How are we, as seekers of truth from a spiritual perspective, to understand an event such as the one above? The link below is to a <Rudolf> Steiner lecture where he gives his view on the origin of earthquakes
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Points discussed —
How Lucifer’s intervention in human affairs allowed for personal freedom, but at the cost of creating the possibility for evil.
Individual versus collective karma
How when the Christ in the body of Jesus bled from the hands on the cross at Golgotha, it changed the sorry state of affairs that had been existing for those human souls in Spiritland between death and a new birth. Ahriman had been gaining power there and had turned it into the Realm of the Shades. But the Christ event banished him and confined his power to Earth, to the land of the living. But the battle against Ahriman continues here.
The different strata below the Earth: Mineral Earth, Water Earth, Vapor Earth, Form Stratum, Fertile Earth, Fire Earth. It is from Fire Earth where Ahriman has his base of operations and where earthquakes have their origin.
Earthquakes and other great natural catastrophes are remnants or reminders of the great Atlantean catastrophe, the flood that sank that continent, which happened as a result of collective human karma. Thus we mustn’t think that, for example the people of Syria and Turkey, are suffering as a result of their nationalistic karma (even though such karmic divisions do exist), but rather they happen to be in the place where a karmic event that began on Atlantis. This event involves the entire human race, we all share in this guilt.
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Why adepts or psychics versed in spiritual science who can foresee events like this coming and don’t warn people. The reason being that as terrible as these natural disasters are, they relieve karmic pressure, and if for example they had warned everyone to flee and the disaster had been averted, it would be forced to happen again elsewhere; it would really only be postponing it.