I hate writing about myself. Anything said will only have a glass fragment of truth and not present before you the whole mirror reflecting a human being. Fragments held too tightly as the whole truth tend to cut and slice one’s hand. Any identity or label is a piece of the whole person; however, as this is the dark age of Kali Yuga, let us move forward in the darkness of print.

I’ve come to understand that no label can define the mystery and totality of a human being. Still, let me present to you one of my broken shard identities.

Call me Rogue Scholar. Over the past 30 years, I must have studied enough on my own to become a Rhodes Scholar but I attained no degrees, short of the minimum requirement–a high school diploma–in 1974. More than this degree in society’s de-education of my intelligence was too much to bear. The price for a further dulling of intelligence required I assume to many others’ degrees of BS, BMs, acidic PhDs of borrowed knowledge. Thus after a number of interesting adventures, nervous breakthroughs and jumps into the unknown, I currently, and somewhat cheekishly, go by the title “Rogue” scholar.

I define myself this way because I am in rebellion with education in general. I see it as the root cause of perpetuating fossilized traditions and human misery. I specifically rebel against the famous dictum “those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.” I propose that those who teach the lessons of history have done a lousy job and therefore have doomed us to repeat the lessons of history. We teach each new generation to repeat the past and call it the future and that past is full of false promises, aggression and war. The costumes and technology may change but essentially the same fearful, judgmental, aggressive and warmongering human pathologies are spoon fed to the young until they turn green with it and believe as they are told that this color of prejudiced perception is “normal.” If war, and aggression is to end, then programming each new generation to repeat the past has to end. I therefore strive in my books on past and future history to expose the taken-for-granted flaws in perception.

A rogue scholar sets out to disturb the sleepy givens. He nourishes in the reader a true form of the word “skeptic” which means “one who investigates, digs deep for answers.” A skeptic is not judgmental. Mostly the word is used to promote cynicism and not its original meaning. A skeptic observes and never assumes anything. He doubts as that word was intended in its Indio-European roots: “To hover between two possibilities.” He does not stand on tradition. He looks with fresh eyes. He is always in the new moment living in a state of beginning. In that freshness there can come forth intelligence, innovation, and original insight about the inner and outer universe. A rogue scholar finds the doorway to eternity in the atomically small yet powerful point of each present moment.

A rogue scholar has the unenviable task of disturbing people’s sleep. He questions assumptions and poses often shocking alternatives. For instance, we assume we are civilized when perhaps civilization has yet to happen on this earth. We assume we are human when it may very well be that our humanity is still in seed form.

We are trained to think and feel that we are individuals when we are all idiots.

Yes. We are all idiots. That is our bondage through programming.

This Greek word comes from the root idios, which stands for “identity.” Society trains one to be excellent and extraordinary, be it in intellectual and social accomplishments or in pathological behavior. If I am to follow my society’s aim at living an extraordinary life then this requires that I I-dentify with emotions, thoughts and things. I am “John.” I am an “American.” I love this. I hate that. I hope, I fear, I do the I-diot.

Idios also means being “special” or “distinct” from other personalities. I-diocy is what you get when the society seeds the empty skylike being of a child’s soul with the dark rain clouds of a borrowed identity. Nevertheless, if one is aware, one sees that for any identification to exist, it requires its opposite. If society and religion can program you to I-dentify, there is a chance you can deprogram yourself from religious and societal conditioning and experience dis-I-dentification. No matter how dark is society’s hurricane of beclouded thoughts and feelings conditioned to roil life into ego personified, it must rotate around a profoundly becalmed inner eye in its center. That eye in the idiot’s storm can be a window to the larger sky we have forgotten. It is a reminder of the unbearable lightness of being infinite.