898. Those souls or spirits, however discerning they may be in other matters, and receptive of understanding, nevertheless cling so hard to these ideas that they do not doubt them, but deny [any other life]. The reason for this is, as said, that when their own or proper self is taken away, then they think there is nothing left but something they reject. And I told them that the difference of life between those who do not have this inner sight and conviction [and those who do], is like that between something very faint - so faint as to be nothing - and heaven, or such as the difference between darkness and light, or indeed between what comes forth from man's lowest parts or rectum, and what descends from the universal heaven. In fact, a kind of vat was portrayed to me, almost like the infernal one [285], thus it is just like the difference between this tub - where hellish spirits imagine that they possess the whole heaven (for they think that the vat or tub is the universe, under their sway) - and the universal heaven with its flames and light.