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== Quotes ==
===''Infinity and the Mind'' (1982)===
:<small>{{cite book|last=Rucker|first=Rudy|title=Infinity and the Mind|publisher=Princeton University Press|publication-place=Princeton, New Jersey|date=2019|isbn=978-0-691-19138-6|url=https://www.rudyrucker.com/infinityandthemind/}} (all page numbers are from the New Princeton Science Library edition published in 2019)</small>
* I think of consciousness as a point, an "eye," that moves about in a sort of mental space. All thoughts are already there in this multi-dimensional space, which we might as well call the Mindscape. Our bodies move about in the physical space called the Universe; our consciousnesses move about in the mental space called the Mindscape.
** Chapter 1, “Infinity” (p. 35-36)
* Just as we all share the same Universe, we all share the same Mindscape. For just as you can physically occupy the same position in the Universe that anyone else does, you can, in principle, mentally occupy the same state of mind or position in the Mindscape that anyone else does.
** Chapter 1, “Infinity” (p. 36)
* Just as a rock is already in the Universe, whether or not someone is handling it, an idea is already in the Mindscape, whether or not someone is thinking it. A person who does mathematical research, writes stories, or meditates is an explorer of the Mindscape in much the same way that Armstrong, Livingstone, or Cousteau are explorers of the physical features of our Universe. The rocks on the Moon were there before the lunar module landed; and all the possible thoughts are already out there in the Mindscape.<br>The mind of an individual would seem to be analogous to the room or to the neighborhood in which that person lives. One is never in touch with the whole Universe through one’s physical perceptions, and it is doubtful whether one’s mind is ever able to fill the entire Mindscape.
** Chapter 1, “Infinity” (p. 36)
* In more familiar terms, it is not hard to prove that God is infinite ... but what if you don’t believe that God exists? It may seem hard to doubt that the more impersonal Absolutes–such as “everything,” or the Mindscape–exist, but there are those who do doubt this. The issue under consideration is a version of the old philosophical problem of the One and the Many. What is being asked is whether the cosmos exists as an organic One, or merely as a Many with no essential coherence.<br>It is certainly true that the Mindscape, for instance, does not exist as a single rational thought. For if the Mindscape is a One, then it is a member of itself, and thus can only be known through a flash of mystical vision. No rational thought is a member of itself, so no rational thought could tie the Mindscape into a One.
** Chapter 1, “Infinity” (p. 48)
* In one of our conversations I pressed Gödel to explain what he meant by the “other relation to reality” by which he said one could directly see mathematical objects. He made the point that the same possibilities of thought are open to everyone, so that we can take the world of possible forms as objective and absolute. Possibility is observer-independent, and therefore real, because it is not subject to our will.
** Chapter 4, “Robots and Souls” (p. 169)
* [[Kurt Gödel|Gödel]] shared with Einstein a certain mystical turn of thought. The word “mystic” is almost pejorative these days. But [[mysticism]] does not really have anything to do with incense or encounter groups or demoniac possession. There is a difference between mysticism and occultism.<br>A pure strand of classical mysticism runs from [[Plato]] to [[Plotinus]] and [[Meister Eckhart|Eckhart]] to such great modern thinkers as [[Aldous Huxley]] and [[D. T. Suzuki]]. The central teaching of mysticism is this: Reality is One. The practice of mysticism consists in finding ways to experience this higher unity directly.<br>The One has variously been called the Good, God, the Cosmos, the Mind, the Void, or (perhaps most neutrally) the Absolute. No door in the labyrinthine castle of science opens directly onto the Absolute. But if one understands the maze well enough, it is possible to jump out of the system and experience the Absolute for oneself.
** Chapter 4, “Robots and Souls” (p. 170)
=== ''The Sex Sphere'' (1983) ===
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* “What’s superspace?” I felt around for my body and couldn’t find it.<br>“Thoughtland, Fletch, the cosmos. Pure mentation. Abstract possibility. Infinite dimensions. The class of all sets. God’s mind. The pre-geometric substratum. Hilbert space. Penultimate reality. White...”<br>“Cut the crap, Harry.”
** Chapter 29, “Rudy Rucker Is Watching You” (p. 220)
=== ''[[w:Mathematicians in Love|Mathematicians in Love]]'' (2006) ===
:<small> All page numbers from the trade paperback reprint edition published by Tor {{ISBN|978-0-7653-2039-1}} in 2008 </small>
* My roommate says anyone who mails bombs to computer scientists can’t be all bad.
** Chapter 1, “Bela, Paul, and Alma” (p. 21)
* Mother Nature doesn’t want power-tripping greedheads looking up her skirts.
** Chapter 2, “Cone Shell Aliens” (p. 59)
* People always have bad news for you when they call you “sir.”
** Chapter 3, “Rocking with Washer Drop” (p. 101)
* “Do you know computer science?”<br>“I know it’s for lamers who can’t handle real math.”
** Chapter 3, “Rocking with Washer Drop” (p. 137)
* Although my mood swings were the logical and deterministic results of my inputs, they were dismayingly hard for me to foresee, let alone control.
** Chapter 4, “Hypertunnel at the Tang Fat Hotel” (p. 151)
* There’s only one way that people change the past, Bela. They stop thinking about it. They move on.
** Chapter 4, “Hypertunnel at the Tang Fat Hotel” (p. 152)
* In a sense mathematics is quite objective: the same deductions can become known to everyone who starts with the same axioms and definitions; the same abstract forms can be universally perceived. So it’s perfectly possible to talk math with a cockroach from Galaxy Z.
** Chapter 5, “Mathematicians from Galaxy Z” (p. 250)
* It was odd, odd, odd to see people die. The world rolled on the same as before, as heedlessly as if a person were an ant or a wildflower or a puff of wind. Nature kept on making more and more of everything, and never mind that birth is a death sentence. And now that I’d been to La Hampa, I knew that creation was even more prodigal than I’d ever imagined. There were worlds upon worlds filled with people struggling and swarming like fretful gnats, all of them doomed to vanish into dust while the cosmic dance spun on.
** Chapter 6, “The Gobubbles” (p. 301; in the book, La Hampa is a parallel world)
== External links ==
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