Thomas Daniel Nehrer > Quotes

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Beliefs and definitions never clarify how Reality works -- they only distort perception of it.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“The scientist would look at a sphere, measure the surface in great detail, categorize the skin qualities and components, then predict evolving surface tensions and potentials. The use of that sphere, however, along with its beauty and potential would not be of interest. Science would count the bricks of a house, but not care about living in it, thus missing the point – but thinking that, by quantifying the physical, everything had been covered.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“When, and only when, you clearly see the inner roots to an outer condition, can you change them and thus it.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Without understanding your place as a conscious entity manifesting and engaging an experiential Reality, you will only be able to perceive Jesus within the confines of your belief structure. And that would present that hall-of-mirrors Jesus caricature comprising a divine myth or a deduced, amenable stick figure – either of which may perhaps satisfy your own needs, but have nothing to do with the real man.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Most people, solidly frozen into long-held, common notions, are unable to grasp clearer views.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“Vocal cords are not rental units. No Hebrew prophet, nor Mohammed, nor any founder of any cult or religion ever spoke the words of anybody but themselves.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“Judaism, for example, presents itself as monotheistic and retrofits that claim on its history by revising its lore. But in ancient times, Judaism was much more accurately Henotheism, wherein people (particularly common folk) worshipped a principal god while accepting the existence of other deities, or Monolatrism, where many gods were acknowledged, but only one worshipped.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“New Testament gospels are traditionally accorded a cultural sanctity and lofty regard completely out of line with their literary worth.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Had the common man in (first century) Palestine thought about it at all, he would have considered the world flat, with land riding on and surrounded by water below and above. Keeping water up there was the “firmament” – a great, canopy-like dome not too far beyond where birds could fly. Indeed, the firmament had gates for the sun and moon to go through, and through which water fell as rain from the waters above.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“You never saw an angel, because they don’t exist – at least not in this Reality. They do exist in the realm of imagination – but then, just about anything can be conjured up there in a mind steeped in myth and lore.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“Whatever beliefs and definitions you hold will seem to be true.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, Essence of Reality: A Clear Awareness of How Life Works

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth

“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.”
― Thomas Daniel Nehrer, The Illusion of "Truth": The Real Jesus Behind the Grand Myth