Inside each of us is a desire to know something more than what we see or respond to in this material world. However, there are plenty of those who contend that this indeed is all there ever will be, and anything else beyond this world is merely wishful thinking; yet, each of those people, each night, experiences a world beyond this world in their own dreams, which often takes them beyond time and space.
Man has an innate need to find something outside of himself and outside of his typical world. While some may find this altered state of consciousness easily through prayer, quiet contemplation, or meditation, others take an entirely different route with the usage of drugs and assorted substances that through chemical reactions to the brain force the consciousness into a different state than it is at everyday rest; very often this desire to get "high" comes from the desire to become something other than your perception of whom or what you fundamentally appear to be.
This need for an altered state of consciousness, no matter how it is attempted, comes from a thirst for something outside of ourselves that will provide meaning, purpose, contentment, and answers to the questions that we have. Each of us believes, no matter where we are at, at one time or another that we are lacking in something, which means that we should be searching for that something else, although often we don't really seem to know what that something is.
For some of us, we try to drown out that search by staying busy and occupied, so that we never have to take the time to actually contemplate that beyond our small little world, are things that are so much bigger. For others, that search is so vague; we don't know how to go about searching for it, so we take substitutes for it, by ingesting or smoking substances that will ease our mind in such a way, that we aren't worried about the search, itself. Then there are those that know that if they can just still their active mind, and turn within, that they can indeed connect with a dimension beyond this one, and experience true peace and love at a capacity previously unimagined.
It is that search that pushes man inevitably forward, even though at times, it appears mankind is in a period of moral decay and decline. That search is the reason for being, it is the reason that people do not give up and will continue to push on, even under the most trying of circumstances. No matter the noise of a busy day, or the sheer boredom of a day without direction or purpose, we are pulled, always pulled to find that which must be found. We can talk about it, ignore it, take drugs to try to kill it or push it to the edges of oblivion, deny it, curse it, or we can embrace it and become one with it.
Our mind cannot know peace and tranquility until it reaches union with the One mind--and with that union this delusion that traps us so well within this world will vanish as if it never was.