The Gaia Vedas : Author’s Note

How I Write …

Image generated by the author in Omnigraffle.

[Author’s Note: This essay is a working draft. It may be subject to future revisions as I tie the various pieces of TGV together more tightly.]

My Manifesto / Charter

This is about a good a summary about who I am and my particular / peculiar perspective, as any.

My name is Alutha Zatoichi Jamancar. I am a continuum master. I work in nonordinary realities. I explore, create, map, and redefine continuums.

In this lifetime, I will create a global sustainable utopia that will be called Gaia Pacifica. I will define a new continuum, a new reality, Gaia Pacifica Prime, and cause a shift of consciousness from the current continuum to Gaia Pacifica Prime.

I will transform our model of what it is to be human, and raise the baseline of what adult humans can achieve.

I will create a new model of consciousness, one grounded deeply in our sensual and energetic natures, and containing a new fluidic model of identity.

I will create a new model of community, with new structures, new agreements, and new constellations of connection and intimacy.

I will pathfind and create new myths, new pathways, and new stories to source humanity’s development.

I will transform our ability to share knowledge, expertise, and experience.

I will profoundly expand our definition and experience of mastery, both at the level of individual and at the level of community.

This is who I am.

How I Write

I write somatically. That is to say, I build somatic maps of the models that I explore and create. Over time … I have integrated and cross-checked where these maps overlap and intersect. This has led … more or less … to one sprawling somatic map … that is stored in my soma (body). Over time … I have synthesized several … new models or upgrades. These upgrades represent improved models for certain highly experiential knowledge (k) domains … domains like education, social interactions, productivity, and intimacy. To write about one of the new models … I read my somatic map [for that model] and translate that raw somatic map into verbal language. I write in a style intended to facilitate the rapid and accurate reconstitution of these somatic maps. To do this … I use punctuation a bit differently … because I aim to facilitate a particular kind of processing … by readers.

Also, I write in a very … compact, even dense … style. I pack a lot of information into very few words. This is deliberate. I have a lot of information to offload in a very short time, so I write densely and efficiently … with the intention that in the future I — or someone else — will “unpack” what I have written and create more accessible works.

The Process I Use

Although I have long had concerns with being blocked in my writing, in truth, I haven’t really been blocked since 2006 (or even before). I can sit down at any time … and write on any topic, although I usually let my soma pick the topic to cover next.

I also ‘work’ on topics by mulling over them. I have gotten good at figuring out pieces in my sleep, realizing this mid-dream, and waking myself up to jot down the gist on my phone … and then resuming sleep. I usually flesh out my notes and fix grammar and spelling when I wake.

I also have long since learned to trust my ‘inner notetaker.’ When I jot something down … often I will sense one part is “off” — or incorrect in some central way. It needs fixing, expanding on, or moving … to another place in my work. If it is “off,” I can rely on my soma to ferret out the needed adjustment … whenever I return to it. I also depend on certain recurring structural flaws … to remind me to ‘unpack’ a given nugget. The “bad encryption” becomes another shorthand for data storage and retrieval. So, a stranger viewing one of my lists might be inclined to helpfully point out an ‘error.’ That ‘error’ is [often] just a way of tagging the info for a particular form of processing / ‘clean up’ later on.

Basically, I usually start with a topic, theme, puzzle, conundrum, or word … and then follow it with a number (usually 3 at minimum) of empty bullet points. I then start ‘dumping’ everything my soma ‘has’ on this topic … and add new bullets as I go. Then I move on to a new topic. I usually let these lists sit untouched for about 4–5 days, minimum, and I revisit them. I look for gaps … fix language … and expand or move things around as needed. After about 3 to 4 cycles of this, I am ready to move the lists … into paragraph format.

In the final cycle, I read through and look for gaps, missing bits, ‘loose language,’ and passages where I have over-extended myself. I fill in the gaps, find & language the missing bits, tighten my language, and delete passages where my pen has exceeded my [current] understanding.

The Origins of My Lexicon / Jargon

Often — and to my mild amusement — when my soma is ’steering’ … I will be generating a list for a given topic that I intend to expound on, and my soma will pull terms that I am not even sure I know the meaning of — or just flat out invent new words or terms. Years ago, in the beginning … I would jot them down nervously … ready to revisit them later and be thoroughly stymied. But in all the decades that I have been working on The Gaia Vedas (TGV), I got ’stuck’ on a custom term only once. (‘Nummi,’ if you are curious. Not even I know what the letters stand for …).

So … I just jot down what my soma indicates, and revisit it later. If it’s an unusual / rare word … I look it up and confirm the dictionary meaning is what is needed. I read a lot as a kid, had access to a decent small town public library, and apparently part of me paid attention. So … they almost always check out — and are an excellent choice — for what I need to convey.

And if it is a custom term (e.g., somatic addresses, stochastic fields, skillmaps) … I can count on my soma … when I revisit the term … to “unpack” it in sufficient detail. Many major topics in TGV began as such “encrypted” terms … which was a little nerve-wracking in the early days. (It is still somewhat disconcerting to have to ‘decrypt’ one’s own writing / jargon.)

