This Oneness, in a tiny degree, can be experienced by two persons who are in close spiritual sympathy when both are simultaneously and powerfully animated by very loving thoughts of Christ, or are working together, and _giving_ on account of Christ: then a fluid interchange of sympathies and interests takes place in which the barriers of individuality go down.
This same fluid interchange in a still lesser degree takes place in ordinary friendship between two friends of similar tastes; but this interchange must always be with the mental and the higher part of us, it can never take place because of the merely physical, for in the physical, dependent as it is upon senses, barriers always exist: we see this in the union of lovers--their union is merely a transitory _self_-gratification, although it may include another self in that it is mutual; but more frequently it is not even mutual, and what is a pleasure to one is at the moment distasteful to the other, though the one can easily conceal from the other that it is so, proving how complete the duality of consciousness and of feeling remains between two individuals who depend upon contiguity of _substance_ (or the sense of touch) for their union, and not upon spiritual _similarity_: in spiritual similarity alone is _identity_ of feeling and personality and perfect union to be found, and in this identity _deceit is impossible._
The more we investigate the question of satisfactions the more we find that these, in order to be permanent, must take place upon a very high level, upon a plane above materialism. However much we may with our sense of taste enjoy a dinner to-day, it will be no joy whatever even a week hence. The natural everyday facts should (and are intended to) prove to us the futility of giving so much time and thought to the pleasures of the flesh: these pleasures lead nowhere, they end abruptly, they are very limited, being confined to five senses, and consequently, owing to a necessity of continual repetition, satiety supervenes, and there remains nothing else to turn to. Yet when this happens we are really very fortunate, because it may be a cause of our searching amongst our higher faculties for our gratifications.