This explanation is for entity bean.
The way I understand from reading the book is (I don't think i read it somewhere else), "ejbRemove cannot happen in the pool because it needs to check for cascade-delete aw well. Hence, ejbActivate() is always called first followed bu ejbLoad(). This is what it means to have the method having the 'same state' as 'in the beginning of a business method.'
SCJP 1.4
SCBCD 1.3