Quotes from Valentin Tomberg

God…is the center of all selves.

Just as the self of the human being is the centerpoint of the plurality of manifestations of his life of soul, so is the ONE God, transcending the self, the centerpoint of the world.

The fullness of existence, life's true richness, does not consist solely in health and happiness but in an ever-expanding range of joy and sorrow; and the broader the range, the richer life becomes.

The Magician represents the man who has attained harmony and equilibrium between the spontaneity of the unconscious (in the sense given to it by C. G. Jung) and the deliberate action of the conscious (in the sense of "I" or ego consciousness).

Silence is the indispensable climate for all revelation; noise renders it absolutely impossible.

If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain such as he is. But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, he begins to 'crystallise'…Crystallisation is possible on any foundations.

We bow with respect and gratitude before all the great human souls of the past and present - the sages, the righteous, the prophets, the saints of all continents and all epochs throughout the whole of human history - and we are ready to learn from them all that they wish and are able to teach, but we have only one sole Initiator or Lord; we are obliged to reiterate this for the sake of certainty.

One need not fear the devil, but rather the perverse tendencies in oneself!

Is mankind therefore solely responsible for its history? Without a doubt—because it is not God who has willed it to be as such. God is crucified in it.

It is said that, "Nature has a horror of emptiness" (horror vacui). The spiritual counter-truth here is that, "the Spirit has a horror of fullness". It is necessary to create a natural emptiness—and this is what renunciation achieves—in order for the spiritual to manifest itself.

you only know that which is verified by the agreement of all forms of experience in its totality—experience of the senses, moral experience, psychic experience, the collective experience of other seekers for the truth, and finally the experience of those whose knowing merits the title of wisdom and whose striving has been crowned by the title of saint.

The Secret of Creation attributed to Apollonius. Jabir (or Geber) himself, in giving the text of the Emerald Table states that he is quoting Apollonius. Now, Kraus has shown that The Secret of Creation was written, at least in its final edition, during the Caliphate of al-Ma'mun (813-833),

all revelation which does not give hope is useless and superfluous.