Well, about myself, I always had questions when I was young, as a teenager. I always wanted to know “What is life meant for?”. And I couldn’t get answers. I used to discuss with a priest in religious class, and I just couldn’t get answers. Then I also forgot about it again. When I was in my twenties, it was not so important. But I never really believed deeply again. I lost my faith in Christianity because I couldn’t believe that God could send somebody eternally to hell. It made a big impression on me as a child. But, I felt there must be a great power. I never really lost my faith in God, if you want to call it God. So when I came to India, suddenly everything made so much sense, because here it is explained.

As a Christian also, I always felt like I was talking to God within. But God was supposed to be somewhere in the clouds in heaven, and I could never understand how that works. In India, suddenly it says: “Bhagwan is inside, in the form of consciousness.” This made a lot of sense and impressed me so much because if you think about it, what is the most important thing in our life? I mentioned it also in my booklet. Imagine God, or a king, says to you, ‘You can have everything you want. I will give you everything. Just tell me your wishes. But there is one condition: you won’t be conscious.’ Would you accept? Would you accept a big house, a beautiful husband, all the money, all the position, if you are not conscious?

We never think about this. We take consciousness for granted. And by consciousness, I mean what makes thinking possible. It is the basis of the mind. When I heard about Advaita Vedanta, this Indian philosophy, it immediately made sense. It was like, wow. I was so happy. Suddenly, I didn’t have questions anymore about the meaning of life or what is important. I felt that if this is my essence, then I should find out who I really am. This is the most important question in Hindu Dharma. 

This impressed me so much, and that’s why I write, because I feel that in the West, this knowledge is lacking. And now, I feel that even in India, especially among youngsters, many don’t know about it anymore. They are not aware of what great treasure they have. You don’t even have to study so much. Just think a little bit and reflect on what is true—what is true about myself. Nowadays, we don’t do this, because we only have our mobiles. We are always looking outside, and it has become much more difficult.

When I came to India, I used to sit for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening for meditation. Now, I have to admit, I don’t do it anymore, and it is much more difficult. So much information is coming in. You want to know about the situation in the world, and it is important to know about current events. But the essence is that we should know what our essence is. If we have this anchor, then we can be interested in what is happening, even things like the Epstein files and so on. The world is in a bad shape nowadays. We should try to improve it, but we should not forget the most important connection, which is with our true self—Bhagwan, Brahman, Ishvara, God, whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t matter.

Have you heard of this concept of brahman earlier? Did you know about it? I met some students at a conference maybe two years ago. During the tea break, I kept asking them, ‘Can you explain to me what Hinduism is about?’ One girl said, ‘We worship many gods.’ I asked, ‘And who created the many gods?’ There was silence. Then I asked, ‘Have you ever heard of Brahman?’ I don’t mean Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer—the trinity, but the all-encompassing Brahman. Nobody had thought about it. I was so shocked. It is your knowledge.

In the West, many philosophers in Germany benefited from this. Now nobody mentions it. I feel what is happening is that they want to control us. For that, we have to lose our connection to God, to Bhagwan. Then we can be controlled. Then we are afraid to die, and we do everything for security. That is not a good state. So the main thing is that we have to find this connection. Then life becomes easier. It will not always be easy—difficult times will come—but you have an anchor.  I recently talked with some German friends, and we all agreed that we are very grateful to India for this knowledge. Even many young and old Indians don’t know about it anymore. 

And I think it is easier for Indians to understand. I remember I was once in an ashram in Telangana or Andhra Pradesh, very far off, at the end of the road near the mountains. It was the ashram of Karunamayi. A bus came with villagers, and I was the only foreigner. The children ran up the steps, saw me, and ran back to their mothers because they had probably never seen a foreigner. We were in the temple, and Karunamayi gave a talk in Kannada. I don’t understand Kannada, but I understood one sentence. 

