Author: Maria Wirth
A German friend sent me a YouTube video about an Indian, Santosh Acharjee, who had a near death experience. He is telling his experience to a Christian interviewer, Randy Kay. It was posted 2 months ago and had already over 2,8 lakhs views. I guessed he would advise everyone to “accept Jesus”, because it is one of the propaganda methods of the Church. There are several videos like that. They try to make people believe that the “loving God” whom people encountered during their time out of the body, is Jesus Christ. It’s a powerful tool for them. They tell…
Recently on twitter, Hath Yogi (@hathyogi31) wrote a thread on major myths about Hinduism that needed to be debunked. The first point was “Hindus are idol-worshippers”. I wrote the following comment: Several Hindus reacted, “We ARE idol-worshippers. Why should we care what others think? We have the right to worship idols”. They are right and they misunderstood me. I did not mean to debunk idol-worship but to debunk the false “label”. The problem is not with the worship of a representation of the Divine, called idol in English, but with the extremely negative connotation which Christianity and Islam have…
Excerpt from my open letter to Pope Francis which is also valid for Muslim clerics. “Maybe Your Holiness is under the impression that Hinduism is a depraved religion and Hindus would do well to accept the Christian God instead of their multiple Gods. Such an impression would be completely wrong. There is no other religion that is – unjustly – denigrated as badly as Hinduism. Sorry to say that Christian (including Catholic) missionaries are in the forefront of this vilification campaign. Few people in the west know how profound India’s ancient tradition is. Long before ‘religions’, as we know them…
If you have not been born into a Christian family, there is absolutely no good reason to accept Christianity. And if you have been born a Christian, you should reflect, what is helpful in your belief and what is harmful for you and for humanity as a whole. Let me explain: I was born in a Christian family and the belief in God, the Creator, who knows us and loves us, was helpful as a child. My mother taught me a brief prayer which rhymed in German. Translated it goes: “Dear God, I am small, my heart is pure, let…
Many years ago in a dream, I saw a map of India before me as one can see it sometimes on TV, with mountain ranges and the Himalayas distinct. Looking at it, my heart expanded with great love. Still dreaming, I was surprised that one can love a country so much. Yet it was not love at first sight. Only on my second visit – intended as a stopover on my way to Australia that lasts meanwhile 40 years – India that is Bharat, showed me what amazing treasures she hides under her noisy and often challenging surface. I realized…
Last year, Mahashivaratri was on 11 March. I was at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar and an amazing incident happened on that day. I share it here, because I feel it can be inspiring and may help, not to judge sadhus too quickly in a negative way. I was standing at the roadside with other people, watching the Akhara of Naga Sadhus passing by to Har-ki-Pauri for Ganga Snan. There were some Babas on horses, some in carts and the majority walked, most of them naked and smeared with ash, some in saffron cloth. One of the naked Babas stopped…
A Pakistani woman, Zainab A. Khan, keeps warning Hindus on Twitter (@ZainabAKhan2) that they have no chance against Muslims if they don’t realise the danger, they are in. She seems to be genuinely caring towards Hindus, which finds an explanation in her pinned tweet. It reads: “Who am I? Lawyer. Dated & married an amazing Hindu guy, who was killed by my family when he visited Pakistan after being promised safe visit. Lost my voice after being shot but still working full time as a lawyer. This should settle this. Stop asking if I’m Muslim or Pakistani.” She recently put…
Someone asked me this question in the course of an interview. Here is what I replied: Oh, there is so much uniqueness that it is hard to put it briefly. Sanatana Dharma is the original, complete knowledge about what is true I consider Vedic knowledge or Sanatana Dharma as the original, most ancient and complete knowledge about what is true regarding us and the universe. It is called today inadequately ‘Hinduism’. An ‘ism’ usually means a fixed doctrine that must be believed, and Hinduism is the opposite of that. It allows the greatest freedom to connect with one’s essential Self,…
Things are finally changing for the better for Hindu Dharma. For too long, many educated Indians, including the first Prime Minister Jawahar Nehru, had accepted the biased view of the British that Hinduism is inferior to the Abrahamic religions, without realizing, that this was a clever strategy to hide the fact that Christianity and Islam are based on a ‘must-belief’ story and Hinduism in contrast, is based on verifiable insights of the Vedas and a genuine enquiry into the truth. For the first time in independent India, now a postgraduate course in Hindu Dharma is included at the Benares Hindu…
An article in the Indian Express from 8th January, 2022 caught my attention. It was titled “Your silence emboldens hate voices: Faculty, students of IIMs to PM”. 16 Professors and 167 students of IIM Ahmedabad and Bangalore had signed a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office. It urges PM Modi to steer the country away from “forces that seek to divide us”, and rued, “Your silence, Honourable Prime Minister, emboldens the hate-filled voices and threatens the unity and integrity of our country.” Almost two years ago, I also had written a letter to the Prime Minister and had attached a…