“It is not necessary, most of the time, to direct an individual into this or that relationship or situation – components of his or her personality, aspects of themselves they may not be aware of at all, will push them, by the laws of attraction or repulsion, into the places, or near to the people, who will benefit them. Very often two people, or a group of people, may meet in forceful and beneficial situations, and onlookers may even cry out that this must be the result of a ‘miracle’ or ‘divine intervention’. The couple, or group, have been drawn to each other sometimes across oceans, or overcoming ‘impossible’ hazards, because they need each other – need to learn from each other. But often this process, to the uninstructed onlooker, seems like a meaningless or wasted conflict, or a stalemate, or even damaging.

“And of course sometimes such encounters are indeed mistaken, wasteful, damaging. How could it be otherwise on poor Shikasta, in its extremity, at the end of the long processes that have brought it to such a shameful state?”