Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.What do you dream of? And what are your dreams made of? Have your dreams warned you, guided you, or left you in confusion? What do your dreams tell you about yourself? Are they a mirror to what's been consuming your thoughts, or are they a message to you from the unseen? When you dream of your dead loved ones, is it they who are visiting you, or is your soul traveling to their realm? Your dreams can be a window into your subconscious, or a doorway into the world on the other side that awaits you. And every night your soul departs your body to visit your next stop, only to come back and give you another chance to repent to Allah before it's too late. There was this 28-year-old young man in Gaza named Amir who was staying in a Nasir hospital. And this video shows him missing an eye and having gone through multiple surgeries. And his doctor who's interviewing him says to him, what's going on? Why do you seem so happy even as you were struck so brutally? So he says, look, I'm 28 years old, and I've been in the hospital for 40 days. And those were the best five seconds of my life.
This reminds me so much of an incident from the time of the Prophet (ﷺ) where Anas (رضي الله عنه) says that the Prophet (ﷺ) used to love good dreams. So he would say to his companions every day, who amongst you had a good dream last night? And Anas (رضي الله عنه) said if the person was known to be of good character, the Prophet (ﷺ) paid more attention to their dreams. So this woman comes to the Prophet (ﷺ) and she says, Ya Rasulullah, I saw myself entering Jannah. And then she named 12 men that she saw there. She said they were covered in blood. And then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says to a group of angels, Ithhabu bihim ila nahr al-barzakh, take them to the river of Barzakh. And so they go into that river and they come out, wa wajuhuhum kalqamar, and their faces were like the full moon. Then they had golden chairs and plates with fresh food and dates. And she said, I sat and I ate with them. And then right as the woman finishes telling the Prophet (ﷺ) her dream, a man comes to the Prophet (ﷺ) with the news of the shahada of those exact same 12 men that the Prophet (ﷺ) had earlier sent on an expedition. So what happened here? Are these people actually entering Jannah? Are they entering Barzakh? Are they meeting other souls in reality? Dreams
are referred to in psychology as the royal entry into the unconscious. Dreams will tell us a lot about ourselves, what populates our unconscious, what we're concerned with in reality, where our hearts are really connected. And if you look at the dreams of the righteous, they're always dreaming about the Prophet (ﷺ) or visions of paradise or other righteous people because their dreams reflect what fills their hearts, their minds and their souls. And your dreams also reflect what fills you. So yes, our dreams are full of meaning, even the ones that come from ourselves. Now there's room for their importance in Islam, but we also don't inflate them to where we start ignoring our clear reality. Basically don't live in your dreams to the point that you don't actually pursue the living directives from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Your Prophet (ﷺ) did not want a sleeping ummah. After all, he was the man 'Alayhi Salatu Wassalam whose heart never slept even when his eyes were closed. And when your heart is awake, amazing things can happen. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, أصدقكم حديثاً أصدقكم رؤياً The most truthful of you in speech are those with the truest dreams. So a Siddiq who we spoke about will have dreams with true guidance because they are truthful hearts. And the Prophet (ﷺ) said that of the worst lying is to lie about a dream. And as the Day of Judgment gets closer and times become more deceptive, where what appears to be true in front of us in this dunya is actually a lie and sometimes vice versa, the Prophet (ﷺ) said that Allah rewards us with dreams that will hardly fail to come true. And there has always been an element of truth in dreams to the point that the Prophet (ﷺ) described them as 1/46th of prophethood. Now you might say, how does that number make sense? Of the 23 years of revelation to the Prophet (ﷺ), for the first six months, Allah exclusively communicated
to him through true dreams. And if you take six months of 23 years, that's 1/46th. The difference of course is we don't become prophets through our dreams. And unlike the prophets whose dreams are always true, the rest of us have some dreams that are true and others that are not. The Prophet (ﷺ) said the following, he said there are three types of dreams. There is a true vision from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Then he said there is a distressful nightmare that comes to you from Shaytan. And then he said there's hadithun-nafs, and this is the majority, which is just our regurgitated thoughts. He said (ﷺ), if someone sees something they dislike, then don't seek its interpretation. Instead, let him stand up and pray and not speak to other people about it. In another narration, the Prophet (ﷺ) warned that the interpretation of a bad dream is tied to a bird's leg. So I want you to imagine that it's flying above you and he's saying don't make it come to be by seeking its interpretation and causing it to fall upon you. Instead, just seek refuge from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But beyond the different categories of dreams, the fact is that dreams still remain a door into communication from the unseen. Whether it's a message from Allah through angels or direct inspiration of events that come to be or meeting our deceased relatives. In one narration when the Prophet (ﷺ) was told of a dream about him, he explicitly said, verily the souls meet. What does that mean? Do our souls actually meet in our dreams or is this symbolic? And if they do actually meet, who goes where? Do our souls travel to the barzakh or do dead souls come back to the dunya? For one, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala can certainly connect souls across dimensions even when they're living in this dunya. So look at the example of Umar (رضي الله عنه) shouting out to Sariah (رضي الله عنه), one of his commanders who was thousands of miles away and he has an
