Esoteric Science Training: I became a different person

Doris Stellmacher (Sangit Masto) recalls the three-month Esoteric Science Training with Wadud and Waduda of autumn 1988

From 1987 on, the Multiversity at the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune offered a programme titled Esoteric Science. It was intended to introduce participants to a selection of the 112 meditations of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra in a three-month workshop. The group was led by Wadud and Waduda (later called Ma Prem Leela Lovegarden).

Waduda describes her experiences and the structure of the training in a foreword to Vigyan Bhairav Tantra: The Book of the Secrets, published as a new edition in 1991 (the one with the cards). As this introduction is no longer in the editions available on the market, Osho News is reproducing this valuable inner roadmap verbatim in Introduction to the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.)

A field of trust

I am happy to have been asked to write about the Esoteric Science Training. I see now that it had created the basis for my experience of what Osho truly meant by ‘meditation’. After the training I was a different person, with a new orientation in life.

It was the title Esoteric Science that I found very interesting; it sounded somewhat magical and mysterious, colourful and full of surprises. I had come to Pune for six months; I wanted to use this time to immerse myself more deeply in meditation and in the life at the Osho Meditation Resort. I wanted to free myself from what had weighed me down from childhood, to free myself from fears, anger, numbness, to experience deep encounters and lightness, and to come back more into the moment, to this commune which was so full of joie de vivre.

That’s how I came to find myself in this group of 45 people. We were all of different ages, personalities and professions, and had come from all over the world. These were the people with whom I would spend the next three months, day in day out, in this sizeable group room in Radha Hall, right in the centre of the lively Resort, between the kitchen and the bookshop. And nobody knew what was going to happen!

Wadud and Waduda were the leaders of the training. They appeared welcoming, light and warm. Wadud was like a scientist. He was always curious and interested, and looked into every nook and cranny of what we reported about our experiences, wanting to know in detail what effects the meditations had on us. In his dry manner, he always made us look at our emotions and thoughts from a different, wider, and interesting perspective.

Waduda was warm-hearted, motherly and full of humour. She accepted everything and everyone the way they were. It was touching to see how with her simplicity, straightforwardness and her sometimes seemingly naive questions, she managed to always take us back to the simple truth in our hearts and make us accept ourselves and our lives as they were.

The meditations we did in the beginning were different from what I had expected. Also my previous idea of esotericism did not correspond to what we were living here.

The meditations all had to do with our senses, with feeling, seeing, hearing and experiencing what was in front of us. To walk through the Resort and sense a flower, a tree, another person, was such a direct experience. I could sense how everything was connected. For me, these exercises were full of beauty and surprises. They were so different from my idea of meditation, which I had visualised as something like a watcher on the hill, separate from life. Instead, life had become so colourful, so intense, so deep, so multidimensional, just like Osho would say in his discourses in the evening. I finally understood.

The atmosphere in the group – despite us being so different from each other – became very intimate and full of trust. Every day I was amazed to see how each participant unfolded and opened up in such different ways, and so beautifully. My evaluations and the judgments I had taken for granted, dropped away from me.

Slowly, gently and tentatively, thanks to the deep acceptance we had for each other in the group, my heart began to open and I started to have the courage to show myself. The protection of my inner numbness began to melt away. Slowly, I dared to come out of my hidden corner and show myself the way I was.

When I recently read the text Waduda has written about her experience with us trainees and the structure of the training (which then became the foreword to the The Book of Secrets, 1991 edition), it brought back so many memories. The training was structured exactly as she writes.

In the group itself, The Book of Secrets, this major work of Osho on the science of meditation, with Shiva’s 112 meditation techniques, was strangely never mentioned. It felt to me as if every few days Wadud and Waduda pulled a new meditation out of some hat. We were always amazed that Osho had invented so many meditations… Wadud was very good at explaining the techniques in detail. And when we then shared our experiences, he also wanted to know all the details from us.

Apart from the Dynamic and Kundalini Meditations which were part of our daily routine, we often did the Darkness Meditation and, in the second part of the training, a Buddhist heart meditation.

For the Darkness Meditation, the room was completely sealed off from light. The meditation was completely different to what I had imagined. In the beginning I was afraid I would lose all orientation, fall into dark holes, lose control. As we sat in the completely darkened room, we were meant to keep our eyes open and let ourselves be absorbed by the darkness. Soon enough I felt safe, calm, soft, infinite, like floating in my mother’s womb. This meditation is still in my repertoire today.

