Thomas B Pryor
“The Mask: A Primer on the Myth of Reality” analyzes, explains and illustrates that what we refer to as “the world” is not independent of our perceptual apparatus, but is rather an abstraction: a collectively shared, individually refined conceptual “mask” that we ourselves impose on the dynamic flow of human sensory experience to render it comprehensible and, to a limited degree, manageable. The Mask is 280 pages long, it references great literature ranging from Moby Dick (the book derives its name from an Ahab quote: “All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. . . . If a man will strike, strike through the mask.”), Don Quixote, Albert Einstein, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and numerous similar sources to illustrate how human organisms, individually and collectively, impose conceptually posited Form on the Chaos of human perceptions to make our experience meaningful. The implications concerning Space and Time, “Being,” Phenomena, Relativity, Intellect, Truth, Religion, God, Self, Determinism, Free Will, and the Biblically inspired concepts of Salvation and God’s “Kingdom” are analyzed in the context of this insight.The author, Thomas B. Pryor, is an 83 year-old retired lawyer whose undergraduate major was in Psychology and who has an MA in History in addition to his law degree. See also the author’s short (30 page) book entitled “The Incredible Substance of Being” addressing the same subject in a fictional framework.