She said the temple was for Lalita—Lalita Ambika, Devi, Shiva-Shakti. Have you heard of Shiva-Shakti, Brahman and Prakriti? The innate female power in Brahman that creates everything. She said, ‘Lalita Chaitanya Rupa’—she is in the form of consciousness. At that moment, I thought, if you say this to Germans or Europeans, even educated ones, they will be confused: ‘What does it mean that God is in the form of consciousness?’ But I felt the villagers understood it immediately. Maybe Indians who go only through the English education system are actually at a disadvantage.

I don’t see any difference between hinduism and hindutva because it is actually about documenting things. With communism and socialism, it is always the same—you have a dogma. I was wondering why eastern religion also has an “ism” Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Hinduism, with Hindu Dharma, it is not like that. Hinduism is not an ‘-ism’ in that sense. ‘-Ism’ is not really correct for Hinduism, because it is not dogmatic. It is very open. So ‘Hindutva’ is actually a better word than ‘Hinduism.’

What I noticed, and my book is also about this—the title is Why Hindu Dharma Is Under Attack by Muslims, Christians, and the Left—is that the attacks became stronger after Hindus became aware that actually Hinduism and Hindutva are good. The British told Indians, ‘You have a very primitive religion. You worship nature and many gods. You should adopt Christianity.’ Then, around 2000, when the internet became stronger, there was a talk about Internet Hindu. Hindus could suddenly connect and say, ‘Actually, we have a very good belief system, a very good philosophy, and a very good tradition with so much knowledge. We can be proud of it.’

When this came up, suddenly people started saying, ‘These Hindutvavadis are bad people. They want to throw out Muslims and Christians.’ Nothing of the sort. Hindutva means Hindu-ness, and the essence of Hindu Dharma is that this consciousness—Bhagwan, God—is in everyone. Absolutely in everyone, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or anything else. It doesn’t matter. It is the most inclusive. I did not understand why it is so badly attacked. Even I was personally attacked. 

My neighbor was a communist from West Bengal. He had a Brahmin name. He used to introduce me to his friends as an RSS pracharak. I didn’t even know what RSS really was then, but I thought it must be good, and later I understood and I thought it is good. People try to make it look very bad, as if they are against others. This is a misunderstanding. Not only a misunderstanding, but a conscious one. They don’t want to know the truth. They want to attack Hindu Dharma, because if Christians or Muslims really became aware of what great knowledge is here, they would at least become half Hindu. It makes much more sense—respecting rishis, respecting life, ideally not eating animals. I find it very important that we are so unconscious that we think we can kill animals just for taste. 

People say, ‘Everyone has free choice.’ But you don’t have free choice if it affects the life of another being. Animals are also beings. And this needs to be discussed, and actually in the west there are now discussions about it. But unfortunately in India more and more people started eating meat. If it’s necessary then  it is but if there is no need for it. This respect for human life, animal life, and nature is a very beautiful aspect of Hinduism, hindutva. When I spoke up for Hindus, some of my friends would have preferred if I had been a Christian missionary. They didn’t like that I spoke in favor of Hinduism. Only later did I realize there are two groups of people in India.

For 20 years, I lived mainly in ashrams. I thought every Indian knew what great treasure they had. Then I came into a normal environment and realized that many people were very negative about Hinduism. Most of them were English-speaking and had gone through the education system. They had been taught to look down on their own tradition. Which i had not realised earlier because when i came to india i thought wow, what great knowledge is here. Recently, a CIA document declassified in 2016 talked about cultural trends. It said that apart from village worship, Hinduism has a very sophisticated philosophical and ethical system in Vedanta, in the Upanishads. They know this. So why don’t they research it and spread it? Instead, they attack it. I feel the reason is that they want to cut us off from our connection with the divine. That is the main purpose.

If you see what is happening in the world now, the top elites around Epstein are very depraved. It is very bad. It is Kalyuga. But that doesn’t mean we have to fall into it. We should stand up for what is true and for a dharmic life. So I feel proud to be a Hindu. Some people feel ‘Hindu’ is not a good word and now call themselves ‘Sanatani.’ But we should be careful. ‘Sanatani’ sounds very close to ‘satanic’ in the West. Westerners don’t know what ‘Sanatani’ means. They may automatically think of ‘satanic.’ Not because they want to insult us, but because that is the word they know. So we should be careful not to give anyone a handle to call us demonic. In India, it is no problem. But internationally, people sometimes say Hindus worship demons. Some Christian priests and podcasters say this. But it is completely wrong. Hindu Dharma is the very opposite of something satanic.

