THE

AKWỤKWỌ

OBI

WITHIN the human mind there springs naturally and without effort the thought of a future place or state of happiness. The thought has been variously expressed. In English it is rendered in the form of the word heaven.

Relics found in mounds and burial places of prehistoric inhabitants of America testify to their thought of heaven. Monuments, temples and inscriptions on metal and stone in the ruins of ancient civilizations in the Americas attest the belief in heaven, by the builders of those civilizations. The masters of the land of the Nile reared obelisks, pyramids and tombs, and left them as silent, graven witnesses proclaiming a future state of happiness for man. The races of Asia offer a wealth of testimony in caves and shrines, and a literature which abounds with the descriptions of a future happy state of man as the results of his good deeds on earth. Before the heavenward pointing spires of Christian faiths were raised on the soil of Europe, stone circles and pillars and crypts were used by man to induce the blessings of heaven upon him while on earth, and to fit him to enter the happy sphere of heaven after death. In a primitive or limited way, or with the ease or extravagance of culture, each race has expressed its belief in a future state of heaven.

Every race has its myths and legends which tell in their own way of a place or state of innocence, in which the race lived happily. In this original state they were given existence by a superior being on whom they looked with fear or awe or reverence and whom they regarded as their master, judge or as a father, with the trustfulness of children. These accounts say that rules were provided by the creator or superior being, so that living according to these, the race should continue to live in their state of simple happiness, but that dire results would attend any departure from the ordained life. Each story tells in its own way of the disobedience of the race or humanity, and then of the troubles, misfortunes, and disasters, with their pains and sorrows resulting from the ignorance and disobedience of the ancestors.

Myth and legend and scripture state that the human races must live in sin and sorrow, stricken by disease and afflicted with old age which ends in death, because of that ancient sin of the forefathers. But each record in its own way, and characteristically of the people by whom it was made, foretells of a time when by the favor of the creator or by the expiation of wrongs done, men will escape the realistic dream of earth life and enter into a place from which pain and suffering and disease and death are absent, and where all who enter will live in uninterrupted and unalloyed happiness. This is the promise of heaven.

Myth and legend tell and scripture ordains how man must live and what he shall do before he can obtain or have conferred upon him the felicity of heaven. Suitable to the life and character of his race, man is told that he will gain heaven by divine favor or earn it by deeds of valor in battle, by overcoming the enemy, by subduing the impious, by a life of fasting, solitude, faith, prayer or penance, by acts of charity, by relieving the sufferings of others, by self-abnegation and a life of service, by an understanding and overcoming and controlling of his improper appetites, tendencies and inclinations, by right thought, right action and by knowledge, and that the heaven is either beyond or above the earth or is to be on the earth in some future state.

Christian beliefs concerning man’s early and future state differ little from those of other and more ancient faiths. According to Christian teaching man is born and lives in sin, and it is said that the penalty of sin is death, but he may escape death and other penalties of sin by believing in the Son of God as his Savior.

The statements in the New Testament about heaven are true and beautiful. The theological statements about the theological heaven are a mass of irrationalities, contradictions and short-sighted absurdities. They repel the mind and enervate the senses. The theological heaven is a place lit up with brilliant lights, and extravagantly furnished and decorated with very expensive earthly things; a place where songs of praise are sung perpetually to the strains of music; where the streets flow with milk and honey and where ambrosial food abounds; where the air is laden with the fragrance of sweet perfumes and balmy incense; where happiness and enjoyment respond to every touch and where the inmates or minds of men sing and dance and thrill and throb to hosannas of prayer and praise, throughout infinite eternity.

Who wants such a heaven? What thinking man would accept such a shallow, sensuous, heaven if it were thrust upon him? The soul of man must be like a fool, a jelly fish or a mummy, to put up with any such nonsense. Nobody wants the theological heaven nowadays and none less than the theologian, who preaches it. He wants to stay here on this accursed earth rather than go to that glorious heaven which he has planned and built and furnished in the far-off sky.

What is heaven? Does it not or does it exist? If it does not, then why waste time in deluding one’s self with such idle fancies? If it does exist and is worth while, then it is best that one should understand it and work for it.

