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.

6624. Since man thinks on the level of the senses such things are obscure to him, so obscure indeed that he does not know what an idea is, in particular that thought is distinguished into separate ideas as speech is into words. For to man thought seems to be continuous, without separate parts; but in actual fact ideas constituting thought are the words that spirits use, and ideas constituting more internal thought are the words that angels use. And because ideas are the words they use to speak with, they are audible among spirits and angels. This explains why man's silent thought can be heard by spirits and angels, when it pleases the Lord that it should be. How perfect the ideas constituting thought are in comparison with the words composing speech may be recognized from the fact that a person can think more in a minute than he can speak or write in an hour. I have also recognized it from conversations with spirits and angels; for at such times I have in a single moment filled in the broad outlines of a subject with specific details, while my affection was engaged. The angels and spirits grasped every distinct detail, and many more that manifested themselves around that subject like a cloud.