268. We may gather how great angels' wisdom is from the fact that in heaven there is a communication that involves everyone. The intelligence and wisdom of one individual is shared with another: heaven is where everyone shares everything of value. This is because the very nature of heavenly love is to want what is one's own to belong to another; so no one in heaven regards his or her good as authentically good unless it is someone else's as well. This is also the basis of heaven's happiness. Angels are led into it by the Lord, whose divine love has this same quality.

I have also been granted knowledge, by experience, of this kind of communication in the heavens. Once some simple people were taken up into heaven, and after they had arrived, they arrived also at an angelic wisdom. They understood things they could not grasp before and said things they could not express in their former state.

5920. 'And the eyes of my brother Benjamin' means especially as a result of perception by the intermediary. This is clear from the meaning of 'the eyes' and 'seeing' as understanding and consequently perceiving, as above in 5919; and from the representation of 'Benjamin' as the intermediary, dealt with in 5411, 5413, 5443, 5639, 5688, 5822. The implications of this are as follows: Because 'Benjamin' represented the intermediary - and this intermediary was interior truth, 5600, 5631, directly dependent on internal good, represented by 'Joseph' - it possessed a clearer and sharper perception than that possessed by the truths beneath it, that is, by the external truths which his ten brothers represented. For the closer truth and good are to the internal, the more perfect is their power of perception; they are nearer the centre of the light in heaven and so are closer to the Lord. For the flow of Divine Good and Truth from the Lord passes through continuous degrees that serve as mediators to one another and are so positioned one after another. As a consequence people who dwell in the first or initial degrees receive the flow with clearer perception, because they are nearer the source, than those who dwell in the middle or outermost degrees. Like light goodness and truth become progressively dimmer at distances away from their source; for the increasingly imperfect things that exist in consecutive degrees make them duller. From all this one may see how to understand the idea of attesting especially as a result of perception by the intermediary; for the intermediary is more internal, while the truths represented by 'Jacob's sons' are more external.