“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

2 After the session I wanted to tie in Seth’s material on infinity with mathematical ideas of that concept, but my reading soon convinced me that such an idea was too involved a task for a simple note like this. However, I told Jane, in his own way Seth had incorporated mathematical ideas in his material: I saw correlations between his probable realities, his intervals, and the concept of an infinite number of points on a line—and that some mathematical definitions of infinity are considered to be more basic, or of a greater order, than others. Actually, in various branches of mathematics, from the works of Euclid (the Greek mathematician who flourished around 300 B.C.) to modern information theory, I found many relationships with Seth’s ideas. I do think that Seth’s material on the “origin” of our universe can be termed an “ideal point,” embracing our mathematical systems, and that his concept of All That Is has no “limits” in mathematical terms. I do not know whether my comments here will make sense to mathematicians.

My tentative inquiries led me to ask Jane if she thought the axioms of Euclidean geometry, say, are innately valid in describing the mind’s inner reaches, or whether, in ordinary terms, those propositions represent conscious acquired interpretations of our visual experience. She hadn’t thought about it. When I asked her where she might have obtained her intuitive mathematical knowledge, she just laughed.

...An encyclopedia of mathematical knowledge... [...] The particular volume or edition of the encyclopedia came out in the fall, and at the time this guy was working there was some kind of mathematical dispute going on, and a schedule set for some kind of conference to be held at the university for mathematicians from all around. The dispute had mathematical and philosophical connotations, because the ideas were wrapped up with science somehow.

(We would like to insert a note here to Roger, to the effect that we would like him to go over the two sessions and give us a detailed written summary of the data given through Jane, in answer to the mathematical questions he sent Jane. [...] Jane’s mathematical knowledge and vocabulary [and mine] is so limited that any valid [or invalid?] data obtained in trance by Jane, on this subject, is of interest to us; the more we learn about these two sessions, the easier it will be for us to interpret another facet of trance experience.

Congratulations to our mathematical genius, Ruburt. [...]

The mathematical data I have also somewhat explained. This is more difficult because of Ruburt’s lack of mathematical vocabulary, and the fact that conceptual patterns were given in intuitive mathematical language—not in a precise narrow range at all, and answering deeper questions than those asked. [...]

(Before the session Jane and I discussed the reaction of Roger Sullivan, of Lexington, Massachusetts, to the two sessions dealing with his mathematical questions. [...]

In other words, larger mathematically intuitive, pure-theory ideas were presented as well as circumstances would permit. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) I fail to see, however, that the most precise mathematical data will enhance the spiritual, psychic, creative condition of mankind (smile), unless it deals with issues that throw light upon the nature of existence, in basic terms. [...]

[...] There have been people throughout history who mentally performed mathematical feats that appear most astounding, and almost in a matter of moments. Some, had they lived in your century, would have been able to outperform computers (just as some are outperforming computers these days!). In most cases where such accomplishments show themselves, they do so in a child far too young to have learned scientific mathematical procedures to begin with, and often such feats are displayed by people who are otherwise classified as idiots (idiot savants), and who are incapable of intellectual reasoning.

Indeed, when a child is involved, the keener his use of the reasoning mind becomes the dimmer his mathematical abilities grow. [...]

[...] Because she has to deliver it linearly in words, which take “time,” she cannot produce her material almost at once, as the mathematical prodigy can his or her answers, but in their own way her communications with Seth are as psychologically clear and direct as the calculator’s objective products are with numbers, or the musician’s are with notes. [...]

[...] I’ve read that mathematical prodigies are in love with their numbers, and rely upon their dependability in an often unsure world. [...]

[...] We have read about relativity, for instance, in popular paperbacks, and some other paperback books on a variety of subjects that might have included various kind or examples of mathematical formulas, etc. [...]

[...] Then, too bad you’re not a mathematical medium, Jane.

[...] Jane said she feels that some of the words she “gets” aren’t correct mathematically, like “assemblage of integers.”

[...] As far as she knows, she doesn’t have “the slightest mathematical vocabulary.”

[...] Now, mathematics is not nearly understood within your system. A fourth and fifth-dimensional mathematics cannot be initiated from within inside your own system.

As one number quite simply can be added to another without denying the validity of either number, nor the individuality of either number, so a different kind of grouping also takes place (pause), involving (pause), mathematical manipulations of these other intensities that reside within the number units.

[...] (Long pause.) It can eventually be given a mathematical identity, or it can be discovered mathematically. [...]

[...] Yet even then his mathematics did hold him back, and put a kink in his intuitions. [...]

[...] The mathematics it contained were beyond her entirely. [...]

[...] Not long after the outline for his Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905, it was said that Einstein owed its accomplishment at least partly to the fact that he knew little about the mathematics of space and time.

[...] There are main coordinate points, pure mathematically, sources of fantastic energy, and subordinate coordinate points, vast in number.

[...] The points obviously are not themselves physical — that is, they are not visible, though they may be mathematically deduced. [...]

(“Numbers or mathematics.” [...] A mathematics connection that is possible: a friend of Jane’s who is also a substitute teacher told Jane that she had a lot of trouble trying to teach the “new mathematics.”

[...] Numbers or mathematics. [...]

The heavenly bodies as moment points conform to certain mathematical principles, though your idea of mathematics is extremely limited. Even using your mathematics, you can still only conceive of reality in certain terms. [...] Your mathematics still deals, comparatively speaking, with a very slim area. [...]

[...] Now you have settled upon one mathematical system to follow in your universe. [...]

(Recently Jane had been reading an essay in which entropy, the mathematical measure of unavailable energy in a thermodynamic system, was discussed. [...]

[...] From within the room inhabitants watching would be able, through mathematical deductions, to deduce exactly how long the ball would keep its continuous bouncing activities, at what rate the motion of the ball would lessen, and at what future time the motion would cease entirely.

The mathematical material was in the nature of an experiment, and to this extent was a demonstration.

(Here Seth refers to the source, as yet unidentified, of the mathematical data—not to Jane, Ruburt or himself.)

[...] Still, the knowledge of mathematics and the arts is as much within you as your genes are within you. [...] Certainly mathematical formulas are not imprinted in the brain, yet they are inherent in the structure of the brain (intently), and implied within its existence. [...]

In rudimentary form children’s dreams also involve mathematical concepts, so that formal mathematical training falls on already fertile ground. [...]

[...] Their qualifications emotionally are also quite advanced, and it is quite possible that they are gifted in terms of mathematics and music, though these gifts may never come to fruition, since they are unsuspected.

[...] What a shock when he discovered that the world was ignoring what he thought to be his important contribution to mathematics. [...]

He was, in a fashion only, sexually ambiguous, his mathematics expressing what he thought of as an acceptable male aspect while the artistic levels in his mind, now, he related to his feminine aspects. [...]

[...] If you study mathematics, there is a prescribed course. [...]

If you have a mathematical problem in, say, geometry, you solve it in a certain specific fashion. [...]

You have your mathematics from us. You have a shadow of mathematics, for here again you have insisted upon hemming in realities, of applying larger elements of thought to your blocks. [...]