army ambushing him from behind the mountain and somehow Umar perceives that all the way in Medina and says, Ya Sariatul Jabal, O Sariah, look behind the mountain. And Sariah hears that all the way in Persia and he's able to go to the mountain with his troops and fight off the attacks instead. And Ibn Al-Qayyim (رحمه الله) said, indeed, living souls can meet in ways Allah only knows whether they're sleeping or they're awake. And it's not just soul connections within dimensions in dunya. Allah will also certainly allow souls to meet across space in the next dimension of barzakh. And every night you encounter the barzakh in your sleep because every night you die a minor death. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, Allahu yatawaffa al-anfusa heena mawtiha wa allathee lam tamut fee manamiha. The souls are taken out during sleep and then they are returned. So yes, your souls are in another world but tethered to the body still, which is why the body is still alive, although their level of consciousness has reached its lowest state. And the deeper the sleep, the more your level of consciousness and awareness of this dunya fades away. And the deeper that it potentially slips into the barzakh. On the other hand, the more shallow the sleep, the less likely it is that you're having true dreams. And the more likely it is that you're just replaying thoughts in your head and going through hadith an-nafs. Ibn Al-Qayyim (رحمه الله) explains how the soul travels to the barzakh in Kitab al-Ruh. So when you actually die, the soul exits from your mouth as the Prophet (ﷺ) said, and the eyes follow it as it completely departs your body. And SubhanAllah, you can see in the face of a shaheed often, their mouths open and their eyes looking up with a smile, as if they see themselves leaving this world. But Ibn Al-Qayyim (رحمه الله) says that the sleeper soul, which is still tethered to the body, exits like a ray through the nostrils but only partially. And a truthful soul traverses to the heavens and back while a lying soul
meets the shayateen mid-air, which corrupts its visions. And this is where Ibn Abbas (رضي الله عنه) said that the believing souls of the living and the dead meet in the dream world and they ask each other about certain things. Allah withholds the dead souls and sends back the living souls to their bodies. Now, how can you distinguish between all of these dreams? Well, there are certain signs for you to look out for. If the dream is coming from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, then it's going to be either commanding you to do good or forbidding you from evil because that's what Allah 'Azza wa Jal always commands you to do, or they're going to come true because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala only communicates in truth, or they're going to increase you in iman because Allah 'Azza wa Jal will send you what potentially increases your faith, as is the norm of our relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And of course, what would be greater than seeing the Prophet (ﷺ) himself, and that is certainly from Allah, as Shaytan cannot take the form of the Prophet (ﷺ). Now, if the dream is from the Shaytan, well think about what the Shaytan wants to make you do. Number one, it makes you afraid because Allah 'Azza wa Jal says, yukhawwifu awliyaa, the Shaytan tries to stir up fear, or he tries to stir up desire or encourage you towards something that's sinful, or he gives you something that's contrary to the revelation, even if it appears to be a good dream. So you can't see yourself receiving some sort of new revelation or some sort of new sign from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala that's not already established in the deen. But if it's a dream from our residual memories just stored up in the brain, being uploaded to our consciousness during sleep, then it's going to be meaningless, or it might be about some of our unresolved conflicts or some of our tensions. We might have a mix of flashbacks and memories. And sometimes you can still have good things there because you're constantly uploading to your thoughts good things. So you might still be seeing the masjid, the Qur'an, but you might also see a combination of that with a bunch of other things that don't make sense at all.
And that's hadith un-nafs. Now when it comes to true dreams and the meeting of the souls, the dead don't get to control who to go to see, nor do the living determine who they get to see from the dead. These are gifts from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for very specific reasons. So if you have a dead relative, don't get mad if you feel like they're visiting someone else more than you in their dreams. It's entirely up to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala whether or not to send your soul back to you after sleep and whether to send souls to meet each other when you sleep. So what do we see in these types of dreams where we communicate with other souls? Sometimes you just see people that you loved strolling in paradise in their favorite dress or with the most beautiful appearance ever and they're smiling right at you in a dream. And sometimes they look distressed because they need something from you to reach another level. Sometimes you might see someone appear to you to even ask you to go handle a financial debt, as was the case of Thabit ibn Qais (رضي الله عنه), who after the battle of Yamama, again a shaheed, he appears in a dream and he asks his companion to go find a shield of his that was stolen in the battlefield and he tells him the exact location where it is. And he says, then go ask Abu Bakr (رضي الله عنه), the khalifa, to pay off a debt that I had with that shield. So the shield was found in the exact same place he said it would be and Abu Bakr (رضي الله عنه) actually acted upon that dream. Sometimes it's a word of advice. Many of the students of Imam Sufyan al-Thawri (رحمه الله) would see him in their dreams after he died and he was still giving them advice. Sufyan ibn Uyayna (رحمه الله) said, I saw my teacher Sufyan al-Thawri (رحمه الله) in a dream and I said, Awsani, give me advice. He said, you need to keep the company of fewer people. Others just saw him in Jannah and in some dreams they asked him how he got there. Al-Jawli (رحمه الله) narrates that someone had seen
Sufyan al-Thawri in a dream and he was asked, what did Allah do to you? So he said, I had only been put into the grave and in an instant I was in front of the Lord of the worlds. I entered and straight away met someone who said to me, Sufyan, I said, yes. He said, do you remember a day that you preferred Allah over your desires? I said, yes. And upon answering, I was immediately served these big plates of food from Jannah. Another man, Su'ayr ibn al-Khims (رحمه الله) said, in a dream, I just saw Sufyan al-Thawri (رحمه الله) flying from date palm tree to date palm tree and the entire time he was reciting Alhamdulillah all praises be to Allah who fulfilled his promise to us. And SubhanAllah, how sweet when you see a deceased parent or a teacher or a friend enjoying the sweetness of paradise. Sometimes you may even see someone telling you that your time is coming soon and so they're actually excited about your coming arrival. All of these are possibilities, but again, you can't live in your dreams. You live life in the choices that you make when you're awake that all affect what your next stop is actually going to be. And it's important that people not turn their bad dreams into self-fulfilling prophecies or turn their good dreams into the litmus test of righteousness. Because while we sleep, our hearts never should. But the best dream you can have, the best soul you can meet, is the best of Allah's creation, Rasulullah (ﷺ). And to meet him in a dream is a truly special
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