Regarding the eye and its contact with rūpa, consider this scenario: I am profoundly concentrated on reading a text and require a bookmark from a drawer. Upon my initial glance, I perceive solely the colour, format, etc., of what we call “bookmark”. When I return to replace it, a pair of scissors is also present—the colours manifesting as the shape of scissors, its solidity, and so forth.
My query is thus: was the visual image of the scissors already present, merely lacking our attention, or was it entirely absent, even though rūpa was there? Furthermore, if rūpa was present, but not as the colour and shape of the scissors because we had not yet seen it, what precise rūpa would it be?
In synthesis, my question is this: do sounds, colours, and similar material forms exist entirely independently of the six consciousnesses?
Thanks all.
I believe that color, smell, and so on, as rupa of dhamma, are primarily the properties and qualities of matter—the ability to produce, in contact with the corresponding senses, corresponding perceptions experienced by us subjectively as color, smell, and so on. Matter also has the properties of warmth, movement, providing solid support, and so on. All these properties, in my view, are interdependent and correlate with one another. They can be objectively found in matter by seeing them as that very subjective experience of color, smell, solidity, or heat.
The rupa of sound is a set of properties (in air vibrations), the ability to give experience of the subjective qualia of sound through ear contact. Sound, as an air vibration, can influence not only the ear but also surrounding objects. It is an objective existence independent of the presence of the perceiver.
I present this inquiry as I sometimes observe a distinct error in Abhidhamma discussions: the reduction of colour to a mere mental factor (cetasika), rather than acknowledging it as a discrete, objectively existing material form (rūpa). I would like to confirm my understanding in this case: colours, etc., are objetive, are not mind or mental factors, right?
Materiality outside the body is produced by temperature and thus independent of any observation. For example when we are asleep the rupas that make up say the TV or refrigerator dont disappear and then somehow magically reappear after we we wake up and see them.