In Hindu Dharma, there are basically two levels. There is one level of “Advaita” which means not two, it is the one consciousness which is permeating everything and encompassing everything. It is Brahman, or Ishvara, or Paramatman, or Tat. It doesn’t matter what name you give. It is something you cannot put into words. The vaida said it cannot be put into words, but it really exists. And at this level, I often compare it with Ramana Maharshi. He used to live in Tiruvannamalai and left his body in 1950. He gave a very nice analogy. He said, imagine a screen in a movie hall. A wide screen, one screen, nothing on it.

Now the movie is projected. You see so many people, so many houses, so many things moving on the screen. But if you touch any person or object on the screen or anything that is moving you touch only the screen. That is the essence. The essence is the screen, that is real and solid. The movie is just a flicker. It comes and goes. So Hindu Dharma says there are two aspects. One is the screen—Brahman. It is true, eternal, one, with no distinction. Nothing temporary. And then you have Maya. In Maya, everything is temporary. It appears real. We even cry in the movie hall, but it is not real. The analogy is not perfect, because in the case of Brahman and Maya, Brahman itself creates the movement. There is no projector from outside. The screen itself creates the movie with the help of Shakti. So these two levels we should keep in mind.

In this movie of Maya, there are not only human beings. There are also devas, asuras, and rakshasas. In Hindu Dharma, you worship devas. You don’t worship asuras and rakshasas. The temples are all for devas. Devas stand for sattva. Ashura stands for ego and Rakshasas for tamas, which is very negative. Even Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are devas. They also have a limited lifespan. They are not eternal. Only Brahman is eternal. But they live very long and have much more power. There are also other beings like the sapta rishis and many others mentioned in the Puranas.

I think we should take some of this seriously, because human perception is very limited. We see only a small bandwidth of what is really there. Hindus have rightly been in touch with these devas and worship them, because they are helpful in Maya—also Surya the sun, Chandra (moon) and the elements. India was very fore-sighted, not only did you know about the five elements, but how you knew about it is amazing. You know about the sky, how do you know about it?, it's American (western culture) You had a long history, you had Krishna and Rama. 

When you worship them, Christians, Muslims, and Jews say, ‘Oh, they worship other gods.’ And basically the thing is the God they worship is on the level of devas, because they don’t have this eternal level in their understanding. They see only God in heaven, watching us, and Satan trying to tempt us, so, it's all in maya only. Their whole religion is about believing in a story. They don’t consider what makes thinking possible. They [Followers of Abrahamic Faiths] think, ‘You worship Krishna, Rama, Ganesh, Shiva, Surya—so many forms. How can that be right? There is only one God.’ In one sense, they are right. There is only one God. But we also believe that. We have one God in essence. But Hindu knowledge is vast because it contains everything—the devas who are in Brahman and also what appears in the movie on the screen.

If we could really explain this, I think people from Abrahamic religions would understand. How can you say, ‘Only if you get baptized, you will be saved,’ or ‘Only if you become Muslim, you will be saved’? That doesn’t make sense. It is not possible. It doesn’t seem right.

The problem with Islam is that in the scripture, in the Quran, there are many verses which are very much against others, those who are not Muslims. It says Allah will accept only Muslims. If you are not Muslim, then you will not be accepted. So when someone is a Muslim and hears this, and thinks that Allah wants only Muslims on Earth, then of course he may not be nice to others. If he believes that God doesn’t like us, then naturally he may think he can also be bad to us, cheat us, or not be nice to us. If someone strongly believes what is written in the book, this can happen. 

But there are many people who have never even read the Quran and who are just normal human beings. They have a conscience. They know you don’t kill other people, you don’t cheat other people. This is ingrained in human nature, I feel. But if somebody is very much indoctrinated, then he may put his conscience aside and say, ‘Yes, let’s do jihad,’ “let’s do allah’s will.” And this is very dangerous.

