"When you have a ugly dream, never examine what you saw, how you saw it, and if you are guilty, how much guilty you are. The evil one, because he couldn’t bring you into temptation during the day, comes to you at night. God sometimes allows him to tempt us in our sleep, so that we can see that our old man is not dead yet. Other times the enemy approaches a person in his sleep and shows him many dreams, so that he becomes upset when waking up. Therefore do not give any attention to it. Make the sign of the Cross on yourself, your pillow. Put the cross and a couple of icons on the pillow and be praying until you fall asleep. The more attention you pay (to dreams), the more the enemy will come to tempt you. This is not something that happens only to adults, but also to children. And also to small children, although they are like little angels, the enemy frightens them; when they sleep and tremble in agony, and they run scared and crying to their mother’s arms. Sometimes angels approach them and they smile from a joy while sleeping or they wake up from a great joy. Therefore the dreams brought by temptation are an external effect of the enemy on a sleeping human being.
- And when you feel a pressure while sleeping?
Sometimes this is due to an anxious situation that one is going through during the day; or to some fears or some suspicions, etc. All of these can be used by the enemy to make some combination to stun a person. Many times the sleep is so light that one thinks that they are awake and praying to get rid of that pressure from which one can even hold their breath. Sometimes the enemy can even take the form of a man or a saint and appear in someone’s sleep. He once appeared to a sick man in his sleep in the form of saint Arsénios and told him: “I am holy Arsenios. I came to tell you that you will die. Do you hear me? You will die!” the man was scared. A saint speaks never like this to a sick person. And if a sick person is really going to die and a saint comes to inform them of their death, then he will tell it to him in a good way: “Because God saw your suffering, He will take you out of this world. Prepare yourself.” They will not say to him “Do you hear me? You will die!”
- And what about when someone is shouting in their sleep?
It’s better if they wake up. There are many dreams of agony. When a person is in agony or tired, these things are struggling inside them and he sees them in a dream. Many times, when I face various problems of people during the day, injustices that happen, etc., then in my sleep I argue with the other: “You ungodly one! You are senseless!”, and with the voices that I make I wake up.
- Elder, is it possible to foresee through dreams the things that will happen?
No, don’t pay attention to dreams, whether they are pleasant or not. One shouldn’t believe them, because there’s a risk of delusion. 95% of them are illusional. That’s why the holy fathers say not to pay attention to them. Very few dreams are from God, but even they, in order to interpret them one must have purity of mind and other conditions, as is the case with Joseph and Daniel, who had gifts from God. “I will tell you, - said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, - what dream you saw and its meaning.” But what a condition he had arrived to! He was among the lions, who didn’t bother him, even though they were hungry. Habakkuk brought him food, and he said “Has God remembered me?” If God didn’t remember him, whom He remembered then?!
- Elder, some people don’t have dreams.
It’s better. They don’t spend neither tickets, nor gasoline (joke). In dreams in a minute you see something that would last for hours in reality or days; because time is abolished. From this fact one understand the psalm verse: “Thousand years in your sight, o Lord, is as the day of yesterday that passed away.”"
Saint Paisius the Hagiorite (of Mount Athos).
