was clear enough. for anyone truly interested in these issues, german idealism is a good place to start, the pre-socratics (heraclitus and parmenides in particular), hinduism, taoism, buddhism, and a liberal reading of christianity all have a good deal of wisdom, and Wittgenstein, existentialism and poststructuralism give a good sense of where we are today.

the meaning of 'reality is an illusion' is much the same as 'that movie is an illusion.' not that reality doesn't exist, but that it isn't what it appears to be. that should be pretty obvious to anyone who has studied quantum mechanics or even atomic physics. it gets even more obvious when you realize 'quarks exist, quarks are energy (e=mc^2), so what the hell is energy?' and unfortunately you have no way of finding out (no logical/scientific way, at least).