Question: Why did I have so many bad dreams when I was small?

Sri Chinmoy: Perhaps your vital wanted to have those dreams. Many times our vital gets malicious pleasure by inviting or invoking wrong forces. Wrong forces in this case means bad dreams. On the one hand, when we are conscious we do not want to have bad dreams, but when we are unconscious, we sometimes invite things that are not divine. I am sure you have been to the zoo many, many times. There we see tigers and lions and all kinds of ferocious and destructive animals. We do not want them to kill us, but we enjoy going as close to them as possible. Similarly, we can say we do not want bad dreams. We do not want them; we never wanted them. But on some level we did want them.