II. Inner Earth and Volcanic Eruptions

The end of Atlantis, the Flood, as it is called, was also connected with the moral quality of Atlantean peoples. Only traces remain of all this, yet up to a certain level we can show a definite connection between the lives people led and such phenomena. We must of course be extremely cautious in establishing this, for it is only too easy for fantasy to creep in. One has to base oneself solely on facts determined by occult research. Occultists seek to establish what happened when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, when the earthquake happened in Calabria,[^4] the earthquake at the time of Christ, or the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. Many people died in those natural disasters. If people perished in them, this does not necessarily mean they did something in a previous life to deserve it. It is, however, part of the karma of these people that they should perish in this way. This is one reason why one looks at the karma of those who perished. The other is the following. Theosophical handbooks often describe kama loka and devachan as if it was merely a consequence, an effect of the previous earth life. But the dead actually still influence this earth life. They play a role when changes occur on earth, in phenomena of civilization or of nature. Imagine we were born in the early years of Christianity and then reborn again in the present age. The fauna and flora of Europe would have changed tremendously. Many animals and plant species would have become extinct, with others taking their place. In the science of the spirit the explanation of this is not considered to be something supernatural, but that the powers man has when he is not in his body actually join forces with those of nature, so that human beings influence their future lives with the powers they have in devachan or kama loka. If you see animals today that differ from those seen thousands of years ago, this is partly due to human influences. Human beings thus have a part in what we call the forces of nature. The dead are continually involved in work on the natural phenomena, and in many respects we can regard natural events reflecting something which the dead bring about in this world.