Recently, with all these Epstein files and what is coming out about the deep state, and about ISIS and Al-Qaeda, I am coming more and more to the conclusion that even Muslims are sometimes instigated to riot. Their leaders may be paid. Like what happened in Bangladesh—it is terrible. I wonder what this deep state is doing, pushing people to fight each other. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, left and right in America—they want us to fight each other. And I am coming more and more to the conclusion that we have to try to find commonalities and be aware of who is actually controlling us, who really has the power and all the money in the world.

I know Muslims can be dangerous when people say, ‘It is written in the book, it is God’s word, you cannot change it.’ Then they think, ‘We have to get rid of all these Hindus.’ That is wrong. There is also a theory that Islam was originally created to get rid of Christianity. When Islam began, they went to Syria and killed the christians there and then to North Africa, and then to India. Some people say it was created to make us fight among each other. I don’t know if that is true but it is possible.

But look, for 2,000 years, people have been claiming, ‘God loves only us’—Christians, Muslims. How can that be true? Why has nobody said, ‘This is nonsense’? Can’t we stop this? Can’t we all be friends? Can’t we just be normal human beings? Why indoctrinate our minds with ‘God wants this, God wants that,’ when it makes no sense? I don’t think God wants us to kill each other. If we could make people understand this, I think it would be good.

I would find it very important. The problem is that I know from my own experience. I grew up in Germany as a Christian, and I remember when we were in school, when we were small, we were taught that our ancestors were very primitive. They used to think that God was angry when there was a thunderstorm. So the teacher and the priest would tell us, ‘Look, now you are so lucky. Now you have the true God. But your ancestors were very primitive.’ The problem is now that Indian Christians and Indian Muslims, in all likelihood, were also taught the same thing. You know, these Hindus—you can forget about them. They are just so primitive. They worship so many gods and strange gods.

I think at the same time, there are always people who have the capacity to reflect. And if a certain number of such people would reflect and say, ‘Yes, it makes sense.’ It is like a screen in a movie. That Brahman is eternal, always one, and we are now in this virtual reality, if you want. Elon Musk now talks about virtual reality. Your ancestors knew that it is Maya, which is similar. So I feel we have to make people understand. That’s why I said in my book that a misunderstanding killed millions of Hindus, because the misunderstanding is that we worship other gods. That is a great sin in a Abrahamic religion. 

You must not worship other gods. That means the one God—besides Yahweh, besides God, besides Allah—they feel, ‘Only me.’ If you say, ‘I want only me to be worshipped,’ then it means maybe there are other gods that would also show they are within Maya. So this is not relational and not helpful for humanity as a whole. That’s why I always say Hindu Dharma is the best option for humanity, because it includes everybody.

Exactly. There’s no need for this. I think the reason for it is what I said: people want us to fight against each other. So that we don’t look at what is actually possible in our lives, that there is much more possible. We are working on computers, earning a little money, paying our bills, and trying to look after our families, and we are always busy, you know? And then there are these people who have billions—trillions we cannot even imagine—who looted India during colonial rule and by early Muslim invaders. They took so much out of India.

So I think they want us to fight. They want us to keep fighting. In my last article, I actually wrote about democracy. Even in democracy, you always have two parties. We say we need a very strong opposition. But a strong opposition means that half of the people are unhappy because they didn’t vote for the government.

And when they are unhappy, the leaders of those unhappy people have to keep them unhappy, because they should vote for them next time. They also have to try to make other people unhappy, so that next time they have a chance to win the election. So it is always a confrontation.

I never really thought about it before. Everybody says, and I also believed it, that democracy is the best form of government. But ultimately, Dharma is the most important thing. It’s not the form of government, but if leaders and people are following karma, then society is good.

Well Attempts are on—like this wokeism, especially for young people, and especially for Hindu young people. Muslim young people are not so much in danger from foreign forces, wokeism, and this LGBT, and trying to be so modern. You know, now people go only to the mall. Earlier, they would go for bhajans. Now that pattern is coming back, and this is a good thing. I heard about bhajan clubbing, where people don’t go for heavy music but have devotional music instead.