In the Buddhist heart meditation, we first imagined to expand our heart, then our body boundaries until we filled the whole room, the whole Resort, and then expanding even further until we finally included all human beings.

Every day I felt like it was a new day thanks to the various heart meditations we did. And I began to experience a different quality in my heart which I had not known before, so different from those dramatic emotions like pain, loss, helplessness, sadness, longing. It was a very subtle emptiness of the heart that could accept things and people as they were. It was a very quiet feeling, so subtle that it was easy to be overlooked. But, day by day, it became easier for me to access this space when we did the Heart and the Darkness meditations.

True esoteric science: the chakras

We soon came to understand what ‘esotericism’ really meant. Wadud and Waduda told us about their earlier esoteric times, when esotericism consisted of wanting to fulfil one’s own wishes; something magical, a new car, the right boyfriend, the prettiest girlfriend etc.

Now their teaching had moved on to a more scientific and, at the same time, experiential approach to the seven chakras, the energy centres in which all our experiences are stored and which shape us. This is true esoteric science!

Step by step, we came into contact with the lower chakras and all the contents of the past that are locked away and hidden there. We explored first the base chakra, which stores the survival instinct and sexuality in all its forms of expression. Wadud and Waduda emphasised again and again that we cannot meditate if we have not cleared our lower chakras and if our lower chakras are not alive and vibrating. But I didn’t expect to have to go through such a hell!

In the second chakra we remembered our birth, our past lives, our childhood and had to let go of all the pain, all the emotions, all the suffering. We spent a few days in the so-called ‘chambers’ (these were specially created, soundproofed-and-padded therapy rooms for catharsis). We screamed, shouted and cried, following our immediate impulses. Wadud and Waduda encouraged us again and again to allow everything to come up, to judge nothing and to hold nothing back. We also did some exercises where we forgave ourselves and the people in our lives.

I was wild. felt so natural, so alive and without barriers. I allowed everything to come up that had been hidden for so long in every cell of my body. We were able to allow all of this, be naked and open in front of each other in the group. A field of trust had opened up, held by our wonderful, encouraging teachers, Wadud and Waduda.

I will never forget when, after a few days, we came out of those dark basement rooms and in the early morning walked outside the Resort along a stream towards North Main Road. I marvelled at the beauty of nature. I felt empty and cleansed of all the dust and pain. I was in complete gratitude to be alive, full of thankfulness and forgiveness towards my parents who had brought me into this life. This freedom from the past was of such fullness of the heart, of love, of compassion.

After this deep liberation, we moved on to the upper chakras, including the 3rd eye. For this we did the Gourishankar Meditation, where we looked into a flickering blue strobe light.

We then started to practise reading the chakras of another person. We read from a space of an empty heart, without judgement, without projections. It was very intimate. I was always touched and surprised that what I saw in my partner was really true. Doors opened where we saw whole lives, situations, people, landscapes from this or a previous life. We often doubted whether what we saw was really true. But we were always surprised when our partners assured us that it was. We became open to seeing each other clearly from the inside of our hearts.

Whenever we had any doubts, Waduda encouraged us, again and again, and advised us to simply speak what we perceived. I was then able to heal a deep wound of not being seen and of not trusting my intuition. I now felt seen and understood, without judgement. In the group we got to know each other so deeply.

We kept practising Darkness Meditation and once we did it for three days in a row, from morning till night. It helped me to hold on to the blank screen from which I could read and see the others in the group, and not be distracted by small things. I felt filled by a deep, wide calmness.

Slowly we began to open our universe, from our training group to the people outside in the Resort, and started giving chakra readings to the ‘public’. Again I experienced that even sitting in front of someone I didn’t know at all, the being of this person was unfolding in my inner space and I was able to mirror it. There is so much healing when we experience being seen and being mirrored as we are! As a result, I developed more and more trust in this new gift of mine.

After these three months of meditating day after day and experiencing whatever was inside of me, I felt reborn and ready to share this treasure with the world and, in the process, change a few things in my life.

As I write this, I realise that Wadud and Waduda’s Esoteric Science Training is still working in the background within me and is the foundation of my ability to see people and situations without judgement from the depth of my heart. Especially in moments of great life challenges, this has become something of compass for me. And for many decades now I have been giving chakra readings mainly in German-speaking, but also in other European countries. What a delight!