The Supernatural – Alive in India and Suspect in the West
When I was young, I always felt the urge to leave Germany. I felt suffocated by what I perceived as a general heaviness and a rigid social environment. Also from a professional perspective, I could not relate to the approach in the communication design sector. I wanted to leave my home country as soon as possible. Though still at university, when I received a scholarship for a year in London, I did not say no. Since then I have lived in many places between Europe and the Emirates.
Eventually my path led to India. Here, I felt immediately at home, despite the chaos, dust and subtropical climate. At some point I began to understand why. Here I encountered a culture in which the divine and metaphysical have a place in everyday life. My interest is not really in religion, but in the spiritual dimensions, independent of institutions, dogma and middlemen.
Temples, shrines, rituals, small gestures, prayers, astrology, gods and goddesses, spiritual practices and ideas about realities beyond the immediately visible are simply part of the cultural landscape. This goes far beyond "institutionalised religion". And it creates an atmosphere I experience as soothing and soul-nourishing. Even the common daily greeting Namaste – done with folded hands in front of one's heart (Anjali mudra) plus slight head bow – has a deep spiritual meaning: the divine in me honours the divinity within you. This vibes quite differently than a firm European handshake.
When looking back, I understand what was attracting me to India and what had been driving me all along: freedom and an environment with people who integrate the spiritual in everyday reality.
I’m interested in the invisible aspects of life, in our original human nature and abilities, in energy and consciousness, but also in our creative expressions and the love between humans, nature and animals. Had my focus been on materialism, worldly comforts and wealth accumulation, I probably would have stayed in London, Milan, Zurich or Dubai.
Information about supernatural or metaphysical realities can be found in many religious and spiritual traditions. Otherworldly beings, invisible realms and extraordinary human capacities appear in texts and traditions across cultures. What strikes me in India is not simply that such ideas exist, but that they can be spoken about quite naturally. They have not been relegated to mythology, fiction or the irrational. People openly speak about past-life regression and karma (the law of cause and effect) as people in the West speak about their weekend plans.
In Hindu scriptures, supernatural powers (known as siddhis) are described in detail. These abilities are traditionally associated with spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga and other forms of sadhana. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, for example, describe such phenomena in connection with concentrated yogic practice.
Christian traditions also contain accounts of supernatural abilities and experiences. The New Testament speaks of “spiritual gifts” or charisms including healing, knowledge, prophecy, miracles and the discernment of spirits. Later Christian mystical traditions also contain accounts of visions and other extraordinary phenomena. In Christianity, however, spiritual gifts are primarily seen as tools for ministry and service, rather than signs of personal spiritual advancement. Christian teachings often caution against seeking extraordinary experiences or powers for their own sake, emphasising humility and the risk of pride.
There are interesting parallels here with Indian traditions, which acknowledge the supernatural while also warning against becoming fascinated or identified with it.
Indian religious literature also contains a rich world of non-human beings and entities: devas, asuras, pishachas and many others. Biblical and later Christian traditions have their own cosmologies populated by angels, fallen angels, demons and other spirits. So different cultures have been describing realities beyond the visible for a very long time.
Growing up in Germany, the supernatural was not part of our school education and ordinary respectable conversations. What could be measured, demonstrated or rationally explained carried considerably more authority than intuition, mystical experience or metaphysical speculation.
Modern Western culture certainly includes philosophy and religion, but public life has been shaped strongly by scientific enquiry as well as the separation of religious belief from experiential knowledge. Especially in Germany, there is a focus on engineering the outer world and I miss the balance. Something gets lost when the materialistic, the measured and logically explainable are dominant.
Traditionally in India, holistic practices are also described as “sciences” – like the “science of yoga” – while in modern Western usage, science generally refers to systematic enquiry into phenomena that can be investigated and tested. The same word can therefore carry rather different assumptions about what constitutes knowledge.
Whether people are aware of it or not, they tend to miss something when the materialistic way of knowing becomes so dominant that other forms of human experience are treated primarily with suspicion, disdain or even embarrassment. Purely material understanding of life never felt sufficient to me. Consciousness, intuition, meaning, inner experience and our relationship with the sacred matter to me and influence how I live and work.
One view I encounter frequently in India is that everything, animate and inanimate, is part of God and each one of us can connect to God directly. That is powerful. We don't need another person or institution to tell us what our relationship with the divine is supposed to look like. Teachers, traditions, rituals, religious or spiritual communities may support that relationship, but should never replace our direct experience.
Maybe this is part of what I was really looking for when I left Germany in my early 20s: not a culture that could prove the supernatural to me, but one that left more room for mystery and the mystical.
India gave me that room. It also taught me, over time, that openness to the invisible needs discernment. Not everything that calls itself spiritual is truthful and benevolent.
But equally true: not everything that cannot be measured is unreal.
Originally published: 5. June 2024 Revision: 30. September 2026
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