Since ancient days, some areas have suffered regularly from typhoons, other types of storms and floods. People have considered these to be natural calamities which are inescapable and so have resigned themselves to this fate, as we all know. From our point of view, however, they are not natural calamities but man-made ones,I am going to explain why.

In order to alleviate the damages caused by these calamities even a little, scientists are doing their best by advancing the study of meteorology. In Japan, the government is doing all it can, too, spending great amounts of money yearly on equipment and facilities, so progress is being made to some extent. But the anticipated results do not seem to be so easily obtained. In Japan alone, yearly damages from natural disasters amount to stupendous sums of money. Let us take as an example the damage caused byTyphoon Kitty, which visited our country recently.

Citing the losses in figures only, the rice crop was decreased by about 10,000,000 bushels; 4,229 houses were demolished or washed away; 144 people were either killed or declared missing; and tens of thousands were hurt. Estimating the loss of food crops, the damages to streets and seawalls and to houses and other facilities, the total monetary cost was something like 87 billion yen (approximately 240 million dollars at that time), so you can see how great the destruction was. When the effects of all the big and small storms assaulting our country several times a year are added up, the material and non-material losses we suffer are beyond counting.

When we consider this state of affairs, even though it maybe impossible to eradicate such calamities completely, we should exert every possible effort to keep the suffering from them as small as possible. Ofcourse, there are people in government and members of the general public who are doing their best, resorting to any measure they can think of, in order to accomplish this purpose. However, the budget is not large enough and the facilities are far too insufficient, so anticipated actions are far behind schedule.

If this state of affairs continues, it is a matter of course that the same yearly damages must go on. If advancement of the study of meteorology alone is relied on, how can the needs of the present be served? That would be like “waiting one hundred years for the waters in the Yellow River to clear.”

In other words, scientific study is on the material or physical level only, which is like trying to discover the interior of something by studying only its exterior. I must say that there can be no absolutely right procedure for solution other than to first grasp the innermost, basic cause andthen, only after that, to make plans for the eradication of disasters.

You may ask, “Is there really a possibility of discovering the basic cause of calamities, as you say?” I would like you to know that there is.

A storm, from our point of view, is a cleansing activity of the space surrounding the earth, that which we call the spiritual realm. The reason it occurs is that even in the spiritual realm impurities are accumulating constantly, the same as they accumulate in the physical world in entire cities and in individual homes. The only difference is that because their spiritual realm is invisible to human eyes, we are not aware of them and of how much they have accumulated.

This is one reason they have not been noticed. It is also partly due to the fact that education up to now has been one-sided, has focused only on the material area, with total neglect of any study of the spiritual side. This is the greatest mistake humanity has made, as I have always stated.Unless man awakens to the reality of the spiritual realm and studies it, he can never come to realize the true, basic cause of a storm.

As I said above, to awaken people to the existence of the hitherto unknown spiritual realm is the true mission of religion. It seems strange that up to now so many spiritual leaders have apparently been almost completely indifferent to or had lukewarm attitudes toward this point.

When impurities accumulate in the spiritual realm, natural purifying action must inevitably occur, according to the laws of Nature; thatis, the impurities are blown away by the wind and washed away by the water.This is the reason for storm. It is the same principle as the cleansing that takes place in our physical lives, and the key to solving its mystery lies in finding out the basic cause of impurities.

Impurities are spiritual clouds formed by human thoughts, words,and deeds. Evil, harmful thoughts, words and deeds affect the spiritual realm,and as a result clouds are created. Therefore, by the number of big storms and typhoons frequently assaulting various areas of the world in recent years, wecan tell how much man's thoughts have deteriorated and how many bad words have been spoken and how many bad deeds have been committed.

Is there any way to dispel these clouds? I tell you it isquite simple to do so. It can be done by following a method which is exactly opposite to the one mentioned above; that is, by changing human thoughts to good ones, human words and deeds to good speech and acts. We can only clear the spiritual realm, which has been clouded by evil, with good for goodness emits light and dispels clouds. For instance, the singing of Christian hymns, chanting of Buddhist sutras, and chanting of Shinto prayers are all effective to ascertain degree for the cleansing of the spiritual realm, because the words used in all of these are good words that have high vibrations. Were it not for these good words of high vibratory rate, there would be far more clouds accumulating all over the world, causing even greater storms than we experienced today.

Thus, the truth is: Storms are created by man, and he suffers from them. Nature truly works in a wonderful way. We are amazed at the way the laws of Nature operate. They follow the same procedure as that which takes place when impurities accumulate in the human body and purification comes inthe form of illness.

As you can see from the above explanation, the way to prevent destructive storms is for man to recognize and understand this truth and to stop doing evil deeds and begin doing good deeds. This and nothing else will be effective in overcoming these disastrous actions.