The mind longs for happiness and looks forward to a place or state where happiness will be realized. This place or state is expressed in the term heaven. The fact that all races of humanity have through all time thought of and believed in some sort of heaven, the fact that all continue to think of and look forward to a heaven, is evidence that there is something in the mind which compels the thought, and that this something must be similar in kind to that toward which it impels, and that it will continue to impel and guide the thought toward its ideal until that ideal goal is reached and realized.

There is great energy in thought. By thinking and looking forward to a heaven after death, one stores up a force and builds according to an ideal. This force must have its expression. Ordinary earth life affords no opportunity for such expression. Such ideals and aspirations find their expression after death in the heaven world.

The mind is a foreigner from a happy realm, the mental world, where sorrow, strife and sickness are unknown. Arriving on the shores of the sensuous physical world, the visitor is beset, beguiled, bewildered by the allurements, delusions and deceits of forms and colors and sensations. Forgetting his own happy state and seeking happiness through the senses in the objects of sensation, he strives and struggles and then sorrows to find on approaching the objects, that happiness is not there. After a sojourn of barter and bargain, of conflicts, successes and disappointments, after smarting from pain and relieved by superficial joys, the visitor departs from the physical world and returns to his happy native state, taking with him experience.

The mind comes again and lives in and passes from the physical world to its own, the mental world. The mind becomes a time-worn traveler who has often visited, yet never has sounded the depths nor solved the problems of mundane life. Man has had much experience with little profit. He comes from his eternal home to spend a day in the world, then passes again to rest, only to come again. This goes on until he shall discover in himself, his deliverer, who will tame the wild beasts which beset him, who will dissipate the delusions which bewilder him, who will guide him through sensuous delights across the howling wilderness of the world and into the realm where he is self-knowing, unattracted by the senses and unaffected by ambitions or temptations and unattached to the results of action. Until he finds his deliverer and knows his realm of safety man can look forward to heaven, but he will not know it nor enter heaven while he has to come unknowingly to the physical world.

The mind does not find the essentials of heaven on earth, and it is never even for a short time in perfect accord with its surroundings and with its emotions and the senses and attendant sensations. Until the mind shall become the knower and the master of all these, it cannot know heaven on earth. So the mind must be freed by death from the physical world, to enter into a state of happiness as its reward, to live up to the ideals to which it has looked forward, and be freed from the suffering which it has endured, and escape the temptations with which it has struggled, and to enjoy the good deeds it has done and the ideal union to which it has aspired.

After death not all men enter heaven. Those men whose thought and work are spent on the things of physical life, who never consider or concern themselves about a future state after death, who have no ideals aside from physical enjoyment or work, who have no thought or aspiration toward a divinity beyond or within themselves, those men will have no heaven after death. Some of the minds belonging to this class, but who are not enemies to mankind, remain in an intermediate state as in a deep sleep, until physical bodies are anew prepared and ready for them; then they enter at birth into these and thereafter continue the life and the work as demanded by their previous lives.

To enter heaven, one must think of and do that which makes heaven. Heaven is not made after death. Heaven is not made by mental laziness, by doing nothing, by languishing, by idling time away, or dreaming lazily while awake, and without purpose. Heaven is made by thinking of one’s own and others’ spiritual and moral welfare and is earned by earnest work to such end. One can enjoy the heaven only which he himself has built; the heaven of another is not his heaven.

After death of its physical body, the mind begins a process of elimination by which the gross and sensual desires, vices, passions, and appetites are burned away or sloughed off. These are the things which beset and beguiled and deceived and deluded and confused it and caused it pain and suffering while it was in physical life and which prevented it from knowing real happiness. These things must be put aside and parted from so that the mind may have rest and happiness, and may live out the ideals which it has yearned for, but was unable to achieve in physical life.

Heaven is as necessary for most minds as sleep and rest is for the body. When all the sensual desires and thoughts have been put off and done away with by the mind, it then enters the heaven which it had previously prepared for itself.

This heaven after death cannot be said to be at a particular spot or locality on the earth. The earth known to mortals in physical life cannot be seen nor sensed in heaven. Heaven is not limited to the dimensions by which the earth is measured.

