For those interested in Gnostic Christianity, the history of the original Christians and related subjects. I recently read two fantastic books that were written by one of my favourite spiritual teacher's Tim Freke over 25 years ago. "The Jesus Mysteries" and "Jesus and the Lost Goddess".

Part 1 "The Jesus Mysteries" goes into the history of Christianity and the debate over whether Jesus Christ was a historical figure or solely mythological. It recounts the chronology of the Egyptian Mystery schools, the Greek mystery schools and their famous philosophers up to the Jewish versions that became what we know as Christianity today. It thoroughly examines the different Christian factions and historically recounts the split between the "literalists" and the "gnostic's"  - the knowers. For those who are on an awakening journey there is a lot to enjoy in this book and it may cut deep particularly if you had a traditional Christian upbringing. 

• The Literal Allegory (The Outer Mysteries / Psychikos): This is the literal story of Jesus, his birth, miracles, crucifixion, and physical resurrection. This level was designed for the uninitiated (Psychics). It used compelling storytelling to introduce basic morality and capture the imagination.
• The Esoteric Reality (The Inner Mysteries / Pneumatikos): This level was for the initiates (Spirituals). They understood that the characters and events in the story were symbols representing different parts of the human psyche and universal Consciousness.

Part 2 "Jesus and the Lost Goddess" goes into much more detail about the original gnostics and their awakening journey. If you are interested in Spiritual Awakening and want to know how the ancient Christian mystics viewed it then this is the book for you. 

Here are some notes from this book:

• Jesus / The Son of God represents Consciousness itself specifically, Awareness being aware of Awareness. He is the symbol of the Logos, the ordering principle of the cosmos that resides at the core of every human being.
• To "receive Christ" or realize you are a "Son of God" means shifting your identity away from the temporary ego and realizing your fundamental nature is universal, unconditioned Consciousness.

• The Soul has fallen into "amnesia" (spiritual sleep), becoming trapped in the density of matter, plagued by the illusions of the Archons (egoic programming).
• Her "redemption" or healing by Jesus in the gospels is an allegory for Consciousness shining its light upon the fragmented mind, integrating the shadow, and waking the soul up from its earthly delusion

• They are well-meaning but constantly confused, literal-minded, and asleep. This perfectly mirrors our own everyday thinking mind, which struggles to comprehend the vastness of pure Consciousness until it undergoes a total transformation.

• To be crucified with Christ means to completely see through the illusion of the "counterfeit spirit" the false self constructed by societal programming, fears, and labels. The separate "I" must be surrendered.

• It is not the physical reanimation of a corpse, but the Awakening of Consciousness from the dead sleep of materialism.
• When you rise from the grave, you are waking up to the realization that you were never the mortal body or the fleeting ego. You are the eternal, unbroken Witness. You have passed from the illusion of death into the continuous presence of life.
  The Sacred Marriage (Syzygy): The Ultimate Initiation
  The climax of the Inner Mysteries described in Jesus and the Lost Goddess is the Sacred Marriage (Bridal Chamber).
  This is the mystical union of the Goddess (the purified Soul) and the Christ (Universal Consciousness) within the practitioner. When the soul stops looking outward at the material world for fulfillment and turns fully inward, it merges with pure Awareness.
  In this state of total Awakening, the illusion of duality (inside vs. outside, self vs. other) completely dissolves. You look at the universe and realize it is a singular, living, breathing expression of the One Consciousness and that You are That.

   

   

I recommend both these books, currently sold on Amazon. Enjoy. 

• The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy.

  Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy. 

   

After having read these books I did some further research with the help of Google Ai and here is more information on this topic that you may enjoy, including some helpful After Awakening insights;

The 7 stage Evolution of Awakening: 

In Jesus and the Lost Goddess, the authors reconstruct the ancient Gnostic journey as a 7-stage evolution of Consciousness, tracking the soul's movement from total material amnesia to supreme Awakening.

