398. The delights of heaven are both ineffable and innumerable; but he who is in the mere delight of the body or of the flesh can have no knowledge of, or belief in a single one of these innumerable delights; for his interiors, as has just been said, look away from heaven towards the world, thus backwards. For he who is wholly in the delight of the body or of the flesh, or what is the same, in the love of self and of the world, has no sense of delight except in honour, in gain, and in the pleasures of the body and the senses, because these so extinguish and suffocate the interior delights that belong to heaven as to destroy all belief in them. Consequently, he would be greatly astonished if he were told that only when the delights of honour and of gain are set aside, other delights are given, and still more if he were told that the delights of heaven that take the place of these are innumerable, and are such as cannot be compared with the delights of the body and the flesh, which are chiefly the delights of honour and of gain. All this makes clear why it is not, known what heavenly joy is.