One who enters heaven is not governed by the laws which regulate the movements and actions of physical bodies on earth. He who is in his heaven does not walk, nor does he fly about, nor does he move by muscular effort. He does not partake of delicious foods, nor drink sweet potions. He does not hear or produce music or noise on stringed, wooden or metallic instruments. He does not see the rocks, trees, water, houses, costumes, as they exist on earth, nor does he see the physical forms and features of any being on earth. Pearly gates, jasper streets, sweet foods, drinks, clouds, white thrones, harps and cherubs may be located on the earth, they are not found in heaven. After death each one builds his own heaven and acts as his own agent. There is no buying and selling of merchandise or any of the products of earth, as these are not needed. Business transactions are not carried on in heaven. All business must be attended to on earth. Acrobatic feats and spectacular performances, if witnessed, must be seen on earth. No such performers have been arranged for in the management of heaven, and no one there would be interested in such shows. There is no political jobbery in heaven, as there are no positions to fill. There are no sects nor religions in heaven, as each one there has left his church on earth. Nor will there be found fashionables and an elite of exclusive society, because the broadcloth, silks and laces in which society is clothed are not allowed in heaven, and family trees cannot be transplanted. The veneer and coatings and bandages and all such adornments must have been removed before one may enter heaven, for all in heaven are as they are and may be known as they are, without deceit and the disguise of falsehood.

After the physical body has been put aside, the mind which was incarnate begins to throw off and free itself from the coils of its fleshly desires. As it forgets and becomes unaware of them, the mind gradually awakens to and enters its heaven world. The essentials to heaven are happiness and thought. Nothing is admitted which will prevent or interfere with happiness. No conflict or annoyance of any kind can enter heaven. The sphere of happiness, the heaven world, is not so grand, awe inspiring or sublime as to cause the mind to feel insignificant or out of place. Nor is heaven so indifferent, ordinary, uninteresting or monotonous as to allow the mind to regard itself as superior and unsuited to the state. Heaven is to the mind who enters, all that which will afford that mind (not the senses) its greatest and most comprehensive happiness.

The happiness of heaven is through thought. Thought is the creator and fashioner and builder of heaven. Thought supplies and arranges all the appointments of heaven. Thought admits all others who take part in one’s heaven. Thought determines what is done, and the manner in which it is done. But only thoughts which are of happiness can be used in building heaven. The senses may enter into the heaven of a mind only to the degree that they are made necessary to the happiness by thought. But the senses so used are of a more refined nature than the senses of earth life and they can only be employed when they conflict in no way with the thought of heaven. The sense or senses which are concerned with the flesh have no part or place in heaven. Then what kind of senses are these heavenly senses? They are senses made by the mind temporarily and for the occasion, and do not last.

Although the earth is not seen nor sensed as it is on earth, yet the earth may be and is perceived by the mind when the thoughts of that mind have, in furtherance of an ideal, been concerned with the earth. But the earth in heaven is then an ideal earth and is not perceived by the mind in its actual physical condition with the hardships which it imposes on physical bodies. If the thought of man had been concerned with the making habitable and beautifying of certain localities of the earth, with improving the natural conditions of the earth and with turning them to advantage for the common good of himself and others, or with improving the physical, moral and mental conditions in any way, then the earth or the localities of the earth with which he had concerned himself, would, in his heaven, be realized in the greatest perfection, by his thought, and without the obstacles and hindrances with which he had contended in physical life. Thought takes the place of his measuring stick and distance disappears in thought. According to his ideal thought on and of earth, so will be his realization of it in heaven; but without the labor of the working and without the effort of thinking, because the thought which brings about the realization is formed on earth and merely lives itself out in heaven. The thought in heaven is the enjoyment and result of the thinking which was done on earth.

The mind is not concerned with the subject of locomotion unless the subject was related to its ideal while on earth and was considered without too much self interest. An inventor whose thought on earth was concerned with some vehicle or instrument of locomotion for the purpose of making money out of his invention, would, if he entered heaven, have forgotten and be entirely unaware of his work on earth. In the case of an inventor whose ideal was to perfect such a vehicle or instrument for the purpose of bettering the conditions of the public or for relieving individuals of hardships, with a humanitarian motive, and even in the case of him whose thought was of making and perfecting an invention with the object of demonstrating some abstract proposition—as long as his thinking was without the chief or ruling thought of making money—the work thought of would have part in the inventor’s heaven and he would there accomplish in full measure what he had been unable to realize on earth.

