353. By false intelligence and wisdom we mean any intelligence and wisdom that is devoid of acknowledgment of the Divine. In fact, people who do not acknowledge the Divine Being but put nature in place of the Divine all think on the basis of their physical bodies. They are merely sense-centered, no matter how scholarly and learned they are considered in this world. ¹ Their learning, though, does not rise any higher than the things in front of their eyes in this world, things that they keep in their memory and inspect almost physically. This is the case even though the very same branches of knowledge serve truly intelligent people as a means of forming their understanding. By "branches of knowledge" we mean the various experimental disciplines such as physics, astronomy, chemistry, mechanics, geometry, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, and political history, as well as the realms of literature and criticism and language study.

[2] There are church dignitaries who deny the Divine. They do not raise their thoughts any higher than the sensory concerns of the outer person. They look on the contents of the Word as no different from knowledge about anything else; they do not treat those contents as subjects of thought or of any thorough consideration by an enlightened rational mind. This is because their own deeper levels are closed off, and along with them, the more outward levels that are next to these deeper ones. The reason they are closed is that they have turned their backs on heaven and reversed the things that they could see there, things that are proper to the deeper levels of the human mind, as we have noted before. This is why they cannot see what is true and good - because these matters are in darkness for them, while what is false and evil is in the light.

[3] Nevertheless, sense-centered people can think logically, some of them actually with more skill and penetration than other people. However, they rely on deceptive sensory appearances bolstered by their own learning, and since they can think logically in this fashion, they think they are wiser than other people. ² The fire that fuels their reasoning is the fire of love for themselves and the world.

These are the people who are devoted to false intelligence and wisdom, the ones meant by the Lord in Matthew: "Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand" (Matthew 13:13-15); and again, "Things are hidden from the intelligent and wise and revealed to children" (Matthew 11:25-26).

V:

5089. 'And they were in custody for days' means that they lay in a state when they were cast aside for a long time. This is clear from the meaning of 'days' as states, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, 3462, 3785, 4850; so that 'for days' here means lying in a particular state for a long time - in a state when they were cast aside, meant by 'custody', 5083. A more lengthy explanation of the details contained in the internal sense here is not possible because they are not the kind of matters about which any idea can be gained with the help of things in the world, such as details about the celestial-of-the-spiritual man, about this man's state within the natural when the interior natural is being made new, and after that when it has been made new and the exterior natural has been cast aside. But some idea of these matters and others like them can be gained from things in heaven, which is the kind of idea that does not pass into any notion gained from things in the world, except in the case of people who, in their thinking, can be led away from sensory impressions.

[2] Unless a person's thought can be raised above sensory impressions so that these are beheld as existing so to speak beneath him, he cannot possibly discern any interior aspect of the Word, let alone things of heaven such as are totally removed from those of the world, since the senses take hold of them and stifle them. This explains why people who rely on their senses and have focused their attention on known facts rarely understand anything about the things of heaven; for they have immersed their thoughts in the kinds of things that belong to the world, that is, in terms and in definitions formed from these, and so in what the senses perceive, from which they can no longer be raised up and so preserved in a way of looking at things that is higher than the senses. Nor can their thought range freely any longer over the whole field of matters recorded in the memory, selecting those which agree and casting aside those which are contrary, and using those which are in any way appropriate. For their thought is locked up and immersed in terms, as has been stated, and consequently in sensory impressions, so that it cannot look round about. This is the reason why the learned possess less belief than the simple, and also indeed why they possess less discernment in heavenly matters. For the simple can view something from a position that is above mere terms and above known facts, and so above sensory evidence. This the learned cannot do; their viewpoint is based on terms and known facts because their mind is immersed in these. Thus they are bound so to speak in a dungeon or prison.