Then the men, seeing what miraculous sign Jesus did, said, This is truly the Prophet, the One coming into the world. Therefore knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone. And when it became evening, His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them. And the sea was aroused by a great wind blowing. Then having rowed about twenty five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, and becoming near the boat, they were afraid. But He said to them, I AM! Do not fear. Then they desired to take Him into the boat. And the boat was instantly at the land to which they were going. On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone. But other small boats came from Tiberias near the place where they ate the loaves, the Lord having given thanks. Therefore, when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there nor His disciples, they themselves also entered into the boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And finding Him across the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One. (John 6:14–27)
The fact that goods and truths are man’s real food may be clear to anyone, for the person who is deprived of them has no life within himself, and is a dead man. The food on which the soul of the person feeds who is dead in this sense consists of the delights arising from evils, and of the pleasures gained from falsities. These are the food of death. These delights and pleasures also derive from bodily, worldly, and natural things, which have no life at all within them. Furthermore such a person does not know what spiritual and celestial food is. Every time ‘food’ or ‘bread’ is mentioned in the Word he assumes that food for the body is meant. In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Give us our daily bread’, for example, he thinks purely of nourishment for the body. There are some whose ideas do extend further and who assert that this petition includes all other physical requirements, such as clothing, money, and so on. Indeed they will argue fiercely that no other kind of food is meant, even though they clearly see that the petitions coming before and after it entail purely celestial and spiritual things, and refer to the Lord’s kingdom, and possibly know as well that the Lord’s Word is celestial and spiritual. (Arcana Coelestia 680)
That which distinguishes the celestial from the spiritual is love to the Lord, and that which distinguishes spiritual from celestial is love towards the neighbour. (Arcana Coelestia 2069)
In the natural kingdom are men whilst they live in the world. In the spiritual kingdom are spiritual angels; in the celestial kingdom are celestial angels; for there are these three universals, the natural, the spiritual, and the celestial. (Last Judgment 314{304})
Darkness in the Word corresponds to a state where there is a lack of enlightenment. So when we read of it being evening and darkness, we know that the events that are being described are indicating states of life when the loves of self and the world are active. These states are also what are referred to as states of temptation. The reason that these states occur is because our sense of self is attached to beliefs and affections that belong to the loves of self and the world, and temptations are the only way that higher loves and truths can be implanted in their place.
In the story these temptations are represented by the storm which the disciples find themselves in.
His disciples went down on the sea. And entering into the boat, they were going across the sea to Capernaum. And darkness had already occurred, and Jesus had not come to them. And the sea was aroused by a great wind blowing.
The disciples represent the spiritual principles that we learn through our interaction with the Word. If these principles are to be woven into the fabric of our being so that they become our very life and so form the basis for a new sense of self, then the attachments in the natural man that have been the source of our identity up until this point have to be weakened and broken.
And this is what work with spiritual principles does for whenever we look to act from them it stirs up and challenges our natural habitual ways of being. We will always experience resistance in these times. This is why we are told that we must take up our cross if we wish to follow the Lord (Matthew 16:24-25). We have to die to our native sense of self, that is, we have to die to our habits of allowing natural desires which put self first from ruling in our minds and guiding our behaviour.
In the midst of the storm, when they had come to the end of themselves, the disciples let Jesus into their boat. This speaks of a shift in state where spiritual principles have been brought into life through the work of repentance. For as we have just seen, engaging with the Word brings about states of temptations and through these, we come to see our very real need for the Lord in our life. And we see the concept of repentance reflected in the fact the disciples are said to be heading to Capernaum which as we have seen previously means field of repentance.
The work of repentance involves hearing truths and making an effort to live from them. This living from them is done as if of ourselves but it is the Lord who grants us the ability to act. But because of the strong appearance that we are the ones who are doing the work, we easily fall into attributing the power to do so to ourselves.
The natural man seeks to take credit for this work. This is why we find the disciples on the initial part of the journey on their own and in darkness. For the proprium cannot but claim to itself what is of the Lord’s. This is its nature. All our struggles in trying to live a spiritual life flow from our attachment to the proprium’s desire to claim to itself what is good and true. The story of the disciples in the storm is a story of our coming to see that the power of the spiritual principles that we have acquired cannot be separated from the Lord who is their source. When this realisation dawns within our minds – then what is lower can begin to be worked with. And we see this represented in the part of story that we are reading today where after the storm, the scene moves back to those on the shore.
On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone.
So as we look more closely at what is happening in the narrative, we can see that there are different groupings of people mentioned and that each of them illustrates a level of relationship that we might have to the Lord. At the highest level we have Jesus and closest to Him are the disciples, and then there is the crowd. These three sets of people represent three levels, three states of thought and affection regarding the Word within our minds. Jesus represents the Word and in terms of our spiritual life, is what is highest or deepest. He represents the love of living from the Word which sits at the very centre of the minds of those who are being regenerated by the Lord. This deep love is what is meant by the term love to the Lord and because the Lord is goodness itself, love to the Lord is the same as loving what is good.
The other love that the Word points us to and is said to be like this love, is love towards the neighbour. The use of the term neighbour in the Word refers to how things stand spiritually in relation to the Lord. It speaks of what lies closest to the Lord because all spiritual relationships are determined from the Lord as the centre of all things. If by the Lord we understand love or goodness, then we can see that what lies closest to good, must be truth.
