898. However perspicacious and capable of perceiving in other respects, these souls or spirits still so stick in such ideas that they do not doubt, but deny, and this, as was said, because when the proprium or self is taken away they suppose that nothing would remain except what they reject. I then said to them that the difference of life between those who do not so perceive and those who are so persuaded, is as that between something very obscure - being so obscure as to be nothing - and heaven; or that between darkness and light; yea, as that which comes forth from the lowest parts of man, that is, from the rectum, and that which descends from the whole heaven. Indeed, a tun was represented to me, almost like the infernal tun, so that the difference was as that between that tun, where the infernal suppose that they possess the whole heaven, supposing that tun to be the universe subject to themselves, and the whole heaven as to its flames and light.