I
just woke up from a strange yet enlightening dream. Of everything on Earth, I dreamed of being an amoeba living in a
large pond on the bank of which I was sleeping.
“I”,
the amoeba, had climbed up the stem of a bulrush, what in amoebal language was
known as a “Stairway to Heaven”, for what lay beyond our lake universe was what
Heaven was to us. I was pushing as hard as I could to penetrate the water/air
barrier, in vain. I seemed to have been
doing that for ages, eons. Finally, in
total dispiritedness and exhaustion, I was about to let go and let myself fall
back to my bottom-feeding, amoeba-eat-amoeba existence, when suddenly, I heard,
“Why are you doing this, my friend?”
I
looked around and encountered a spherical being attached to the Stairway. “Who
are you?” I asked.
“My name is
Raminothna. I can be many things, but
right now, I'm the egg of a dragonfly. And you?”
“I
am an amoeba.”
“What
were you doing?”
“I
was trying to get into Heaven.”
“Why?”
“I'm
tired of my mundane existence. I want
to transcend to a higher realm.”
“I can
appreciate the sentiment, but I’m afraid you are going about it the wrong way.”
“Oh
yeah? Well, if you know the right way, why are you still stuck in here?” And I
couldn't help but add, “At least I have some freedom of movement, unlike you.”
“I
will be out of this pond before the next full moon,” declared the
dragonfly egg happily.
"So,
how do you do it?"
“Tell
me. How do you reproduce?”
“That’s
a bit personal, isn’t it?”
“You did
ask.”
“Okay,
I reproduce by binary fission, where one becomes two, two become four, four
become eight, eight become sixteen, and so on.
How about you?”
“The same.”
“So,
what is the difference?”
“Now tell
me. Are your descendants detached or
attached to each other?”
“Detached. We are free moving entities,” I said
proudly.
“Are
they differentiated or identical?”
“They
are identical, “
“And their
behavior? Is it mutually competitive or
cooperative?”
“Mutually
competitive. Fighting over the same old
bacteria for food, if you must know.
And what about yours? Are they
detached or attached?”
“They are
attached to each other.”
“Do
they have freedom of individual movement?”
“No, they do
not.”
“Then
I don’t see how you can teach me anything.”
“Here is how. My descendents will be differentiated in
relation to each other, both structurally and behaviorally. And though they will be stuck fast to each
other, they will have a much higher degree of collective freedom.”
“You
got me lost somewhere.”
“You see, while some of
my descendents will become eyes so all can see, others will become legs so all
can walk with immense strides, and some will produce protective armor so all
can live in the rarified atmosphere of ‘Heaven’, and still others will become
wings so all can fly in the heavenly winds, clear over the mountain, and the
mountains beyond.”
“All the way to
the moon, no doubt?” I said sarcastically.
“Unfortunately
not. Only human beings are capable of doing that.”
“Human
beings? They must be tremendous flyers then?”
“Strangely,
the individual human being can’t even fly.”
“You
lost me again.”
“Quite simple, really.
Like you amoebae, all dragonflies of the same species are virtually identical
and mutually competitive. On the other
hand, like dragonfly cells, human beings are differentiated in relation to each
other to fill various social roles and form the various social organs. Thus, they can form still higher societies
which have yet far greater capabilities.”
“I
think I understand. Anyway, back to my
original question. How do I get out of
here?”
“If you take the right
evolutionary path, your descendents may become something more akin to a human
being than a mere dragonfly.”
“With
due respect to the amazing dragonfly, I think I'd rather be the even more
amazing human being. So, how many moons
will it take?”
“Three
billion years, if you start now, that is, if you succeed.”
As
the amoeba began its long integrative transcendence, and at long last became
me, I opened my eyes, and saw that the full moon had moved far to the
west. But already, I found myself
looked far beyond it, all the way to the stars.