So, spiritually understood, the term neighbour refers to truth because truth is what stands closest to good. We can see from this then that to love the neighbour is to love truth and so love of the neighbour manifests in us as a love of working with concepts and ideas to discover their applications in useful services. Specifically, this love is the source or the energy that drives our intellectual functions with a view to developing our understanding of spiritual matters. In the Gospel, love of the neighbour and the things to do with this level of love in us are represented by Jesus’s disciples. This love for truths is the source of our motivations to learn and grow intellectually which can be seen in that the Greek word translated as disciple literally means learner.
So we have these two loves: love to the Lord and love of the neighbour. As a means of drawing a distinction between them, the teachings for Spiritual Christianity use the term celestial to describe all that has to do with loving the Lord or good, while the term spiritual is used to describe all those things that have to do with loving truth which is good’s neighbour. While this distinction is useful for building a deeper understanding of celestial and spiritual matters and how they are organised and related to each other, for all practical purposes they are One and can’t really be separated. We can see this in the fact that to love the Lord is to obey the commandments and precepts of the Word. Jesus Himself said,
If you love me keep my commandments. (John 14:15)
For it is love to the Lord or love of a celestial quality that draws us to the Word and provides us with the recognition or perception that it is the Lord. But it is love of a spiritual quality that empowers us to take the truths that we find there and begin to apply them consciously in our life.
We all desire to love the Lord more fully and completely, I don’t think any of us would be here if that wasn’t the case. But we can’t do that without loving the neighbour, or loving truths which simply means to do them. For it is truths that teach us what we must do, and it is by means of obedience to what truths teach that we come to know the Lord and see our dependence on Him as the Word for our life.
The crowd is the lowest of the three levels and as such represents our natural desires and thoughts. It is the part of us that is concerned with the things of natural life and the body. The crowd level in us is where the ego or proprium is active as the loves of self and the world. Prior to a conscious awakening to the spiritual dimension of our life, we are unable to separate our sense of self from the desires and thoughts that belong to this level. So before an awakening to spiritual life, everything about us is trapped in evils and falsities because until a new sense of self is born from the goods and truths of the Word, all there is to build our sense of life from are the loves and thoughts which arise from the appearances of the senses. This sensual and bodily level of mind is the source of our inner darkness as to the deeper meaning within the Word and it is so thick that it immediately crowds out anything spiritual that comes into consciousness. This tendency is described as the crowd wanting to seize Jesus, to make Him king so that He withdrew into the mountain.
Knowing that they were about to come and seize Him, that they might make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain Himself alone.
The crowd mentality that is characteristic of our natural mind responds to truths just like this crowd does to the presence of Jesus. This level of life always looks to force things to suit itself, including the things of the spirit. So when we read of the crowd seeking to seize Him to make him king, we are reminded that we can’t trust our natural responses. Our natural responses will always go against what truths teach and this is what is meant spiritually by seizing Jesus. It is also why He is said to withdraw.
Responses which are motivated by what is lower in us to what is higher will always seek to violate the proper order for human life, for the proper order is when what is lower serves the higher. The natural man should serve the spiritual. If this order is violated, then falsities are believed rather than truths, and evils are done rather than goods. And so there is no greater act of violation or violence to the image and likeness of God in a human being than having what is higher being forced to serve what is lower. Of wanting to seize the Word to make it a king in the service of the proprium, in the service of the love of self.
The truths of the Word give us the power to work with the Lord to have our mind recreated into the image and likeness of God. When this arrangement is in place then the higher can flow into the lower and organise those thoughts and affections which are capable of supporting spiritual and celestial purposes, that is, the purposes related to loving the Lord and practising the truths of the Word. And for those thoughts and affections that cannot serve these purposes, they are either cast off or brought into submission to what is higher.
But when the proper order is not in place then the concerns that belong to the lower degree of our mind dominate our inner life, and we find our sense of self trapped and unable to move out of the things of the lower mind. We can easily observe this in ourselves, for when we are caught up in worldly and selfish concerns our motivation and interest in celestial or spiritual matters drops away. On the other hand, when we are focussed on celestial and spiritual matters the things to do with self and the world are brought into their proper order and perspective. For when celestial and spiritual things rule in our lives many of the concerns and worries that we previously carried melt away and no long have the same impact on us. We are able to get some distance from them.
And so it is that we now find the crowd of natural affections and thoughts on the other side of the sea.
On the morrow, the crowd standing on the other side of the sea had seen that no other little boat was there except one, that one into which His disciples entered, and that Jesus did not go with His disciples into the small boat, but that the disciples went away alone.
As we can see, this term other side is used in reference to where Jesus is and states of temptation as represented by the disciples in the storm, have the effect of separating things out so that we can see two sides. We come to see the difference between things of a spiritual quality and those of a natural quality. We are brought to see what is on one side and what stands on the other, and in these states, we are able to receive new insights concerning the quality of the various thoughts and affections that make up our inner world.
We learn that within us there is a crowd of thoughts and affections which belong to the natural level of life and even though these are drawn to Jesus, the Word, the motivation that drives them is self interest and so they are always suspect and can’t be trusted. The Word as the Lord makes this clear when Jesus says them
You seek Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied.
Signs are pointers to truths that must be obeyed if we are to be saved from self seeking but the natural man is not interested in such truths. The main theme behind the sign is that the Lord is the bread of life, the sustainer and nurturer of all. Our proprium does not accept this, and this is the story of the crowd whose quality comes into light after the state temptation, for it is only interested in having its curiosity aroused and satisfied which is why the Word as Jesus admonishes…
Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give to you; for God the Father sealed this One.
Or as it is put in a looser translation of the Bible called The Message…
Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food…Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last.