6198. Some spirits were once present with me who imagined that it was they who had life and that the life I had came to me solely from them, so that they were in effect myself. But when they were told that they were spirits who existed separately from me, and that interiorly I too was a spirit they could not believe it. To enable them to know it, they were separated and in that way shown that they were spirits with a separate existence. But they still refused to believe it and stubbornly stuck to their own ideas. They went away for a while, and when they came back their conviction was still the same. This experience too shows that spirits know nothing different from this, that what exists with man is essentially theirs. But spirits like these who cling tenaciously to such beliefs are not afforded easy access to men because it is hard for them to be separated from men. A similar conviction has, it is true, been instilled into all other spirits to the end that they may be of service to men, but in them it is somewhat different.