After millennia of silence, God is now speaking to us

Much mathematics describes relationships that are not physical phenomenon. But always, mathematics describes absolute truth. So, it's mathematics that seems to be basic 'stuff' of the mind of God. As the 20th century unfolded, mathematics began to describe the seemingly impossible.

For example:

In a cathode ray tube (your old TV set) there is an electron gun at the rear and a phosphorescent screen about 20 centremeters in front of that. An electron vanishes at the gun and a flash appears on the screen. In the world of our understanding, there must be a trajectory across the 20 centremeters to the screen. There is no such path. The electron simply disappears from the world of matter into what is called the wave equation.

This is somewhat analogous to you physically vanishing into your name written on a piece of paper where, in the writing itself, the potential you awaits being returned to the physical world. From the instant of vanishing at the gun, the electron is held entirely in an equation. Its arrival back into the physical world from the mind of God is recorded as a flash on the screen.

Why you don't see the mind of God in mathematics

Notice how a three-year old delights in counting steps as she descends them. Notice how the five- year old wants to know: How wide is it? How heavy is it? How high is it? How old is it? How many are there?

Quantification appeals to the very young, as it seems to give them a better conceptual grip on the world as it unfolds for them. The concept of number becomes our first abstract thought.

However, once at school, mathematics is not the game of exploration and discovery of the mind of God as it should be - but a job to be done. Our natural potential to put a philosophical quality to mathematics is squashed in the young minds parents are forced by law to hand over to 'the system.'

Long after I had escaped from school, and with the conviction that I was a maths dummy, I read the book Mathematics for the Million. This book was not written for students preparing to be examined. It was written for those ready to have a new window into the world opened for them.

The author, Lancelot Hogben, was one of his time's greatest biologists. He was imprisoned as a conscientious objector in the First World War. So, it comes as no surprise that he was the type of compassionate person who was thinking of the victims of formal schooling when he wrote the book.

I realised from my reading of this book that a 16 year-old leaving school, while knowing little of mathematical method, should still have an appreciation of the unique absolute truth of mathematics and its almost mystical existence deep in the motion of objects and in the design of man's technology.

At the age of 30, I decided that I need not go to my grave as a maths dummy - and I went on to gain a degree in pure mathematics. The dog-eared 1943 edition of Mathematics for the Million is there in front of me as I write this.

If you cannot accept formal religion or the delusionary world of New Age, but still feel that 'there is something out there,' then the more of a mathematician you become, the more you will know what that something is.