Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/449

Marriage, every marriage, is the expression of an enormously deep decision. No one ever marries casually. (Look at the progression. Casual—intensely meaningful—really casual, really intensely-meaningful, really really casual—etc.) For casual is the appreciation of infinity, the knowledge that all men and all women as well as the universe and God are ultimately our mates, our extensions. But intensely meaningful is the social expression we give to invest all of our soul in One. And this we have to do in the Give-and-Take of life in order to discover ourselves Intensely.

There are two natures in art and in life. We contract and we expand. Or perhaps put better, we expand and we contract, we give and we take. In life, the more we engage in, the less we understand; the less we engage in, the more we understand of a given thing. To take completely is to be drowned—all the things of earth and life become equally meaningful to us. (Drugs open us to extreme giving or extreme taking, assuming the echo from now on of Take beneath Give; Give beneath Take, and so on.

What I am trying to say is that the general law of man’s successive levels of the unconscious is that on the surface in Consciousness people are essentially a big or little Give or Take with the other implicit beneath it, smaller, less intense, but wider. Thus GIVE

t. . . .a. . . .k.. . .e

Or vice-versa. But the next level is REALLY TAKE

really. . . . give. . . .

And the next, REALLY REALLY TAKE

really. . . really. . . give

I can even express it mathematically given G for Give, T for Take and g for g. . i. v. e. and t for t. . . a. . . k. . . e.

Here it is:

If I knew more mathematics, I could express it in one function. In any case to understand the above equation realize that I mean it to progress inward rather than from left to right.