5/24/12 9:41 AM after many fussy edits...Hi Shashank -
The khanda of "rupa" is only used to talk about the physical aspect of existence - internal and external to the body.
I think I understand your basis for making the above statement. Here is Bhikkhu Anālayo in his
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, pages 202-204, Chapter X "Dhammas: the Aggregates"
The first of the aggregates, material form (rūpa), is usually defined in the discourses in terms of the four elementary qualities of matter. A discourse in Khandha Samyutta explains that material form (rūpa) refers to whatever is affected (ruppati) by external conditions such as cold and heat, hunger and thirst, mosquitos and snakes, emphasizing the subjective experience of
rūpa as a central aspect of the aggregate.
It is critically important to understand that rūpa (material matter) is defined through the subjective aspects of the internal sense-organs (ajjhattikāni āyatanāni) -- nose (components by which smell happens), ear (components by which hearing happens), eye (components by which seeing happens), etc -- and through the external sense-objects (bāhirāni āyatanāni): odours, sounds, visible objects,etc. The internal sense-organs include the mind (the sixth of the sense organs), and its sense-objects are mental objects, aka "whatever becomes an object of the mind or of any other sense door during contemplation."[1]
Even when one wants to know, like Kevatta, where the forms of elements end ("where do these four great elements — the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, and the wind property — cease without remainder?") the answer given by Gotama is that the question "should not be phrased this way"; the proper question makes the elements subjective to the one's own "footings" (the bases), the means by which to experience or to cease experience of the four elements (so, the proper question does not involve elements as they may be in their own right or absolutely):
"it should be phrased like this:Where do water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing?
Where are long & short,
coarse & fine,
fair & foul,
name & form
brought to an end?
"'And the answer to that is:
Consciousness without feature,[1] without end,
luminous all around:
Here water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing.
Here long & short
coarse & fine
fair & foul
name & form
are all brought to an end.
With the cessation of [the activity of] consciousness
each is here brought to an end.'"
So, to reiterate: external form - to consider it both practically and honestly - is matter which is apprehended by one's senses (āyatana), and thus external form may also just be the audible, tastable, tactile, smellable, visible, and/or conceptual
components of that which is bigger and unknown to our senses, unknown to us. This is the basis for our constant "new" discoveries, such as echolocation in the 1930s; prior to this bat-ologists assumed a sixth sense, or maybe papers stating "We don't know" didn't publish well or cause tenure track.
At a practical level, it is common to take inferences and make them facts and it is common to revisit those "facts" at the inference level to gain new insight. Consider that there are movements in physics to remove time from equations, respecting that the time-space grid is an inference we use to great practical effect, but is still an inference and is false as an absolute (as was its precedent the luminiferous ether and the inference of there being an absolute location in space (a finite universe)). A non-tenure, scholar-farmer-translator physicist,
Julian Barbour, is known for removing the assumption of time from physical equations (and he does the legwork with other colleges to further this development).
There is a story from the late 1880s of a
"Flatland" 2-d square apperceiving - through his own 2-d sense - what is 'Sphere' (a 3-d circle visiting from Spaceland) as well as learning his own 2-d limits to teach Pointland (a 1-d area of a single Point resident) what is two dimensionality:
Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.Inferences can be wonderful, practical developments made from the sense-bases, and where inferences are always known as inferences (not absolute), the benefits of honesty remains - chiefly, we might avoid willful ignorance and the pain of willful ignorance. To say, "only 2-D exists", then Square (the hero of Flatland) would have been false and ignorant, self-limiting (self-satisfying) to what his senses were perceiving (changing diameter circles arriving and disappearing in regular sequence) and adding also "the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience" - applying conclusive, self-satisfying opinions to his sensory apperceptions ("for what purpose?" one might ask Mr. Dewart if he were able to answer his work or willing (see first page, first para of Conspectus)).
If you know "the physical aspect of existence" outside of the rūpakkhandha (
sense-objects), then how? Gotama does not address finitude and the four elements (meaning, not addressing "rūpa" as fully formed or locatable matter), rather rūpa as intercepted by the six sense-organs (and dynamically intercepted, anicca); what is taught are the foundational bases for the elements.
