Book I Canto II: The Issue

All manifestations of Love in the world have always been deformed and reduced to need and desire.

There is not one man in a million who would have the strength, the quiet calm to face the circumstances if he knew them in advance.

It is only when the outer crust of the ordinary life is violently taken by some unexpected and tragic event that the inner consciousness has the occasion to take the place of this outward movement and to govern fully the whole being.

Those who have come upon earth fully conscious of their entire being and conscious of their Origin, there is at first a period when this consciousness gets veiled by the physical life and the body-consciousness.