Best 72 quotes of Thomas Daniel Nehrer on MyQuotes

Above, in discussing the perceptive notions of Jesus, remarkable concepts of Plato or the highly introspective lessons of Gautama and Lao Tzu, it took considerable discussion to explore the meaning and relate it to How Life Works. Islam presents no such deep pool of thought to pierce.

. . . And the consequence to that is, you can never attain a Clear Awareness of life’s flow by absorbing and following Old Teachings, however revered by our culture, however vaunted by institutions and fancy buildings, however nice they sound, because you must already hold adequate wisdom in order to even identify it. Unless you can tell which expressions are wise because you are aware of life’s nature yourself, you will invariably be soundly, profoundly fooled.

As it is, the vital question you should be asking is not what I am, but what you yourself are.

As to “facts” as a basis of understanding things in this investigative age: if there is anything greatly preferred to valid, reliable information in our culture, it is the appearance of facts – nice, tidy story lines that seem complete and perfunctory, stories that can be widely circulated in mutual agreement, despite lacking validity. And, as there are absolutely no historical facts concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth – not a single word about him recorded during his lifetime – Christianity provides such a wonderful substitute appearance.

Because your life is a reflection of your inner Self, causality comes exclusively in changing your own nature, not trying to change the external world out there by manipulating it.

Beliefs and definitions never clarify how Reality works -- they only distort perception of it.

But for centuries, since the capitulation of Judah, the Jewish peoples had been almost continuously under foreign control. So, where was Yahweh all this time while his people suffered...? Far from ever questioning the very being of such an inept deity, the conclusion was invariably reached – likely promoted by religious authorities living privileged lifestyles – that the people had sinned, had worshipped other gods, had somehow failed their side of the bargain.

But Lao Tzu’s teaching suffers from the major problem endemic to such visionaries. In the intervening two and a half millennia, his words have been misinterpreted and distorted by generations of adherents until his message is riddled with meaningless ritual and dogma. Taoism contracted the conceptual plague: it became a religion.

But there is only one mechanism to life, one way in which Reality functions. Theology, the rendered definition behind religion, philosophy and science all purport to depict that functionality. But if each fails to do so accurately, that invalidity needs to be exposed – and the only way to do that is to point out the fallacious elements of the description.

But what you are looking for is not “truth,” not a collection of fine and polished answers emanating from grand buildings, expert acknowledgement and advanced academic degrees. What you are looking for is your Self, and what I provide here are some tools and perspectives to aid a Journey through the jungle of explanations and definitions and up a mountain of perspective to where you can see that Self clearly.

Clear Awareness is not a magical state to be attained by secret rituals, chants, pleading to some external source or emergence into astral planes, nor a status bestowed by a certified master. Nor is it a capability of yours that needs to be developed, strengthened or discovered. Awareness is the core attribute of your existence; it only needs to be freed from all the synthetic definitions, beliefs, misconceptions, fears and other hindering fallacies your mind has absorbed through the course of your life.

Clearly, when western cultures absorbed Christianity, they got an all-inclusive package: ancient Hebrew rituals and myths steeped in lost purpose, scantily recorded and broadly misinterpreted teachings of Jesus, revisions and distortions by Paul, twisted cosmology and superstitions supplied by priesthoods and bureaucratic/political distortions innate to man’s traditional endeavors.

Clouding the exact evolution of El and Yahweh as concepts (and any other aspect of belief, for neither El nor Yahweh ever existed as anything except mind images of fervent believers) is the invariable propensity of associated religions to revise their history along the way according to subsequently popular interests.

Even though this deity (the Christian God with a capital "G") has evolved through its 2000 years, it somehow maintains in its current version all old characteristics, whether conflicting or consistent: readiness to punish but ability to heal, vindictiveness yet forgiveness, utter cruelty to outside nonbelievers but looking for converts, etc.

For deep adherents, the Koran would seem to echo great truths given directly to a vaunted and hallowed prophet by a deity of overwhelming power and grandeur. If you don’t hold any such archaic notions, however, the words attributed to Allah come across as harshly self-defensive, crude in reemphasizing old cultural standards, shaky in trying to establish new standards, brutal in places, mostly repetitious and monotonous – and thoroughly unbelievable. When you have outgrown all such unfounded religious notions, the Koran doesn’t offer much by way of piercing perspective.

However, in regards to the theological aspects of each religion, tradition or philosophy, the same exacting standard must be set as measurement: does it clearly and accurately depict the functionality of Reality? That is, does the cosmology precisely describe how Reality works? If not, then the religion is invalid.

However, just as earlier, when Christianity was introduced it didn’t eliminate pagan conceptualizations, but layered new beliefs on top of them, so science simply added to the western mindset. It didn’t fully displace religion, luck, fate, etc. Science just heaped other definitions onto the average person’s already conglomerated psychic truckload.

However, science, by its very nature, forms its own inherent boundaries to man’s progress. . . Focused as it is on the world out there, categorizing and measuring, theorizing and concluding all things based on external evidence and proof, science misses the core of life: the consciousness doing the experiencing.

If you find that you “disagree” with something I’ve written, then you missed the point!!

If you picture other people as superior to yourself, you will realize that mental image. Putting a preacher, a saint, a prophet, an expert or anybody up on a pedestal in your personal view, fundamentally accomplishes nothing but the effect of putting you in a pit.

If you’ve come to see that the image you absorbed while growing up is not valid, and you launch out on a prefabricated Journey, you are most likely to simply replace it with another, fancier paradigm – the mind is that easily fooled by its own base view.