The movements or travel of the mind in its heaven world are not performed by laborious walking or swimming or flying, but by thought. Thought is the means by which the mind passes from one locality to another. That thought may do this is experienced in physical life. A man may be transported in thought to the most distant parts of the earth. His physical body remains where it is, but his thought travels where he wills and with the quickness of thought. It is as easy for him to transport himself in thought from New York to Hong Kong, as it is from New York to Albany, and no longer time is required. A man while sitting in his chair may absent himself in thought and revisit distant places where he has been and may live over again important events of the past. Sweat may stand out in beads on his forehead as he performs great muscular labor. His face may be suffused with color as he, having gone back into the past, resents some personal affront, or it may turn to an ashen pallor as he passes through some great danger, and all the while he will be unaware of his physical body and its surroundings unless he is interrupted and recalled, or until he has returned in thought to his physical body in the chair.

As a man may act and re-enact in thought the things which he has experienced through the physical body without being aware of his physical body, the mind, too, can act and re-live ideally in heaven according to its best deeds and thoughts while on earth. But the thoughts will then have been disassociated from all that prevents the mind from being ideally happy. The body used by the mind to experience earth life is the physical body; the body used by the mind to experience its happiness in heaven is its thought body. The physical body is suited to life and action in the physical world. This thought body is created by the mind during life and takes form after death and lasts not longer than the heaven period. In this thought body the mind lives while in heaven. The thought body is used by the mind to live in its heaven world because the heaven world is of the nature of thought, and is made of thought, and the thought body acts as naturally in its heaven world as does the physical body in the physical world. The physical body needs food, to be maintained in the physical world. The mind also needs food to maintain its thought body in the heaven world, but the food cannot be physical. The food there used is of thought and is the thoughts which were entertained while the mind was in a body while on earth. While the man had been reading and thinking and idealizing his work when on earth, he had by so doing, prepared his heavenly food. Heavenly work and thought is the only kind of food which the mind in its heaven world can use.

The mind may realize speech and music in heaven, but only through thought. The song of life will be accompanied by the music of the spheres. But the song will have been composed by its own thought and according to its own ideals while on earth. The music will be from the spheres of the heaven worlds of other minds, as they are in harmony.

The mind does not touch other minds nor objects in heaven, as physical things contact other physical bodies on earth. In its heaven the body of the mind, which is a body of thought, touches other bodies by thought. One who knows touch by the contact only of flesh with other material or by the touch of flesh with flesh, will not appreciate the joy which may be afforded to the mind from the touch of thought with thought. Happiness is realized, almost, by touch of thought with thought. Happiness never can be realized by contact of flesh with flesh. Heaven is not a lonesome place nor state where each mind is confined in the solitude of a beingless heaven. Hermits, solitary recluses and metaphysicians whose thoughts have been concerned almost exclusively in contemplation of themselves individually or with abstract problems, may enjoy their respective heavens, but it is seldom that a mind can or does exclude all beings or other minds from his heaven world.

The heaven which man inhabits after death is in man’s own mental atmosphere. By this he was surrounded and in it he has lived during his physical life. Man is not conscious of his mental atmosphere, but becomes conscious of it after death, and then not as of an atmosphere, but as heaven. He must first pass through, grow out of, his psychic atmosphere, that is, go through hell, before he can enter his heaven. During physical life, the thoughts which build his heaven after death remain in his mental atmosphere. They are, to a large extent, not lived out. His heaven consists in the development, living out and realization of these ideal thoughts; but all the time, be it remembered, he is in his own atmosphere. Out of this atmosphere is furnished the germ from which his next physical body is built.

Each mind has and lives in its own individual heaven, as each mind lives in its physical body and in its own atmospheres in the physical world. All minds in their respective heavens are contained within the great heaven world, similarly as men are contained within the physical world. The mind is not located in heaven as men are by position and locality on earth, but the mind is in that state by its ideals and the quality of its thoughts. The mind may shut itself up in its own heaven within the great heaven world and be out of touch with other minds of like quality or power, similarly as a man shuts himself off from the world when he absents himself from all human society. Each mind may participate in the heaven of another mind or with all other minds to the degree that their ideals are the same and to the degree that their thoughts are in tune, similarly as men on earth of kindred ideals are drawn together and enjoy mental association through thought.

