Question: When I first go to bed, sometimes I get a strong feeling of a dream that I had the previous night. Why is this?

Sri Chinmoy: This means that your dream was very strong. Whether it was a positive or a negative dream, the dream was equally strong. With positive dreams you go forward; with negative dreams you go backward. A positive dream is like a flower. You keep a few flowers on your shrine and they emit a fragrance. After some time, even if you take the flowers away, still the fragrance remains. You burn an incense stick for some time and you smell the incense. But when you remove the incense, the same fragrance is there. The thing goes away, but its capacity, its essence, its quality remains. A similar thing can happen with a person. A saint stands in front of you, and then after some time he goes away. But the peace, joy, love that he had in him are still vibrating at that particular place. And if a bad person full of anger and other undivine qualities stands in front of you, then his undivine qualities also remain there and vibrate for some time after he leaves. When a man goes away, the quality that he embodied he leaves on the spot, and you get the effect of the consciousness that he had when he was physically present. It is the same thing with a dream that lingers after it has gone away. If the dream was very powerful, the essence of the dream, its main quality, remains with you.