The Chameleon was born in India. His father was a tradesman and his mother was a servant. He had one brother who was a troubled child and went to jail at age fourteen for murder. The Chameleon became a Buddhist monk. He achieved nirvana at age sixteen, on the same day that his younger brother committed murder. Some people in the village said that the soul of his brother’s victim inhabited his body after he reached nirvana. It is possible that many souls entered the Chameleon’s body that day.

It was expected that when the Chameleon came down from the mountains, his nirvana would mark a point of departure from the world. This has always been the case for Enlightened ones before. For the Chameleon, however, his nirvana marked a point of deeper entry into the world. He became curious about all the lives ever lived. He spoke with the old wise men about it. They were deeply unsettled.

In a discussion with one old wise man in particular, the old sage said that he believed the Chameleon had not completed the nirvana, but had stopped just before, right when he experienced the potential power of the Enlightened one, and then stopped himself just short of the permanent break with his worldly senses. The Chameleon was power-hungry—the old sage did not say this, but he believed it and kept it quietly to himself.

The Chameleon decided he would set out to travel the world, unknown to all those around him. He would take on different disguises, some said he even changed his physical appearance. And he changed his mannerisms and emotions and mind in order to become as many people as he possibly could, assuming their identities completely.

The center point of the wheel where the spokes of all other identities connect. At one point on the outer rim, the Chameleon only knew himself. He could see the points to his left and right, but he could not understand them. And the points on the other side of the wheel, he could not even see. When he experienced nirvana, he entered into the center of the wheel, from here he could become anyone, moving freely from the center to points on the outer rim, where the One true identity experiences time and space in different individuated bodily forms in the physical world.