Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.... In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets... Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.' For in this love 'to divide is not to take away.

I am LifeYour pure essence, spirit and seed of existence itself,That lies within you, longing to awaken and flourish.I am long before you and after you, never born, never die,timeless, without boundaries.I am pure unconditional love, wholeness,connectedness, freedom, bliss,joy, peace, stillness.I am That beyond the gross and limited,yet you are blinded.You choose the illusion that you have controlthrough grasping and being caughtby all that is unreal and comes and goes.You think you are alive but you barely know Life.You choose separation.It is time to wake up!Have strength, courage and trust to let go.Surrender the fear and all that imprisons you.I am beyond mind, thoughts, emotions, ego, conditioning, desires, needs, attachments, memories, dreams, goals, forms, identities, ideas.Beyond all that arises.When all that I am not is released and let go, I AM....Total, whole, eternal,infinite.And such also is all that arises.No more questions.Home.No more you, I, us.No more words.

[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.

The symbol of a drama, a symphony, or a dance is useful to correct a certain absurdity which may arise if we talk too much of God planning and creating the world for good and then being frustrated by the free will of the creatures. This may raise the ridiculous idea that the Fall to God by surprise and upset His plan, or else _ more ridiculous still _ that God planned the whole thing for conditions which, He well knew, were never going to be realized. In fact, of course, God saw the crucifixion in the act of creating the first nebulae. The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces.

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business con