What sense objects do the manas and the mind consciousness each correspond to?

The manas is both an inner consciousness and an outer consciousness: it can discern all of it—the inner representations within the supreme faculty and the outer representations outside the supreme faculty. Whatever dharmas the eighth consciousness manifests based on the object in itself (the essential object), the manas, relying on the eighth consciousness, can grasp and discern them all, including the objects of the five dusts. The mind consciousness, however, is only an inner consciousness; it can only grasp the mental dust (dharmas) within the supreme faculty, and cannot grasp any other dust-objects—except when it possesses supernatural powers.

When the eighth consciousness grasps the essential object, it receives and takes in the four great element particles upon that essential object, and immediately transforms them into a dust-object resembling the essential object; this is then transmitted step by step into the supreme faculty, becoming the inner representation. In between, it must pass through the transmission of many media, being transmitted all the way to the five gross physical sense organs. The portion before it reaches the five gross physical sense organs belongs to the outer dust, outer objects, and outer representations. So how many layers of representations does the outer object have in total? Each medium it passes through forms one layer of outer-object representation, and then the dust-object representation changes once; passing through another medium, the dust-object representation changes once again—the more media it passes through, the more it changes. So how many layers of outer representations are there? As many layers of media as there are, that many layers of outer representations there are.

Then, when the representation is transmitted to the five gross physical sense organs, it passes through the transmission nerves of the five gross physical sense organs and is transmitted into the supreme faculty. The representation before it reaches the supreme faculty still belongs to the outer representation, or belongs to a state of being half outer representation and half inner representation; the transmitting medium has become the five gross physical sense organs, and the outer dust has changed once again. Before this, the manas had been grasping and discerning all the representations manifested by the eighth consciousness all along, which shows that the manas can discern this continuously transmitting and changing dust-object of outer representations along the way, while the six consciousnesses have not yet arisen, let alone discerned it. So how far from the supreme faculty is the outer representation discerned by the manas? As far as the distance from the sense faculty to the essential object—very close to the essential object.

The inner representation discerned by the mind consciousness, however, is relatively far from the essential object, and also at some distance from the five gross physical sense organs; it can only discern the representations within the supreme faculty. The dust-objects of representations before the supreme faculty are unknown to the six consciousnesses. What the six consciousnesses know is extremely narrow, whereas what the manas knows is very extensive and broad, and it knows it much earlier than the mind consciousness. Therefore, when we encounter special situations and have sudden reactions and responses without time to think, it is because the manas first discerned and made the decision. At that moment, although there is no mind consciousness, the manas, discerning on its own, knows the general situation and can also judge what impact the matter will have on oneself; if the impact would be relatively great, the manas reacts first.

After the reaction is made, the dust-object representation has already been transmitted to the supreme faculty; the six consciousnesses immediately appear and handle the dust-objects according to the manas's intentions, and only afterward does the mind consciousness realize what just happened. This is the result of the manas first discerning the outer six dusts. In discerning the outer representations, the manas perhaps discerns all representations entirely; it knows the whole process of the transmission of the outer dust-objects. Therefore, His decision has long since been made; only afterward do the six consciousnesses appear and, according to the manas's decision, make an extremely swift reaction and response.