Firstly you should to know what is friendship? Then you will know the importance of friendship.
What is friendship? What do you mean by friendship? You are lonely and you get somebody to cling to, and then the two of you hang out together, and you call this as 'friendship'. What do you mean by 'friendship'? What kind of friends do we have around us? When do we call somebody a friend?
We say, 'A friend in need is a friend indeed ', it means that friendship is a trade. 'When I am in need, you help me and when you are in need, I help you, and then we are friends. Your views agree with mine, my views agree with you and we are friends. I need to copy assignments and you are always there, then we are friends. In all my rubbish, the one who can partner me, he is my friend.'
In a lucky moment, aloneness happens to you and you are just sitting still with yourself, fully contented, not excited, not sad, but completely with yourself. You are sitting still, and the other fellow comes and says, 'Hey, you are sitting quietly. Are you sad? Come, let's go for a drink .' And you call him your friend. You call him your 'friend'.
You will never make friends with someone who really shows the truth to you. You will make friends with someone who will keep you in illusion. And that's what you call friendship - a bond of mutual deception.
So, what is friendship? Friendship is nothing. Friendship is a state of being in which you are concerned not with what you can get from the other person, but in the real advancement of the other person. And the real advancement is, discovering the truth. So a friend is a friend only if he brings you closer to the truth; in whose presence you become less agitated, in whose presence a silence comes. Not the one who keeps gossiping with you.
Find out such friends, and then there will be real magic. But you cannot find them if you keep yourself occupied with friends of this kind. You will first have to create space. You will first have to throw the dirt away. You will first have to create a space in which that real friend can enter.
Till the time you are so occupied with these kinds of friends, the real one will not come. He cannot enter. Even if he comes there is no space for him. So get rid of all this that is around you. It will be a little painful in the beginning, because you have become used to living with these people. But bear that pain, pass through that pain.
This is taken from the source prashantadvait.com the WordPress blog where I belong.