The heaven world is built up and made up of thought, but of such thoughts only which will contribute to happiness. Such thoughts as: he has robbed me, he would kill me, he would slander me, he has lied to me, or, I am jealous of him, I envy him, I hate him, cannot play any part in heaven. It should not be supposed that heaven is a dull place or state because it is made up of such uncertain and unsubstantial stuff as one’s thoughts. Man’s chief happiness on earth, little though it is, comes through his thought. The money kings of earth do not find happiness by their mere hoardings of gold, but in the thought of their possession of it, and their consequent power. A woman does not get her scant measure of happiness from the many pieces of finery which are used in the make-up of a gown and from the wearing of that gown, but her happiness comes from the thought that it beautifies her and the thought that it will command admiration from others. An artist’s delight is not in the product of his work. It is the thought which stands behind it that he enjoys. A teacher is not well pleased merely by the fact that students are able to memorize difficult formulas. His satisfaction lies in the thought that they understand and will apply what they have memorized. The little happiness which man gets on earth, he gets through his thought only, and not from any physical possession or success. On earth thoughts seem to be intangible and unreal, and possessions seem very real. In heaven the objects of sense have disappeared, but thoughts are real. In the absence of gross sense forms and in the presence and realness of the subjects of thought, the mind is inexpressibly more happy than is the mind of ordinary man through his senses while on earth.

All those who entered into our thought while on earth, or those with whom our thought was directed to the attainment of some ideal, will in thought be present and help to make up our heaven. So one’s friends cannot be shut out from his heaven. Relationships may be continued by the mind in its heaven world, but only if the relationship is of an ideal nature and not in so far as it is physical and fleshly. Physicality has no part in heaven. There is no thought of sex or the action of sex in heaven. Some minds while incarnate in physical bodies, invariably associate the thought of “husband” or “wife” with sensual acts, and it may be difficult for such to think of husband and wife without the thought of their physical relationship. It is not difficult for others to think of husband or wife, as companions engaged in work toward a common ideal or as a subject of an unselfish and not sensual love. When the sensually inclined mind has parted from its physical body and has entered its heaven world, it, too, will not have the thought of sex because it will have parted from its fleshly body and its sensual appetites and will have been cleansed from its gross desires.

The mother who seems to have been parted by death from her child can meet it again in heaven, but as the heaven is different from earth, so will the mother and child be different in heaven from what they were on earth. The mother who regarded her child with a selfish interest only, and considered that child as her own personal property, does not wish such a child nor can she have it with her in heaven, because such selfish thought of physical possession is foreign to and is excluded from heaven. The mother who meets her child in heaven bears a different attitude of mind to the being to whom her thought is directed, than the selfish mother bears to her physical child, while she is in the physical world. The dominating thoughts of the unselfish mother are of love, helpfulness and protection. Such thoughts are not destroyed nor hindered by death, and the mother who had such thoughts for her child while on earth will continue to have them in heaven.

No human mind is limited to nor encased in its physical body and every human mind incarnate has its own father in heaven. That mind who has left earth life and entered its heaven, and whose best thoughts were directed to or concerned with those whom it knew on earth, may affect the minds of those on earth if the minds on earth reach high enough in thought.

The thought of the child which the mother carries with her in heaven is not of its shape and size. In physical life she knew her child as an infant, as a child at school, and later perhaps as a father or mother. Through all the career of its physical body the ideal thought of her child has not changed. In heaven, the mother’s thought of her child does not include its physical body. Her thought is of the ideal only.

Each one will meet his friends in heaven to the degree that he knows those friends on earth. On earth his friend may have a needle or a moon eye, a button or a bottle nose, a mouth like a cherry or a scuttle, a dish or box chin, a pear-shaped head or a head like a bullet, a face like a hatchet or a squash. His form might be to others like that of an Apollo or a satyr. These are often disguises and the mask which his friends wears on earth. But these disguises will be pierced if he knows his friend. If he saw his friend through the disguises on earth he will know him in the heaven world without those disguises.

It is not reasonable to expect that we should see or have things in heaven as we have them on earth, or to feel that heaven would be undesirable unless we could so have them. Man seldom sees things as they are, but as he thinks that they are. He does not understand the worth of his possessions to him. The objects as things in themselves are of the earth and are perceived through his physical organs of sense. The thoughts only of these objects can be taken to heaven and only such thoughts can enter heaven as will contribute to the happiness of the mind. Therefore the same mind which was the thinker in the body on earth will suffer no loss by giving up that which cannot contribute to its happiness. Those whom we love on earth, and to love whom is necessary to our happiness, will not suffer because their faults and vices are not taken with us in thought to heaven. We shall more truly appreciate them when we can have them in thought without their faults and as we think of them as ideals. The faults of our friends clash with our own faults on earth, and the happiness of friendship is marred and clouded. But the friendship without blemish is better realized in the heaven world, and we know them more truly as they are than when appearing with the dross of earth.

