An excellent concise and accurate statement of the interactive dualism theory of mind

@Laird 

If there really is a proper, actual external reality... how do we explain qualia, given that we can never observe the thing-in-itself? Qualia are private, as it were, yet rely fully on interaction with the so-called external world. Actually... when it comes the shared physical medium, all we have are our private qualia.

There is a mystery of why things can interact at all ~ why can I touch, say, a table, and feel a certain sensation? Why do all of we humans generally share very similar, if not the same, range of archetypal sensory awareness to draw upon, that allow us humans to communicate, indirectly, that we are experiencing this thing or that thing ~ hot, redness, sweetness, pain, love, etc?

If the world is truly external, then why do we experience being so truly part of it, through the sheerness of continuous sensory awareness?

It is natural for us to say "I am in pain" ~ it is the external, physical body that is felt to be hurting, yet because matter and physics has no concept of pain, that pain must be entirely mental... or astral, or whatever. Unless what we think of as the "physical body" is simply the closest layer of the astral body to the physical, hence appearing to be identical for all intents and purposes.

If I touch a table, and feel a wooden feeling... is that not a direct sensing of qualia, a sensory interpretation of something? Thus, it is rather unclear that there is a distinction between Experiencer and what is within Experience, except that we decide what is so based on our immediate mental model of reality.

Sheldrake's Mind-as-Field idea may be the best bet, if we think of Fields as Simple in the sense that they don't have parts.

This at least can explain how filter/transmitter theories could possibly work, how memories aren't stored yet changes to the brain affect our access to them, how Psi can work across distances, how wounds in one life can be birthmarks in the next, etc.

We shouldn't necessarily think [Persons-as-Souls] are exactly like the fields of physics, though listening to the Sheldrake-Vernon dialogues it seems a lot of seemingly non-mental concepts actually have their origin as referring to mental characteristics...so I would say just as Paul Brunton once said we needed to mentalize space and spacialize mind, we also need to [bring] mentality back to our physics as well as try and figure out how a Person with non-physical aspects could stand in relation to the World...

As I like to often bring up, Attanasio wrote, "...And he sat amazed under the skywide realization that his immortal soul dwelled not inside him: He lived inside the cosmic immensity of his soul..."