We can now understand this precisely. Just as an axe splits and divides a physical object into two parts, a change in form [essence] separates a spiritual thing into two. For example, when two people love one another, one can say that they are connected to each another as one body. When they hate each another, one can say that they are as distant from each other as west is from east.
This is not a description of their physical closeness or distance, but a similarity in their forms. Since the two of them are similar in form to one another – each loves what the other one loves and hates what the other one hates, etc. – they love one another and cleave to one another. If their form changes, such that one loves what the other hates or the like, they will become proportionally distant from one another, to the point of hatred.
If they are opposites in form – such that whatever one likes, the other hates, and vice versa – then they are extremely distant from one another, as far as east is from west.