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NATIONAL DISASTERS
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Others left the place the night before --to be saved from death. The local catastrophe is used to work off particular karmas. Or a carriage taking a man to the station is stopped in a street block, and he misses the train. He is angry, but the train is wrecked and he is saved. It is not that the block was there in order to stop him, but that the 'block was utilised for the purpose. At Messina some who were not to die were dug out days afterwards, and in more than one case food had come to maintain life, brought by an astral agent. In shipwrecks, again, safety or death will depend on individual karma. Sometimes an ego has a debt of sudden death to pay, but it had not been included in the debts to be discharged during the present incarnation ; his presence in some accident brought about by a collective karma offers the opportunity of discharging the debt 'out of due time'.
