[Carl Jung on Mathematics]
I should like to study the theory of numbers.
What is a number, an entity, a sequence, an archetype?
We think we can perceive and grasp a number logically and suddenly it behaves quite differently from the way we expected.
We are not thinking of prime numbers when we string beads together.
We do not think of numbers as symbolizing laws.
It is a fundamental phenomenon of mathematics that numbers are not just mathematical entities but individualities.
We believe we are playing with equations and suddenly it transpires that certain equations express the laws of electric currents.
God played and formulated currents.
The unconscious creative power concerns itself with the idealized reality; so mathematics has tremendous reality.
It is characteristic of the transcendent that it can be pictured and described by numbers; the passage of time, quantity, and identity, are spiritual substances.
The character of the image is not determined by numbers.
Pure spiritual substance is eternal.
An image as such needs neither time nor space.
Where numbers indicate a measure we move into the material.
A concrete image is a manifestation requiring space in which the spirit clothes itself in the material in order to draw to man.
Images and numbers are doors through which the spiritual can reach man. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Pages 59.60