It is not impossible for the mind in heaven to communicate with one on earth, nor for that on earth to communicate with one in heaven. But such communication is not carried on by means of any production of psychic phenomena, nor does it come from spiritistic sources nor what spiritists speak of as their “spirit world” or the “summerland.” The minds in heaven are not the “spirits” of which the spiritists speak. The heaven world of the mind is not the spirit world or summerland of the spiritist. The mind in its heaven does not enter nor speak through the summerland, nor does the mind in heaven manifest itself in any phenomenal way to a spiritist or to its friends on earth. If the mind in heaven did enter the summerland or did appear to a spiritist or did manifest itself in physical form and shake hands with and speak to its friends in a physical body, then that mind must be aware of the earth, and of the flesh and of the pains, afflictions or imperfections of those with whom it communicated, and the contrast of these would interrupt and disturb its happiness and heaven would be at an end for that mind. While the mind is in heaven its happiness will not be interrupted; it will not be aware of any of the vices or faults or sufferings of those on earth, and it will not leave its heaven until its heaven period is at an end.

The mind in heaven can communicate with one on earth through thought and thought only and such thought and communication will always be for the ennoblement and good, but never to advise the one on earth how to earn a living, or how to satisfy his desire or to give the mere comfort of companionship. When a mind in heaven communicates with one on earth, it is usually through impersonal thought which suggests some good action. It is possible, however, that the suggestion may be accompanied by the thought of the friend who is in heaven, if what is suggested is associated with the character or with what was his work on earth. When the thought of the one in heaven is apprehended by the mind on earth, the thought will in no way suggest itself through any phenomena. The communication will be through thought alone. In moments of aspiration and under suitable conditions, the man on earth may communicate his thought to one in heaven. But such thought can have no earthly taint and must be in conformity with the ideal and relate to the happiness of the mind in heaven, and stands in no relationship to the personality of the deceased. When communication between the mind in heaven and the mind on earth is carried on, the mind in heaven will not think of the other being on earth, nor will the man on earth think of the other in heaven. Communication can be had only when the minds are attuned to each other, when place, position, possessions, do not affect the thought and when the thought is of mind with mind. Of that the ordinary person does not conceive. If such communion is held, time and place do not appear. When such communion is held the mind in heaven does not come down to earth, nor does man ascend to heaven. Such communion of thought is through the higher mind of the one on earth.

Because of the difference in ideals and the quality or power of the thoughts and aspirations of men, heaven is not the same to all who go there. Each enters and perceives and appreciates it as the fulfillment of what he desired for his happiness. The difference in thoughts and ideals of men has given rise to the representations of the numbering and grading of the different heavens which man enjoys after death.

There are as many heavens as there are minds. Yet all are within one heaven world. Each lives in his heaven in happiness without in any way interfering with the happiness of others. This happiness may, if measured, in time and in terms of experience of the earth, seem to be like endless eternity. In actual terms of the earth it may be very short. To the one in heaven the period will be an eternity, which is a complete cycle of experience or thought. But the period will end, though the end will not seem to the one in heaven to be the end of its happiness. The beginning of its heaven did not seem to be sudden or unexpected. End and beginning in heaven run into each other, they mean completion or fulfillment and cause neither regret nor surprise as these words are understood on earth.

The heaven period as it was determined by the ideal thoughts and works before death is not long or short, but is complete and ends when the mind has rested from its labors and has exhausted and assimilated its ideal thoughts which it had not realized on earth, and from this assimilation is strengthened and refreshed by being relieved from and forgetting the cares and anxieties and sufferings which it had experienced on earth. But in the heaven world the mind does not acquire any more knowledge than that it had on earth. Earth is the battlefield of its struggles and the school in which it acquires knowledge, and to earth must the mind return to complete its training and education.

(Ka emechie ya)

The Editorial in the January issue will be about Heaven on Earth.