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.

7816. Looking above self is being raised by the Lord to a higher level, for nobody can look above self unless he is raised to a higher level by Him who is above. But looking below self is of human origin since the person does not in that case allow himself to be raised up.

6316. The majority of the learned, it will surprise you to learn, think on the level of the senses. The reason for this is that they have studied different branches of knowledge solely for the sake of renown. They have studied them so that they may be promoted to important positions and thereby earn material gain, not to the end that they may be made wise; for all branches of knowledge that exist in the world of learning are means that may serve to make a person wise or that may serve to make him insane. Once those learned people have been raised to important positions they live, more than those who are simple, on the level of the senses, and they then think it a sign of simplicity to attribute anything to the Divine instead of attributing it to prudence and natural instinct and all else to chance.