Thomas Daniel Nehrer Quotes

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.

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.

The religious and scholarly alike arrive at conclusions as to Jesus' nature based on the world-view they hold, the belief structure that shapes their interpretation. Inaccurate views of the function of reality can only lead to erroneous conclusions.

. . . 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

When, and only when, you clearly see the inner roots to an outer condition, can you change them and thus it.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

You encounter, at its core, a subjective Reality, one based on meaning and value reflective of your own Self, not an objective universe, cold, particle-based and indifferent as science projects.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is no other force, no other determining factor, no external cause to the cohesive unfolding of your life's episodes – only your composite inner nature. Change that and you change your life.

Whatever beliefs and definitions you hold will seem to be true.

The only difference between holding one god as exclusive or supreme and believing in many gods specialized in function is the number.

The New Age is not one of bells and whistles and mystical special effects. It is not a fantasy state driven by the alignments of planets or the power of crystals, nor a metaphysical rising to higher plains of consciousness by virtue of chanting esoteric mantras. It will not feature the arrival of a thunderbolt-wielding god, ready to set up a final judgment by reviving hordes of old, decayed corpses. The real New Age is a simple, but stunningly profound, awareness that one's Self and all that one encounters are two aspects of the same, singular Essence.

You are the only real authority in your life, but you yield that status to so many externals by believing in them, by having been punished or forced into accepting them.

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.

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.

Various visionaries through time came to see with some degree of clarity that Oneness, that intrinsic connection between Self and experienced Reality.

While scholarly research provides extensive information, the real Jesus, the man who voiced various timeless insights on life, can only be revealed when life is understood better than the common mindset of our time allows.

The real Journey is a personal venture into your own mind content. Nobody, not the greatest mystic, the most vaunted guru, the most hailed psychologist, though they might shuttle you along the trail for a ways, will get you there. Only you yourself can do that.

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.

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.

The only creative force capable of causally revising your experienced reality is your power to change your Self.

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.