4537. CONCERNING THE HOLY SPIRIT AND INTELLECTUAL GIFTS. It was often perceived and said that the more anyone thinks himself to be the Holy Spirit, the more he loses or destroys of his intellectual endowments, for it is the love of self which destroys. This is still more the case with those who think themselves to have been gods from eternity. The same thing was evinced in the case of certain most deceitful [spirits] in the highest elevation, who possess an intellectual gift beyond others. They can see that they are unhappy, and say that they owe this to their own life, and many other things which are true; but still they remain of the same quality, as was shown by an intuition into the eye where the intellectual endowment manifests itself. So far as the love of self creeps in, so far is the let there obscured, and a dark cloud succeeds, to the perishing of intellectual [principles].