Question: If one has a dream, will the events in it actually take place?

Sri Chinmoy: There is no hard and fast rule. You have to know what kind of dream you are having. Sometimes they are all imaginary dreams which come from the subconscient plane. Let us say that you want to eat chicken, but you don't get any. At night that desire may be transmitted into a dream and in the dream you will be eating a chicken. That kind of dream is not a real dream. It is only an unfulfilled desire which comes from the subconscient plane. We see these very often in the dream state.

Some dreams are strange. In the vital world, the consciousness is not pure, so dreams will be full of chaotic, mixed up, silly things. Those dreams are incidents that take place in the vital world.

But there are many good dreams, real dreams. These are harbingers of reality. Dreams are reality in another world above the physical world. If you have a good dream, take it as a reality. But if you have a bad dream, take it as a mental hallucination and just throw it away.

Sometimes the dreams are destroyed before they touch the physical world. On the way to the physical world they are destroyed in the vital plane; therefore they do not take place.

There are some dreams which do take place. These dreams we generally get in the small hours of the morning, between 4:00 and 5:00 or 5:30, at the Brahma Muhurta, or Hour of God. If you have dreams at that time, they are likely to materialise. But these dreams have to be properly guarded against impure thoughts. Also, if you have dreams at a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse, these dreams are usually fulfilled.