Again, the kingdom of Heaven is compared to treasure being hidden in the field, which finding, a man hid; and for the joy of it, he goes and sells all things, as many as he has, and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)
Previously, we have looked at the idea of a field being likened to the human mind and today we are going to examine this concept a little more deeply. Now a mind without ideas or concepts can hardly be called a mind so when we speak of the mind, we mean the ideas and concepts that constitute it and give it its quality. So, the field is not some abstract faculty called the mind but rather it is the very ideas and concepts that make up the landscape from which, and in which, we think. And all ideas and concepts in the mind are organised into a mental structure that reflects their compatibility with each other. Ideas that are most complementary are bundled together and remain closely connected in the thought, whereas ideas that are not so close or may even be antagonistic, are set further apart.
For example, if I were a baker then the ideas which I have that relate to my employment form a field of practical and theoretical knowledge that relates to producing bakery goods. This knowledge is organised and grouped into a specific mental structure as demonstrated when I draw on it in order to engage in the specific activities that are required to produce the baked goods. But let’s say that I own the bakery business, so then I also have to have knowledge that relates to the financial and marketing aspects. My knowledge of baking and my knowledge of bookkeeping and marketing are separate areas of knowledge brought together, in this case, due to my ownership of a bakery business. And whilst these knowledge areas are related in this way, each draws from a separate field of ideas and concepts and it’s important that I am able to keep the two apart and draw only on what’s relevant for the task at hand. For if I was filing a tax return and the only thing that came to mind while trying to do this was a new recipe for Danish pastry, I wouldn’t get very far! So the organisation of the ideas and concepts into various groupings in the mind forms mental boundaries which enable us to think clearly in the context of the tasks that we are involved in . Thus, symbolically we can say that knowledge is organised into fields. This idea of knowledge being a field can also be seen when people speak metaphorically and ask – What field of work are you in?
So the kingdom of heaven, we are told, is like a treasure hidden in a field and since this field is one that specifically relates to the kingdom of heaven, it must be a field of spiritual knowledge – of knowledge that relates to the principles and laws of spiritual life. Such knowledge, when in our mind, forms our doctrine or understanding of spiritual things. So this field in the mind that we are looking at here today is all the knowledge, ideas, concepts and truths which relate to some aspect of religious and spiritual life. For many of us, our experience is that a lot of this knowledge can lie dormant in our memories for many years. We might have received religious instruction in our childhood but then found that when we entered adulthood we had no real use or affection for applying it. Or we may have continued to attend religious activities or read and listen to various forms of teaching related to spiritual topics, but in terms of its actual application to our daily life it has remained fairly external without any real sense of a need to apply what we are learning to examine our feelings and thoughts.
There’s a passage in the work Heaven and Hell that talks about this in relation to those who, having died, enter the spiritual world fairly confident of going to heaven because their external behaviour on earth was reasonably moral and civil. But when they undergo a process of examination in preparation for their final state they then find that the true quality of their external behaviour in the world is determined by the quality of their inner life, of their inner motivations. In this way, they begin to awaken to the reality of spiritual laws, which show that it is the motives or intentions that lie behind our external actions that determine the quality of our spiritual life. So having arrived in the world of spirits, where every person who dies undergoes a process of preparation prior to entering heaven or hell, we read this from the work…
Almost all of them want to know whether they will make it into heaven. Many of them think they will because they led moral and civic lives in the world, not reflecting that both evil and good people lead similar outward lives, being similarly helpful to others, going to church, listening to sermons, and praying similarly, utterly unaware that outward behaviour and outward worship accomplish nothing whatever; only the inner realities that give rise to these outward ones are effective. Scarcely one in thousands even knows what the inner realities are or that they are the focal point of heaven and the church for us. Even fewer realize that the quality of our outward actions is determined by the quality of our intentions and thoughts and the love and faith within them, from which our actions arise. Even when they are told, they do not grasp the fact that thinking and intending actually make a difference. They attach importance only to speaking and acting. (Heaven and Hell 494)
With statements like this in the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, we needn’t remain in ignorance concerning the spiritual laws of life. Nor do we have to wait until we have passed from this world to be enlightened. But instead we have the opportunity to find, in this incredibly fertile field of spiritual teachings, treasures that relate to our life right now in the present of our current experience and circumstances.
Previously, in the parable of the woman who took leaven and hid it in three measures of meal, we saw that a genuine affection for truth, the woman when active within us, stimulates a spiritual process of fermentation so that what is evil and false might be seen and separated from those things that are of the Lord and which promote the kingdom of heaven. So this spiritual fermentation illustrates a growing spiritual sensitivity to the things of the Word but with it also comes states of anxiety and pressure due to our increasing awareness of the conflict between natural and spiritual desires and the ideas that promote each of them. From the perspective of the natural man or mind, it looks as though our growing interest in spiritual things is the cause of the internal difficulties that we are experiencing. This is why it is said that the woman took the leaven and hid it in the meal for the literal Text, that is, the surface story, always appeals to the natural mind’s way of thinking. But we know from what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that nothing from heaven, and thus from the Lord, looks to create difficulties or unpleasantness in our lives. So, a genuine affection for truth, as represented by the woman, because it is from the Lord, doesn’t actually mix leaven or evil and falsity in with what is good. But its presence certainly stirs up what is evil and false within us and brings it into the light where it can be seen and felt, and eventually separated from.