I also have deliberately “repurposed” little-used existing words … for my own purposes … with new custom meanings (e.g., mythos, numina, soma). As I understand it, this is how languages evolve.

To make it easier for readers to follow my intended meanings, TGV comes with a lexicon. It includes both custom terms introduced in TGV and some jargon that will be added in subsequent related works.

How I Chose the Name for ‘The Gaia Vedas’

I knew I was writing to convey a collection of maps and models designed to change the world — really to build a new world — and I had already settled on ‘Gaia Pacifica’ (for “the earth made peaceful”) as the name of that vision of the world. So it made sense to include ‘Gaia’ in the title. And worldbuilding — what we think of in the West notwithstanding — is a very old practice. The vedic culture in India is one of the oldest still in existence in the world, and one of its cornerstones are the Vedas, a collection of writings on a variety of topics.

I wanted this work to have a sense of history, and a connection to pre-modern earth. Hence, The Gaia Vedas.

My Peculiar Use of Punctuation

I use ellipses to enforce specific groupings and structuring / emphasis of certain words / ideas. Honestly, it makes it easier for me to read my own works. A few readers have responded positively to some of my work that has used this structure … and I expect hard-core proofers may be driven slightly batty by it. Sorry / not sorry. :-)

I also use the slash character (aka, divider line ‘/’) to separate similar but subtly different words … where an editor might force me to scale back and pick just one word. I do that … because I find English to be a malleable … but ultimately insufficient … language for what I want to convey. I am building a set of maps for a new continuum with TGV, and using the slash character to indicate … “a set of values” … forces the reader to construct a richer map … than if I had simply selected one term. Not all uses of the [slash] structure in TGV are necessary, but including a wealth of instances … trains the reader … in that particular construct. It represents a small tip of the hat to the soma … and its much richer native data structures … which lose something when translated into traditional [western] languages.

On Contacting the Author

I paint with words … and I have a series of canvases to finish.

I have a complex, intricate, densely-packed … somatic model of the world / cosmos. I am — at present — focused almost exclusively … on transferring that to words. News of potentially relevant discoveries and paradigms … or new and interesting maps … may be useful, but abstractly arguing about how I got [x] wrong … is premature / uninteresting [to me] … at least until I finish getting one copy of everything I have inside … out in the world.

I will likely have made a number of minor and major errors. But I want to get a full copy of my vision out into the world and on record … before I circle back and dig deeper. I just hit 65 (to my great surprise), and at this point I am “all in on Red 27” … on the cosmic roulette wheel. (Translation: I’ve run out of time. Whatever I have completed in the next 2 years is whatever I have. The next generation will have to bat cleanup.)

And be warned … the works (“Gaiaworks”) I envision and have planned as a follow up to TGV will likely require more productive years than I have left in me.

Therefore, for readers interested in contacting me, conversations are weighed by me solely by how much they may aid me in finishing Gaiaworks more efficiently / productively. I am old and my time is short … don’t waste it.

Info on contacting me and some additional biographical info can be found on my bio page [not yet available].

My Peculiar Name

I understood years ago … that crafting an ambitious goal … one invariably crafts a signature identity or mythos. So I crafted a new, custom name to keep me on point: Alutha Zatoichi Jamancar.

I created ‘Alutha’ to mean “pathfinder.” If I had to guess, it probably was a derivative of some form of the ancient Greek word ‘aletheia,’ stuck in my noggin from my time studying the Classics at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wikipedia says … “It was used in Ancient Greek philosophy and revived in the 20th century by Martin Heidegger. It is a Greek word variously translated as “unclosedness,” “unconcealedness,” “disclosure” or “truth.” The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is “the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident.””

I created ‘Jamancar’ to mean “a promise kept.” It has no root that I am aware of. The promise pointed to … is a personal one, a mythic one. Roughly — very roughly — translated … I promised to drag this planet’s ass … out of the dark ages. So … it’s a to-do … to live up to.

My life — and those words — will have whatever meaning that I have accrued through my choices during my time in this world. In the end … those words will have whatever meaning — or lack thereof — that my conduct has afforded them.

… And I selected ‘Zatoichi’ as my middle name. Because I have been oafish, clumsy, a messy eater, and somewhat chunky at various times in my life. And because … by the time you hear my full name … you will have already underestimated me.

Fair warning.

I’ll leave you with my Body (Soma) Blessing. It has been surprisingly nourishing.

Alutha’s Body (Soma) Blessing

“I bless this body / soma, this vessel of life, this conduit of orgasm, this palace of sensation, this temple of awareness, this ancient forest of connection.

I commit to caring for it, loving it, and nourishing it during the brief time I am in its embrace.

I give thanks for the hallowed time I have on this world, through the gift that is this body / soma.”

Image captured by the author in TextEdit.