Indeed, of the major religions, Islam offers no discernible sliver of valid notion for How Life Works.

In terms of idols which represented various gods: worshipping an idol or star cluster is no different than worshipping a concept.

It is vital to see not only what Christianity asserts, but where its precepts came from – how they evolved from primitive, superstitious metaphysical claims into “Gospel Truth”.

It must be obvious that the Reality we all encounter only works one way, and it functions that way regardless of what the experiencer believes.

Most people, solidly frozen into long-held, common notions, are unable to grasp clearer views.

Moving man’s view of himself and life past common thinking, the true visionary faces great difficulty: exactly that deluded mindset the sage would have listeners outgrow is the very filter through which any new perspective must pass.

New Testament gospels are traditionally accorded a cultural sanctity and lofty regard completely out of line with their literary worth.

Of course, the original (anonymous) writer of (the Gospel of) John didn’t use quotes – as they didn’t exist in written Greek – but the translator/publisher of the modern Bible does. And that style strongly implies a validity that is pure illusion.

Of the hundreds of religions and philosophies ever entertained by the mind of man, each considered by the convinced holder to be the only valid one, only at the very most one can be accurate. . . Just as obvious should be the possibility, if not likelihood, if not certainty, that none of those hundreds of religions accurately depicts How Life Works.

One always has to wonder anew how anyone could imagine a god, who, so overwhelmingly intelligent and powerful as to have been able to create this enormously complex world and the vast universe it floats around in, would populate it with a bunch of humans whose primary purpose consisted of bowing subserviently in worship.

One vital aspect in the Path toward Clear Awareness is the beginning of differentiation between belief-induced appearance and Reality. In many ways I can illustrate illusions and point out artificial concepts that are commonly accepted as real, but the onus of recognition is for you to come to see these things as what they are.

Reality, in its essence, consists not of particles interacting pointlessly in an independent physical plane, but rather of values, psychological elements of mind, made real.

Reality’s functional flow can never be debated: reality manifests as it does regardless of individual recognition of its value-based inter-active function. Only simulated notions about reality – creeds, definitions, assumptions, paradigms – can be argued over. And that debate knows neither end nor resolution, as each arguing party hosts a personally customized fantasy – with each appearing unwaveringly valid to the holder.

Reality works in this fashion: what you hold in your mind – the self-image, hopes and expectations, world view, beliefs, fears, feelings and all else – becomes realized in your life, continuously.

Regardless of type, however, the mechanism of a religion works like this: children, from the time they can communicate, are taught to see reality in a certain way. They are indoctrinated with a pre-defined belief structure and value set. Naive, open to such teaching, given only the religious viewpoint and perhaps punished or ostracized if they don’t accept it, most ultimately absorb and mimic the religion outright.

Regardless of what you believe in or conceive of as the functionality of Reality, the Oneness of you with all you experience in your life is an absolute

Religions take hold and dominate a culture, not because they accurately portray reality, but because they appear to, once having been accepted – such that succeeding generations are heavily indoctrinated into the shared cultural mindset from birth.

Simply put, the relative age of a philosophical perspective has nothing to do with its veracity. It is pure illusion to imagine that just because a view of life was held and put to words long ago, that it is more valid.

Since the effects of your life that lead to pain and annoyance are always consequences of inner elements, what you commonly regard as “problems” are more accurately seen as outer symptoms of inner, causal problems. The practical approach is to begin looking at those specific aspects of your life that are not as you desire to find their source, rooted in your mindset.

So, am I some sort of Savior? Not hardly. Save yourself the worry about needing to be saved from anything.

So how do you teach your kids Awareness – to trust in themselves, to love without judging, to expect health without having to manipulate their bodies with drugs, to expect and accept abundance, not eternal struggle? Simply put: you can’t – unless you have that Awareness yourself. In that case, you don’t have to “do” anything – just be yourself.

So life does flow, but not from left to right on a time scale, rather from inside out.

That means 19 or 20 of the books of the NT (New Testament) are anonymous. Many are blatantly pseudepigraphic (forgeries, see next section), with famous names applied to artificially promote veracity.

The authors of the gospels, like all writers in all time periods, either reference information they have at hand – including things they’ve heard or read – or they make things up. . . For reference material, the author of Mark relied not on Jesus himself or any writings from him. . . . His sole source(was): oral traditions passed along by word-of-mouth for four decades.

The concept of a Miracle, that is, an event that takes place somehow beyond the scope of functional Reality, is absurd. . . There cannot be a true miracle. There can only be events that appear miraculous when you don’t really understand How Life Works.

The fact is: Jesus wrote not a solitary word that survives. Equally astounding is historical silence: not a single historical account refers to him during his lifetime from any source whatsoever, Roman or Jewish, official or personal.

The Flow in life is not a temporal displacement of moving objects, from a past into a future via a present. The essential, ongoing Flow to this Reality is an emergence from the value set of your inner nature into the outer realm of events and relationships, where it is then experienced by you in a Now moment.

The gospels, never meant to report, but rather to convince, are in no sense objective and dispassionate biographies. They are glowing accounts meant to persuade people of the writers’ convictions.

The key realization to delving inwards to deal with the roots of outer symptoms is this: once you have clearly identified the core, inner roots to a problem, you then have authority over the situation. . . If, though, you never delve within. . . you will not eliminate the inner source of the problem and thus never fully extinguish the external symptom.