understanding, and of the other. When one is in love, one is supposed to be aware of the other, her needs and wishes, and to be considerate about them. Many people are. One ceases to be aware of the quality of one's own consciousness. If it is being corrupted by the process of sharing, one is blissfully unaware of it. To be quite certain of maintaining the perfection of consciousness described by Professor Collingwood one has to remain separate and apart. All involvement with other people involves the danger of corruption. But to remain separate and apart, in the end, is sterile and unfruitful. To do anything, to be of any use, one has to be a participant, and get involved with other people, and that inevitably involves the danger of corruption. The only remedy or safety is if the form of action one takes itself preserves one's perfection of consciousness.
Now we all know that a person's actions add to and affect his experience; if it were not so, it would never be possible to acquire any skill whatever. And when we speak of the value of experience, we mean, for instance, that years of experience in the law courts have moulded a man's consciousness so as to enable him to think and act like a professional lawyer. It is exactly the same with any other sort of consciousness. I have been using the phrase “the consciousness of God” as a shorthand way of referring to a perfect consciousness, which is uncorrupted, and whose natural state is one of equilibrium. If this consciousness is possible (and one is tempted to say it must be even to be able to imagine it) then there must be a type of conduct which tends to result in it, since all conduct in the end is responsible for the type of consciousness which we have. Clearly this type of conduct is not egotistical conduct, for that results in an egotistical consciousness, which is hardly godlike. There is only one type of conduct left, namely self-less conduct; which can take two forms, selflessly malevolent, or selflessly benevolent, or a mixture of the…