“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.

A war is one kind of natural event brought about as feelings and beliefs interact on one level. A natural catastrophe represents the same kind of phenomenon at a different level. Your part in these feelings and beliefs will place you in your own “natural” position within such events.

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.

Psychically, mentally and physically, they will be as much a part of such an event as, say, the water that sweeps through a town in a flood. They will utilize the physical catastrophe as an individual might use a symptom for purposes of challenge, growth, or understanding — but they will choose their disaster just as they will choose their symptoms. They will be aware of the framework, therefore. It will not be thrust upon them.

So can a catastrophe be used consciously or unconsciously, according to the individual.