THE NIGHT MESSENGER: (Why Nightmares Are So Important)

November 15, 2026

Seerat, a 29 year old, had a thriving career. She was both righteous and smart. One night she had a terrible nightmare. It is dark. She looks around and sees her father. He is lying on the ground and dying. She looks at him and gets very scared about his death. In that terrifying dream, she cries like she has never cried before. She wakes up, terrified. Her heartbeat is rapid and her whole body enmeshed in sweat.

In winter! When children have nightmares, parents generally tend to switch on lights, give a hug to the child. Telling the child that all is well. Even when adults have a nightmare, the overwhelming consensus is to provide some calmness to the person. Some consolation and that is it.

After all, nightmares are just scary thoughts with no connection to real life! However, scriptures and ancient knowledge suggest otherwise. Nightmares may well be storehouses of prophecies about an impending negative event. They may also reveal a past life trauma or provide warnings about a possible future event that can be changed.

THE NIGHTMARE OF CHANDRAGUPTA Jain tradition records that on one night in the fourth century BCE, the emperor Chandragupta Maurya woke in terror. He had seen sixteen dreams in a single night. In one, the sun set before its time. In another, a serpent with twelve hoods rose before him. He sent for Bhadrabahu, the last teacher of his age to hold the entire Jain canon in memory.

Bhadrabahu read the dreams as the announcement of a famine lasting twelve years (Harishena, Brihatkathakosha, 931 CE). The emperor renounced the throne, followed Bhadrabahu south with a company of great monks, and fasted unto death on a hill at Shravanabelagola that still bears his name, Chandragiri. Inscriptions at the site, dating from about 600 CE, commemorate both men (Rice, 1889). The tradition holds that the migration planted Jainism in Karnataka, where it flourishes today. This is the mystery. Was the dream a message from beyond, or the anxiety of a king who sensed a failing harvest? Every civilisation has recorded such dreadful nights ruled by a nightmare. THE WARNING DREAMS OF SCRIPTURE The sacred record is vast.

The Atharvaveda carries hymns to avert the evil dream (6.46), and the Charaka Samhita lists dream imagery among the omens of illness and death. In the Ramayana, the Rakshasi Trijata has a nightmare of Lanka in flames and Ravana journeying towards the realm of Yama (the devil God of death). She understands this dream as a warning and consequently warns her fellow guards to treat Sita with respect (Valmiki, Sundara Kanda, 27).

The Mandukya Upanishad explains that dreams are the second of the four states of consciousness, a plane of experience in its own right. The Bible is equally rich. The Magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod, Joseph is told to flee to Egypt with the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:12 to 13), and Pilate’s wife sends a message to her husband: “I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.” (Matthew 27:19) Pharaoh’s dream of seven lean cows devouring seven fat ones led Joseph to store grain for seven years of famine (Genesis 41).

A hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari calls the true dream one of the forty six parts of prophecy. Queen Maya dreamed of a white elephant before the Buddha’s birth. Gurbani also places dreams on the pedestal of the superconscious.

WHAT PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROLOGY SAYS

In October 1913, Carl Jung dreamt of a monstrous flood covering the lands between the North Sea and the Alps, with the waters turning to blood. In the spring and early summer of 1914, he dreamed three times of an Arctic cold wave freezing the whole of Europe. He feared he was losing his sanity until war broke out in August (Jung, 1963). Jung concluded that the unconscious perceives what the conscious mind overlooks. J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977) proposed that dreams arise when the brainstem fires random signals in REM sleep and the cortex weaves them into a story.

Pierre Maquet and colleagues (1996) showed through brain imaging that during REM sleep the amygdala, the seat of fear, is highly active while parts of the prefrontal cortex, which exercise critical judgement, grow quiet. This explains why dreams carry such emotional force. Matthew Walker and Els van der Helm (2009) add that REM sleep processes emotional memories, which suggests that a troubling dream may be the mind digesting worries the waking self had set aside. Carey Morewedge and Michael Norton (2009) studied participants in the United States, India and South Korea and found that all three groups gave more weight to dreams than to equivalent waking thoughts. Participants who imagined dreaming of a plane crash were as likely to cancel the flight as those given an official terror alert.

THE BRIDGE: A WARNING AS AN OPPORTUNITY

The traditions treat warnings as conditional. Jonah announced the destruction of Nineveh within forty days, and the city repented and was spared (Jonah 3). Patanjali states the principle in four words: heyam duhkham anagatam (the suffering that has not yet come is to be avoided (Yoga Sutra 2.16)) The Yoga Vasistha teaches that destiny is the accumulated residue of past effort, and that present effort can reshape it (Book II). Chandragupta could not end the famine, but he altered his own course before it arrived. The believer may hear in such a dream the voice of the Divine. The psychologist may hear the intuition of a deeper mind that has noticed a failing in health, in a partner or in a plan. The wise response is the same in either case.

The dream is a signal, and a signal asks for attention and not for panic.

THE PATH OF DISCERNMENT

A warning dream can be very graphic and often wakes you up at night. It is vivid and coherent; it often returns if the meaning is not grasped. Yet it can be very terrifying. In medieval European folklore and old English belief, a mare was a demonic or goblinlike creature that sat on a sleeping person’s chest. Around 1300 CE, the compound word nightmare began to refer literally to the evil spirit itself.

By the 16th century, the meaning shifted to describe the suffocating physical feeling and eventually evolved to mean a frightening or unpleasant dream. However, it is not a prophecy. It is symbolic, scary and designed by the sub-conscious mind to literally awaken the person to act on a certain issue. Once the person acts, on the message of the nightmare, the future, depicted in the nightmare does not happen.

In order to record the all important messages of the subconscious through such scary dreams, keep a notebook at the bedside and write the dream down on waking, before the details fade. Sit in silence or prayer before acting on it. Then test it through ordinary means, with a medical examination, an honest conversation, or a careful review of the contract that troubles you. Never take an irreversible decision on a dream alone. Chandragupta did not act in isolation. He sought the counsel of a teacher, as every reader should seek a wise person’s view. The night sends its messages to emperors and householders alike. The wise keep a lamp lit for them.

Parneet Sachdev, IRS is the Chairman of Real Estate Regulatory Authority and a leading author.