Freud begins this work by taking up a possible source of religious feeling that his previous book, "The Future of an Illusion", overlooked: the "oceanic feeling" of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity. Freud himself cannot experience this feeling of dissolution, but notes there exist different pathological and healthy states (e.g. love) where the boundary between ego and object is lost, blurred, or distorted. Freud categorizes the oceanic feeling as being a regression into an earlier state of consciousness — before the ego had differentiated itself from the world of objects. The need for this religious feeling, he writes, arises out of "the infant's helplessness and the longing for the father," as there is no greater infantile need than a father's protection. Freud "imagine that the oceanic feeling became connected with religion later on" in cultural practices.