5991. I saw spirits who must be called bodily spirits. They rose up from the deep, at the side of the sole of the right foot. They appeared to the sight of my spirit as if in a gross body; and when I asked who they are that are like this, it was said that they are those who in the world have excelled in talent, and also in the sciences, and have thereby utterly confirmed themselves against the Divine, thus against those things which are of the church; and because they have fully persuaded themselves that all things are of nature, they have more than others closed their interiors, thus all that belongs to the spirit. Hence they appear grossly corporeal. Among them was one whom I had known during his life in the world, and who then was celebrated for his talents and his learning. But these gifts, which are means of thinking well about Divine things, were to him means of thinking against them, and of persuading himself that they are of no account; for he who excels in talent and learning excels also in the means of confirmation. Hence he had been interiorly obsessed, but in the external form he had appeared as a man of civic and moral virtues.