Nama rupa are dependent on each other, yet the higher the realm the subtler the material body, and my understanding is that at some realms there actually is no body whatsoever.
Is my understanding incorrect, is the body just extremely subtle there? Or if there is no body whatsoever, how can nama be without rupa there?
there is absolutely no rupa in the arupa Brahma realms - thus those beings can’t see, hear , taste , touch or smell, so unfortunately they can’t hear the Dhamma.
People wonder how there can still be mind if there is no heart base. We discussed this:
There is a sixth vatthu which is not one of the pasada-rupas. This is the hadaya-vatthu or heart-base. The hadaya-vatthu is a kind of rupa which is the place of origin for the cittas which are not among the panca-vinnanas (seeing, hearing, etc.) since these cittas have the pasada-rupa as their place of origin. The hadaya-vatthu is different from the mind-door. The mind-door is a citta, the bhavangupaccheda-citta, which is the last bhavanga-citta arising before the mano- dvaravajjana-citta (mind-door-adverting-consciousness).