Chapter 4

Orpins
01 Ur fundamentalist Judeo' Christian friends assure us that hfe was created by a stem, omnipo- tent, judgmental condominium- owner named Jehovah and that our destinies follow His impenetrable plans.
God # lis the Smgie-ceH Inte%ence,
the coUaborative brain that knows how to run a simple
protozoan. The First God is the one-celled God. The
First and origtnd craft of God is Protozoan.
Most religions throughout history have offered metaphorical or poetic myths which, unfortunately, developed in prescientific days before Copernicus, Darwin or Galileo. Giordano Bruno was not the only one to be killed for suggesting that the universe is a big, wild, place filled with other centers of intelligence.
During the past fifty years, astronomy, exo- biology, and genetics have produced wondrous scenarios of Big Bangs, Black Holes, alternate universes, accidental or directed pansper- mia— seeding of planets from space, and the ultimate cosmic unifying principle, that every atom in our bodies has come from the supemova explosions of far- distant stars.
Trnothy Leary 19
For us, as a species momentarily stranded in a landlocked terrestrial stage, life began locally in the ocean, in unicellular form. We clumsy, heavy bipeds, clinging like barnacles on the grasping l-G
surface of an
embryonic planet _ , ,
tend to overesti^ Everything that we now p056e66 mate our status ^^ phy5iobgical or n^ral
and function in equipmoit Wa5 t^llt intO the
the evolutionary ^^'^'"^1 ^^'3^ ^^ ^Je f ir^t
^^j^ protozoan celb.
The unicellu- lar state is the first, the most basic, the omnipres- ent triumphant form of intelligent life. Everything that we now possess as physiological or neural equipment was built into the original design of the first protozoan cells.
We Began as a Single Cell
Individually, too, we began as a single cell at the moment of our conception. Only recently have we begun to understand the seed- complexity of our beginnings. The single cell handles more transac- tions per day than do the nine million primates of New York City.
As we decipher the tactics and intelligent op- erations of the single cell, we shall begin to under- stand how our own lives can be better arranged. This is especially obvious when we consider that our original germ cell contained the blueprints for designing the equipment which makes it possible for us to write, edit, print, distribute, buy and read this book.
^ Your Branh God
God the Protozan
Mystics and psychedelic drug users have commented eloquently on the unicellular pageantry and wisdom that accompanies transcendent moments. Much of visionary- drug art is protozoan- from Bosch to Sufi rugs to acid' rock light shows. Our LSD subjects regularly report accessing those large circuits of our brain that are tuned into cellular traffic.
At the most down- to- earth level, we cannot move
into outer space until we
Unicelblar pageantry ''"^'^ ^^'^Jf ' ™' ^"^ ''
J.J ^ ^ _ . a giant unihed cellular
trsineccndcntmomante. ^^^.^7* ! if^^ .T^'
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ which we shall consider at
the later stages of theotechnology, reminds us that the space capsules in which we will escape from this planet will inevitably be based on unicellular design. Is it not clear that the launch- out from the planet will require us to fabricate self- sustaining capsules that must be capable of perform- ing the most rudimentary unicellular behaviors?