Even in Germany, a friend from there came recently and said it is becoming very popular. So I think people long for some connection. Everybody longs to have a connection with God, with Bhagwan. If we don’t have it, we lack something. Then we have to look for something else. We need entertainment, we always have to do something. I wish Indians would still have this knowledge, and I think there are still many people who have special powers, like sadhus. India is a special country because the pursuit of truth is still very prominent.

In the West, there is no truth now. Everybody has his own truth. We are very much lost in the West. India is still much better, but attempts are very strong to push Indians away from their traditions and from this connection.

I don’t think so. I had help. She was cooking for me every second day—dal—because I’m too lazy to cook dal, and dal is important when you don’t eat meat, no? So once she was telling me that nowadays people don’t know that what they do has an effect on themselves. That is a very deep knowledge about karma. She doesn’t have a guru, but this knowledge is still ingrained. And I think, look, when you go to a pilgrimage place, you don’t have to worry. You can leave your bag, even if people are poor. This knowledge—that you should be a decent human being—is still here because people still know there is a Bhagwan. This trust is still there.

In the West, there is a historian from Israel who is very famous. He is at the World Economic Forum. He was even here, I think, on India Today, and was presented as a very prominent historian. He says it is ridiculous to believe in God or a soul. He is important in the World Economic Forum and so on, so you can see what they want us to believe. And it is wrong. He is wrong. Maybe some people think, ‘Oh, he’s so famous, he must be right.’ But he’s wrong.

And many people say India is very poor, but India is not so poor. Look at what you can buy in India for ₹60,000. If you have a salary of ₹60,000, it is good. What you can buy with that, I think, if you google purchasing parity, you would need €2,000 or €3,000 in Germany—that is ₹2 lakh or ₹3 lakh. So when we say poor, it is relative. Life is much easier in the sense that it is full of festivals. There are lights blinking, so much decoration, whether it is a religious festival or not. There is so much joy. Imagine small children growing up and seeing horses.

In the West, we have done away with everything. We basically have no festivals. We go to the pub. This liveliness is missing. In India, there are bhajans, pilgrimage places, and beautiful temples. Everybody can go out and even buy a small snack on the roadside. Most people can afford it because it is not expensive. In the West, everything is expensive. So when people keep saying India is such a poor country, I don’t agree. It is not only about GDP. If we want a higher GDP, everything has to become more expensive. 

India should be the Vishwa Guru because it has knowledge. This knowledge is here. I don't know where else it is. It is here, and if it is somewhere else, it has spread from here. This knowledge is that everything is contained, everything is inclusive. And we are all the same in essence. We are not the same outwardly. We have different paths, everybody. We have different talents. You cannot say everybody is the same in this way. Yeah, it is karma.

But our essence is the same. That means you respect everybody. So, in this way, Vishwa Guru, the knowledge is here. And what I said, I think they want to disconnect us from Dharma and from this knowledge, so that we are like everybody else, and that we can also be easily controlled. But I feel India should become the Vishwa Guru. But for this, we should explain in a very simple and easy way. Why? Why India? What knowledge is here which is lacking somewhere else?

It was strange because I was flying back from Khajuraho to Delhi. I had not heard of Bageshwar Baba. There was a young swami walking with us to the plane—it was a small airport. One woman told me, ‘My God, we are so lucky. He is coming with us, flying with us. So many people want to see him.’ And I didn’t know who he was. When we landed, people were standing around him. I even took a photo with him. 

Afterwards, when he went to Bihar, I thought, my God, millions come to see him. I feel, first, that he probably has the power to see things that are not easily seen. Some people say it is all fake and that he is cheating, but I don’t think he is cheating. I think psychic powers are possible, definitely. And he says very clearly that India is a Hindu Rashtra. He says people should be proud to be Hindu and not convert for whatever reason. He is young, and so many youngsters come to him. I feel his influence is a very good thing.

Actually, I didn’t really follow him recently. Since it was in 2024, I think that I saw him. I have not followed what he has been saying in the last two years. I don’t listen to his podcast, so I don’t really know. But I feel it is similar to feminism.