• Level 1: The Physical (Body Consciousness): The individual is entirely identified with the physical body, basic instincts, survival, and material sensations.
• Level 2: The Social (Persona Consciousness): Identity expands to include the tribe, family, and society. The person is heavily programmed by cultural conditioning and the need to fit in.
• Level 3: The Rational (Ego Consciousness): The development of the individual intellect. The person begins to think for themselves but is still completely trapped in the matrix of logical duality and a separate ego identity.
• Level 4: The Daemon (The Individual Soul): The first stage of psychic awakening. The individual realizes they are a soul (Psyche) having a human experience. They begin to observe their own psychological programming.
• Level 5: The Angel (The Higher Self): The initiate contacts the Logos the inner Christ. Identity shifts from the mortal ego to the immortal spiritual blueprint.
• Level 6: The Monad (Witness Consciousness): The state of Awareness being aware of Awareness. The boundary between the observer and the observed completely dissolves into absolute Oneness.
• Level 7: The Unknowing (The Mystery): The absolute peak where even the concept of "Oneness" is transcended. The mind falls into a profound, luminous silence before the unutterable Source of all existence.

• The 7 Lower Spheres (1 through 7): These represent the realms of time, space, karma, and psychological conditioning. Each planet was associated with a specific layer of egoic programming (e.g., Saturn with restriction/fear, Mars with aggression). To ascend through these seven heavens meant systematically dismantling those seven layers of psychological programming while alive.
• The 8th Sphere (The Ogdoad): This is the realm beyond the Archons. It represents the Pleroma the divine fullness of pure, unconditioned Consciousness. Reaching the 8th sphere meant the soul had escaped the planetary matrix of recycling/reincarnation and returned to the Divine Source.

• The Guard of the Heart (Nepis): A constant, unblinking mindfulness. Even after achieving Gnosis, the practitioner had to act as a "watchman at the gates of the mind," immediately catching any rising thoughts of judgment, fear, or spiritual pride before those thoughts could crystallize back into an ego.
• The Practice of the Bridal Chamber (Continuous Alignment): Initiates used daily meditation to consciously marry their human soul back to the Divine Witness. They viewed this not as a done deal, but as a relationship that required daily cultivation through silent contemplation.
• Acting as the Logos (Sovereignty through Service): Once an initiate achieved Gnosis, they were expected to actively embody Christ-consciousness in the material world. This meant teaching others, healing, and acting with radical compassion and equality. By actively radiating love and treating others as extensions of the One Self, they structurally reinforced their own realization of Oneness.

• How it sounds in your head: "If I don't get that promotion, I'm a failure," "I need more money to be safe," "I need that person to love me so I can feel worthy."
• The Archontic Goal: To keep your Consciousness completely localized, frantically chasing external objects, validation, and security so you never slow down enough to look inward.

• How it sounds in your head: "I am right, they are wrong," "Look at how stupid/evil those people are," "I am better than them," or conversely, "Everyone is better than me."
• The Archontic Goal: To feed on the emotional energy of conflict. By keeping your mind locked in binary opposition (us vs. them), it structurally prevents you from achieving the state of Oneness.

• How it sounds in your head: "How could I have made that mistake? I am ruined," "What if everything goes wrong tomorrow?"
• The Archontic Goal: To wrap your mind in a heavy shroud of moralistic guilt and paralyzing anxiety. If you are drowning in regret or fear, your Awakening is completely neutralized.

• Ask yourself: Is this feeling coming from the timeless, eternal space of my Awareness, or is it an automated reaction to a material trigger?
• The Realization: If the thought relies on a memory, a fear of the future, or a social label, it belongs to the Counterfeit Spirit.

• The Action: Step back into the seat of the Witness (the Monad level). Watch the thought loop spin in your mind the exact same way you would watch a commercial playing on a television screen. Do not fight it; just refuse to buy what it is selling.

• The Affirmation: Mentally state your spiritual sovereignty. Acknowledge: "I am not this temporary body, I am not this anxious persona, I am not this cultural programming. I am the unbroken Awareness that observes it all."