The extent that we are able to separate from identifying with it as our ‘self’ is very much tied to what love is active in the state at the time – what is valued or treasured. This is seen in the words of Jesus in the Gospels who said…
Do not treasure up for you treasures on the earth, where moth and rust cause to perish, and where thieves dig through and steal. But treasure up for you treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust cause to perish, and where thieves do not dig through and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
These words encourage us to examine where our focus is, to what our heart is turned towards – is it on the things of the world or is it on the things of heaven? To value the Word for what it can accomplish in our lives in terms of offering us a heavenly perspective, is to find the things in it that have a direct bearing on our eternal state of life. So the Text is the field we must search. But we will only search it if we see that there is treasure in it, and we will only see that treasure if we are motivated by a genuine affection for what is good and true. For it is only a genuine affection for truth that values the things belonging to the kingdom of heaven. Without this affection, we will see nothing of value or treasure in the Word and we will not be motivated to act on its truths or principles as far as examining and dealing with our inner states of life.
The Greek word translated in our English Bibles for the word treasure is quite revealing. When this word is broken down into its elements, we have a literal meaning which is placed-into-morrow. The central idea here at a natural level is of something held over for the future, something placed in tomorrow but from a spiritual perspective, what lies ahead of us in the morrow has to do with a change in our state of life, in our feelings and thoughts. The treasure hidden in the field then are the truths in the Word that, when used for self examination, can change our thought and feeling life into one that forms the basis of heaven within us.
Let’s return for a moment to the teaching we read from Heaven and Hell 494. There is a real treasure in this field and it has to do with realising that it is inner realities…that are the focal point of heaven and the Church for us… and that how we think and intend actually makes a difference. A difference in regard to what? Our eternal state of life. If we value this teaching then that will be reflected in our responses to it, we will treasure it.
Again, the kingdom of Heaven is compared to treasure being hidden in the field, which finding, a man hid; and for the joy of it, he goes and sells all things, as many as he has, and buys that field.
Notice that the once the man found the treasure his response was to hide it. Under Jewish law if a person who found treasure in a field was to be assured of gaining permanent possession of it, they would need to purchase the field. The ownership of the field entitled the owner to all that the field contained. This natural law corresponds to a spiritual law and it is this; until we make spiritual principles our own, through taking them into our life and living from them, they are not really inscribed on the heart as something to be treasured, they are not truly part of our life. To have a permanent impact on our spiritual states of life we have to work with spiritual teachings so that they become something that is integrated into the very fabric of who we are. The hiding of the treasure is to protect it from being undermined by the rationalisations of the natural man or that part of us that doesn’t want things to change. This is because to hide something is to conceal it from the senses which is what the natural mind forms its conclusions from. So to hide this treasure is to actively resist all the excuses that we can come up with for not making spiritual things a priority in our lives.
But when the true value of what we have in the Word is realised, there is a burst of joy that springs from the spirit within of having found what every human heart seeks – the means by which we can be reconnected with the Lord, with heaven and with all that is genuinely good and true. While the spiritual life is not without its struggles, these are far outweighed by the joy that comes from having found the way into the kingdom of heaven through having it find its way into us. If these things are truly treasured, then the joy of this empowers us to be able to make the necessary shift in our priorities; to go and sell all that we have so that we might make these wonderful teachings a real and permanent part of our life.
To sell all that we own is to no longer allow the kinds of things that arise from the love of self and the senses of the world to govern our thinking and feeling states of life. It is to work to have instilled into us a new principle of life, a heavenly principle, the kingdom of heaven, which can only ever be found in loving the Lord which we do when we practise the truths of His Word. This love is the true field that the Lord offers to us to purchase in every moment of our lives. From this field of heaven-sent love springs the joy of eternal life. From this field springs every truly wise and loving idea, designed to fill every human mind with the light that they need to live full and useful lives. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, and those who find it are those who truly know its value in their heart.
To enable me to know what heaven and heavenly joy are and what their quality is, though, the Lord has allowed me to feel the pleasures of heavenly joy often and at length. Because this was living experience, I may indeed know about them, but there is no way to describe them. Still, something should be said in order to provide at least some notion about them. There is an effect of countless pleasures and joys that unite to present a single something, a unity or united affection that contains a harmony of countless affections that do not come through to consciousness individually, only vaguely, because the consciousness is so very general. It was still possible to perceive that there were countless elements within it, so beautifully arranged as to defy description. The qualities of those countless elements flow from the very design of heaven; and this kind of design is resident in the very least affections, affections that are manifest and perceived only as a very general unity, depending on the perceptive ability of the subject. In a word, there are infinite elements in a most intricate form in every general entity, and there is nothing that is not alive and does not affect everything even at the very center, since heavenly joys emanate from the very center. I have also noticed that heavenly joy and delight seemed to be coming from my heart, spreading very subtly through all my inner fibers and from there into the gatherings of fibers with such a profound sense of pleasure that my fibers seemed to be nothing but joy and delight, and everything I perceived and felt was alive with bliss. Next to these joys, the joy of physical pleasures is like crude and irritating dust compared to a pure and gentle breeze. I noticed that when I wanted to convey all my pleasure to someone else, a deeper and fuller pleasure flowed in ceaselessly in its place. The more I wanted to convey it, the more it flowed in; and I perceived that this was from the Lord. (Heaven and Hell 413)