Jordan's Wheel of Time Series Guilty of Information Overload

I am currently in the midst of a very long fantasy novel, which in itself is just one of fourteen novels in a series.  The author is Robert Jordan, the series is The Wheel of Time, and the novel is The Shadow Rising, the fourth installment.  Jordan has this tendency to inundate the reader with copious amounts of obscure and esoteric knowledge about his version of magic, prophecy, and fantasy world history.  It can get to be overwhelming at times, but I am learning to anticipate sections in the story that are most prone to this...and am relishing those other sections that just concentrate on the plot and character development. The main indicator to all of this is whichever character Jordan happens to be using at any given time to tell the story.  If it's Mat or Perrin, then I enjoy the narrative...mostly free from all the pretentious mumbo jumbo.  But if the characters are Rand (the Dragon Reborn) or any of the Aes Sedai women, then watch out...here comes a new flood of very crucial "facts".  I understand that, in all fantasy series, the author is committed to creating a separate, special world with its own history and dynamics...and there is a need to communicate its essence to the reader.  But dude, I'm drowning in this stuff!

It used to be that the character of Mat Cauthon irritated me to no end...that is, until I began to realize in the third book that the passages that featured him were relatively free of the cumbersome weight of new information.  Now, he is the character I like and identify with the most...while Rand, who is the series' chief protagonist, now seems distant and unapproachable.  The development of his character seems to come in leaps and bounds, often with little to explain his change.  I wonder, since this IS a very long series, with ten more books after this, whether the situation I've described with these characters will ever change and maybe, just maybe, Jordan will give us readers a break from the layer upon layer of background material...