#Aliens: In “Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians” (Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

, Three Rivers Press, 2001) the description of the psychic, hylic and pneumatic humans are also mentioned. But rather than making this a literal genetic or race issue, it is described as a level of consciousness or spiritual initiation:

“Hylics or ‘materialists”, identify themselves withe the body — or circumference of the circle of self. The Psychics or ‘soulists’, identify with the psyche or soul—the radius of beingness. the Pneumatics, or ‘spiritists’ are aware of themselves as spirit or Consciousness — the center of the circle.” [pp. 70-73]

If we can define the human as a central point of original consciousness with an expanding radius of being and awareness, we have the center point as spirit, central radius as psyche or soul and the outer circumference as body and ego identification.

“In Pagan, Jewish and Christian Gnostic traditions there are two basic stages of initiation which lead initiates progressively through these states of being. Christians called the first or psychic or soul initiation, because it initiates the journey from being a hylic to becoming a psychic. They called the second the pneumatic or ‘spirit’ initiation because it initiates the journey from being a psychic to becoming a pneumatic.

Psychic initiates were taught the exoteric teachings or Other Mysteries of Gnosticism, which were openly available to all those interested in joining a particular Gnostic school. Pneumatic initiates went on to be taught the secret esoteric teachings or Inner Mysteries. Literalist Christianity is the product of psychic initiates, uninitiated into the Inner Mysteries, making a religion out of the Outer Mysteries. This is why the secret pneumatic teachings of Christianity which we are exploring seem so remote from Christianity as it is generally understood today.

The pneumatic teachings were kept a secret because the spiritually immature can easily be so baffled that they dismiss them as incomprehensible nonsense…”

To paraphrase, essentially the process of awakening began with the exploration of soul experience which was all about the psychic initiation process. The essence was to know who you are from the personality standpoint, while developing empathy and good ethics. The pneumatic initiation was about discovering the experiencer or spirit Consciousness that is the ground of all experience. The latter is similar to Buddhist higher level meditative insights where they realize there is no ego self, per se, but rather a deeper connectedness to All. The larger Dreaming Self. It is the All experiencing itself through the reflection of individual selves, and the sense of an all embracing love in this Oneness of being. It is a Mystery, and for those who have come to the place of Gnosis realize that they really know nothing, and instead realize this is an unfolding mystery of becoming and beingness.

Carl Jung often believed that the early Gnostics were really psychotherapists, who not only realized “Gnosis” by deep self-exploration, contemplation and compassionate activity, but they helped their spiritual-seeking brothers and sisters to self-discover the same thing.