DAILY MEDITATION TECHNIQUES: 

• The Practice: Immediately upon waking, before getting out of bed, sit in complete stillness. Do not allow your mind to trace your daily to-do list or anxieties. Instead, focus entirely on the silent feeling of existence the raw sense of "I Am" before you attach any labels to it (like "I am tired" or "I am stressed").
• The Internal Shift: You mentally declare your origin. A traditional Gnostic morning formula, found in ascent texts, involves silently repeating: “I am a spark of the Living Father. My origin is from the Pleroma. I am in the world, but not of it.” This aligns your attention with pure Awareness before the Archontic programming of the day can hijack your mind.

• The Practice: Set specific triggers throughout your day (e.g., when walking through a doorway, before eating, or at the turn of an hour) to practice the "Split-Awareness" technique. One half of your mind engages in your daily task (talking, typing, driving), while the other half rests behind your eyes as a detached, silent observer.
• The Internal Shift: Watch your egoic reactions in real-time. If someone cuts you off in traffic or criticizes you, immediately catch the Counterfeit Spirit trying to run its script of anger or lack. Do not fight the feeling. Simply label it: "An Archontic program of anger is arising in the lower mind." By refusing to call that anger "me," you strip it of its energetic fuel and maintain your baseline of Awakening.

• The Practice: Sit comfortably with a straight spine. Close your eyes and take deep, diaphragmatic breaths. As you exhale, loudly vocalize a single, sustained vowel sound, allowing the sound to vibrate deeply within your chest and skull. Focus your entire attention strictly on the physical sensation of the sound's resonance.
• The Internal Shift: This practice acts as a literal pattern-interrupter for the brain. The intense focus on sonic vibration completely exhausts the rational, chattering intellect (the disciples). It clears the emotional clutter from your energy centers and snaps your Consciousness directly back into the vibrant, living presence of the Now.

• The Practice: Take a singular saying, such as Saying 22: "When you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female... then you will enter the Kingdom." Sit in silence and repeat this phrase over and over, letting it sink into your subconscious.
• The Internal Shift: Do not try to analyze it logically. Let the rational mind fail to solve it. When the intellect surrenders its attempt to categorize the world into dualities (us/them, good/bad, male/female), the mind experiences a sudden, quiet collapse into non-conceptual Gnosis realizing that all opposites emerge from the exact same underlying Oneness.

• The Practice: Lie down on your back and review your day in reverse order, from evening to morning. Watch every event, conversation, and emotional reaction pass by like scenes in a movie.
• The Internal Shift: As you visualize each scene, consciously untie your emotional attachment to it. Forgive any slights, drop any pride from your achievements, and release any lingering worries. You are structurally "stripping away your garments." By the time you reach the morning, your mind is entirely empty. You drop into sleep not as a historical persona with a name and a past, but as pure, unconditioned Awareness sliding back into the great cosmic ocean.

• The Gnostic View: Gnostics believed that sickness, psychological trauma, and physical ailments were manifestations of the counterfeit spirit (the egoic programming of the Archons) constricting the body.
• The Technique: The initiate would enter a deep meditative state of Awakening, anchoring their own identity as pure Consciousness. They would place their hands on the sufferer not to channel an external "energy wavelength," but to act as a clear, unblemished mirror of the Logos. By touching the recipient from a state of absolute, unified Oneness, they intended to "shock" the recipient’s own dormant divine spark into a state of resonance, dissolving the psychological and physical distortions keeping them ill.

• The Technique: They combined physical touch with the vocal intonation of specific sacred names, vowel frequencies, or direct commands.
• The Target: They were not addressing the physical cellular biology directly; they were commanding the Archontic programs (which they viewed as the root of mental and physical affliction) to leave. A Gnostic healer would command a disease to leave by asserting the sovereignty of pure Awareness over the lower material matrix.

• The Technique: Healers would infuse natural oils with focused meditative intent and sound frequencies, applying them to the recipient’s sensory organs (eyes, ears, brow).
• The Purpose: This was a multi-layered practice. It alleviated physical ailments while serving as a tangible psychological anchor to remind the recipient that they were being "scraped clean" of earthly, material conditioning.

For Further Allegorical Christian Gnostic understanding view the follow up blogpost:

The 12 Disciples (Allegorical Meaning) & The Lost Goddess (Soul)

https://oliverwasser.com/2026/11/03/the-12-disciples-allegorical-meaning-the-lost-goddess-soul/