According to Osho, chronic future daydreaming is the mind’s way of avoiding the present; it recycles and decorates the past, keeping you in time and away from reality. The present is timeless, beyond mind. Only moments of meditation—silent, thought-free awareness of what is here-now—end the fantasy and bring direct joy, truth, and nourishment.
Always thinking about the future is like playing old movies in your head; stop the movie for a moment and fully notice what’s happening right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why am I always daydreaming about the future?
THE QUESTION IS FROM GAYATRI. It is not only you, Gayatri, who is continuously daydreaming; everybody is doing that. Human mind as such is a daydreaming faculty. Unless you go beyond the mind, you will continue to daydream. Because the mind cannot exist in the present. It can either exist in the past or in the future. There is no way for the mind to exist in the present. To be in the present is to be without mind. You try it. If there is a silent moment when no thought is crossing your being, your consciousness, when the screen of consciousness is absolutely unclouded, then suddenly you are in the present. That is the moment, the real moment -- the moment of reality, the moment of truth. But then there is no past and no future. Ordinarily, time is divided into these three tenses: past, present, future. The division…
Osho, I either drown in memories of the past or in imaginations of the future. The present, for me, is just an empty word. What should I do?
This is not your condition alone; it is everyone’s. This is the very nature of the mind. The mind is either in the past or in the future; it cannot be in the present. Hence, for the mind, the word “present” is an empty word. Just inquire a little: whenever you are thinking, you either think of the past—what has happened, what is gone—or you think of what is going to happen. But how can you think about what is? It simply is. Where is the scope for thinking? What is, is. What difference will your thinking make? And if you think, you will miss—because thinking creates an interference. You ask, “What should I do?” Become a mirror. As long as the mind remains, you will keep swaying between past and future. The mind is like a clock’s pendulum—swinging from one end to the other, never resting in the middle.…
The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future. Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not. Don't think of the future. Live in the present. That's my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present. Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God. This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment.
Osho, you often say we should be aware only of the present. But along with that, would you also say that while remaining aware we should not worry about the future? Do you want to exclude it altogether—are you advocating its total banishment?
In truth, my emphasis is on living, not on thinking. And one can live only in the present; you cannot live in the future. My emphasis is on living—just as my emphasis is on eating food. Now if someone says to me, “Shall we eat tomorrow’s bread—do you object?” I would say, first of all, you cannot eat the bread of the future; you can only dream about it. And the great danger in dreaming is that today’s bread may be missed. The real danger of dreaming is this: if you are busy eating the bread of the future, who will eat the bread of the present? And the present does not stop for you even for a moment. Whether you are present or not, it keeps rushing on. You are there or you are not—still the present does not wait. It does not stop for you; it goes on.…
He said, ‘I travel only once in three years.’ I asked, ‘What do you do the other two years?’ He said, ‘One year I spend thinking over the last journey I made— savoring its juice. And one year goes in planning the next journey.’ Even then Nasruddin travels at least once in three years; you do not travel even once. Half of your life goes in thinking of the past and half in planning the future; the journey never begins. Either you wander in memory—which is a dead dream—or in imagination—which is a dream of the future, which has not yet been born. You are cut in two; and in between is the present—there is life; you remain deprived of it. Knowledge will awaken you—to the here and now, to this very moment. Knowledge will bring you into the present. The past is lost; it has gone.