“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Catastrophes, such as earthquakes or floods, are not perpetuated by certain elements of nature against other portions of itself. Your feelings have as much natural validity as the tides, and they have their own kind of attraction — mind does move matter. A ring manipulated at a seance under controlled conditions is but the most simple kind of demonstration of the great ability of mind to interact with matter. You each participate in the creation of each thunderstorm, each new spring, each flood, earthquake, and summer rain.

Your feelings are as natural a part of the environment as trees are. They have a great effect upon the weather. There are even connections that can be made, for instance, between epilepsy and earthquakes, where great energy and instability come together, affecting the physical properties of the earth.

(11:28.) Those in earthquake regions are attracted to such spots because of their innate understanding of the astonishing relationship between exterior circumstances and their own quite private mental and emotional patterns.

Such emotional nonphysical qualities are unstable, and affect the deep electromagnetic integrity of the earth’s structure. Obviously there have been earthquakes where there are no people, but in all cases the origins are to be found in mental properties rather than exterior ones. (Pause.) Earthquakes are very often associated with periods of great social change or unrest, and from such locations the fault lines originate and are projected outward. They may then affect a generally unpopulated area on another continent, or an island, or cause a tidal wave on the other side of the world, even as a stroke might affect a portion of the body far from the original damage.

(Pause at 11:38.) You do not need a self-conscious mind to feel, and in the “past,” earthquakes represented the feeling-patterns of species in the same way — unstable conditions of consciousness that in themselves initiated natural phenomena, further altering the state of consciousness and the conditions of species as well.

I told you that a dis-ease (with the hyphen) can have a creative basis (in the 620th session in Chapter Four). And so can an earthquake or a natural disaster.

(12:01. During break we speculated about what might be learned from a computerized global study — one extending back to the beginning of our recorded history, say — to see what correlations could be discovered between earthquakes and periods of great emotional and social upheaval throughout the world…. Resume at 12:10.)

Now: On other than conscious levels, simply as creatures, you are well aware of impending storms, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and so forth.

Many additional issues operate, however, that have to do with any given personal reaction. Here other psychological conditions enter in. People live in regions threatened by earthquakes with clear conscious knowledge of them. Regardless of what they might say, they need and enjoy the constant stimuli and excitement; the very unpredictable nature of the circumstances arouses them to action. There are many different attitudes and characteristics that apply, so that it is difficult to make generalizations, but there are always reasons why any individual is involved in a disastrous natural catastrophe.