When I was young, feminism started in Germany. I was not very happy with it in the sense that they also wanted women to go to the army. I didn’t want to go to the army. In Germany at that time, we had mandatory military service for boys for 18 months, I think. And the feminists wanted women also to go. We also should.

I think feminism has now gone too far, because in a relationship, somebody has to give in. I remember discussions when we were young: when the husband gets a transfer to another city, why should the wife go with him? The wife also has her friends here, so why should she? But somebody has to give in. If you start fighting from there, then better don’t marry. Be alone.

I was recently at a girls’ college, and a police officer was talking about how girls should be careful. He said they should not expose themselves. Then a girl asked, ‘Why only girls? Why don’t you tell boys?’ And he said, ‘We tell the boys also.’ But her attitude was, ‘Why should I not wear whatever I like?’

When I see girls in shorts, I feel they would be much more comfortable in a salwar. They could move more easily. There should be some common sense modernity, instead of just following the West. It is not the best. In the West, we have gone in a very wrong direction. Now, when you see drag queens and people saying they are dogs, and when you follow what is happening in the West, it is bad—very unreasonable. I would not want India to go in the same direction.

Men and women—I feel giving in is not a bad quality sometimes. Just insisting, ‘I also have a job,’ you know? Of course, talking about it is good, but not pushing for laws only on my side. That is also one aspect.

A taxi driver once told me a story. He picked up a woman in Delhi when he was returning empty to Uttarakhand. She got into the car and kept saying, ‘Straight, straight.’ He said, ‘Tell me where you want to go. Otherwise, I will drop you here.’ Then she said, ‘Okay, you can drop me, but only if you give me ₹300.’ He was shocked. He said he would call the police. Then she said, ‘I will tell the police what you did to me.’ He knew the police would believe her, so he felt trapped. He gave her ₹300 and she left.

If this is considered an ideal, it should not be like this. It is a very sad situation. Thinking, ‘Because the law is on my side, I can do whatever I want,’ is wrong.

Well, the most important thing is that we do some sadhana. To sometimes stop and try to recover this inner essence, and develop love for it. It is about Dhyana, Bhakti, Karma, and raja, which means meditation. Meditation basically means sometimes going inside. This is most important—that we have some experience. Yes, there is a beautiful state within us. It is love. It is an expansion. Sometimes, when you wake up in the morning, when you are not yet fully you, when you don’t think yet, and you just feel this inkling maybe, of what that state is. And I really think it is love. Somebody once said, “The only real thing is limitless love, and this is a screen.” The white screen

It is in all of us, but it is hidden. In this play of Maya, they try to put it away, but it cannot be erased. I think that is what is meant by Satyameva Jayate. This screen cannot be deleted. It is always present, and we have to uncover it—the white screen somehow, and discover our essence. 

For the future of Hinduism, the main thing is that Hindus first need to do sadhana. They need to discover their essence. Do some meditation, do some yoga, and read books like Bhagavad Gita. It is very inspiring, for example. And then also explain it to others—that we are not idol worshippers in the sense that we are sinners. What we are doing makes great sense. The god of the Abrahamic religions is basically an idol. I mean, if a god loves only one group, he must be a tribal god. He cannot be a universal God, isn’t it?

That is why I feel India has to become the Jagat Guru, because India has this inclusiveness. It is universal for everyone. It is not exclusivist. It does not say, “If you don’t follow this guru, this son of God, or this prophet, then sorry you go to hell.” I mean, we should be capable of making people understand that this is really nonsense—ridiculous.

And we have to say it. Somehow we are shy. But it is not insulting; it is putting facts on the table. A Christian has no problem or a Muslim has no problem saying, “You go to hell if you don’t convert.” And that doesn’t make sense, no? And we don’t reply. We either think our thing or turn away, or avoid it. But we should have the confidence to come and explain in a good way, in an amicable way—not confrontational.

We should say: You are human first, no? It is possible that what you believe is the truth. And then explain what you have found. So, I think in this way, in Hinduism, we must first do our own sadhana. We have to know and experience this essence in us— know a little but feel this beauty and this love inside. And then we can also explain it to others.