If you go deep inside, you will come to know and understand that this constant craving to be somewhere else is because you have not yet learned how to be there, where you are. You have not gone through a discipline – if I may use the word – through the learning of how to be there, where you are. You know only one thing: never to be there, where you are; always to be somewhere else.

Why? Why is this? If you can be somewhere where you are not, why can’t you be there, where you are? You are trying a more difficult, a rather impossible thing, so why not try the possible, the only possible thing? Why? The mind has a trick, and a very cunning trick. It has proven very useful, so it goes on using it. To be there, where you are, is to face reality. There will be problems. To be where you are not is to go on dreaming; there will be no problems. So it is just intoxicating – just intoxicating!

If you love a woman and remain with her, it is going to create problems. But if you imagine a woman and live with her, it is going to create no problems at all. You are alone. There is no one to create problems. So it is intoxicating to create dreams, because then you are the God amidst your dreams. This is your world.

The real world is not yours, rather, on the contrary, you are part of the real world, just a minute part, just an atomic quanta – really, nothing.

What am I in the real world? Nothing! But in my imaginary world, I am divine, I am the whole and soul. The dreams are mine; the whole dreamy world is mine. I may do whatsoever I like. So the mind takes on the trick, and whenever there is difficulty in the real world, you escape into the dream. You learn the trick. And every moment there is difficulty in the real world – there is bound to be – the mind goes on continually escaping somewhere else.

This is the reason why there is this craving. Understand this, be aware of this, and by and by, whenever you feel that you are creating a dream again, just be aware, and the dream will wither away and you will be thrown back to reality.

Howsoever painful, be with the reality. Howsoever pleasant, don’t be with the dreams. They are pleasant – that’s why we are with them. And reality is not pleasant. But through pleasant dreams, you are never going to get any bliss. Only through painful reality does one reach the blissful moment. If you want real bliss, you will have to pass through real pain, real suffering. That is the price to be paid.

If you don’t pay the price, then you can continue dreaming, Really, you are paying more – and for nothing. In this way, you are not escaping reality, you are just thinking that you are escaping. You are going to suffer, you will continue suffering. The reality will be there, and the suffering will be there, and the pain will be there, only you will have morphia with you, opium with you.

The human mind has always longed for intoxicating drugs. They are chemical ways to escape. They are just mental ways to escape. Everyone begins to.