This is the study of the foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna). This is the study of ceasing to build stories and false absolutes upon inferences and assumptions, and this cessation avails a mind to relief of stress, development of wonder and wisdom (to name some developments among an unknown expanse of
other developments that may arise in a vast openness and which are not known and are not falsely assumed to exist either) in seeing things as they dynamically are and to the extent of how one actually may dynamically experience such sense-objects. The hardware store sells "red" and "green" paint, but it is agreed that "red" and"green" do not exist as such for many, many people.
Why does this understanding of form have any significance (the knowledge that form actually exists to us as sensately apprehended by the āyatana)? Bhikkhu Yuttadhamma has a useful 37 minute video which addresses cravings, specifically an extremely pronounced form of craving known as addiction:
"Ask A Monk: Pornography and Masturbation (and Addiction in General)" Cravings are stressful, and addictions and compulsions are even more stressful and binding.
To Dewart's special humanness, he defined baselessly by opining on what non-human animals are not (see Conspectus page one, para three); specifically, his writing presumes to know that non-human animals lack consciousness by a) correlating human speech with consciousness and b) by deeming there to be no animal speech, if I understand Tarver correctly, merely some form of lesser communication. This reminds me of the joke some have to correlate gun shooting deaths with in-hospital deaths, stating that doctors cause more deaths than gun owners; it is a joke, else gun owners would go to one another for healing and treatment, clearly they do not, and do contribute tens of thousands of statistical deaths to doctors' care in taking their injured arses to the hospital...:glare

What can be said here is that human speech may be comprehended by humans (and other animals now as well) and that human knowledge of bat speech (versuscommunication) is seemingly non-existant. One cannot honestly say that it does not exist unless one wants to bear "the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience", a personal willful ignorance. (Apophatic language has the strength of honestly speaking in non-absolutes and unknowns and infinite inclusion, "I am not non-theist, I am not non-buddhist, I am not non-bat, etc" as opposed to cataphatic structures (based on cataphatic thinking).) There are accurate uses of cataphatic speech ("I have two ears") and yet it gets used much more than is is accurate, outside of Right Speech or honest speech. So a meditative practice on the four foundations removes this. It is no wonder that religions of the world apply contemplative and meditation, reclusive practices in addition to preliminary morally-founded restraints.
My point with echolocation, Flatland, and emphasizing form-as-known-through-āyatana is to point out how ignorance arises and how their study (mindfulness of the foundations) begins to dispel ignorance and create an open, humble mind and attitude, not a different mentality perhaps than that of Mr. Dewart's 500-year predecessor Roman Catholic anonymously and faithfully abiding in his/her dynamic position of limited knowledge, in
the Cloud of Unknowing.
Back to
bats: again, I (and probably you, too) lack the sense-object to whatever bats are (partially?) doing, because we also lack the sense-base (see above stylohyal-larynx-tempanic connection), but we have created the sense-object "echolocation" by converting human inaudible-frequencies into human-audible frequencies. We cannot rightfully assume that our sense-object "echolocation" contains all of whatever bats are doing: that is a wondrous thrill of humble, partial knowledge, where the expanse of the other part, what is not known, is unknown absolutely to me.
Simply, empirical self-study discovers with Bahiya
"in reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard...", unanswerables and wondrous, non-"apprehended"s (unknown-ness).
Ahoy! perhaps it may be called "not non-open awareness"

__________
[1]
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Anālayo, Windhorse Publications, pages 182-183: "Most translators take the term
dhammas in the
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta to mean "mental objects"...in contradistinction to the five other senses. (...) he
dhammas mentioned in this
satipaṭṭhāna are not "mental objects", but are applied to whatever becomes an object of the mind or of any other sense door during contemplation".
edit:
apprehendable apprehended
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edit: gonna' have to put the pencil down soon...
edit: phffffft.
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22:50 pm One. More. Hyperlink. Kotthita.