What kind of material form can contact the gross physical sense organ of the eye?

Form is divided into the form of the essential object, the form of the reflected object, and the form of the veridical object. Among these, the external material sense-object of the essential object can only be contacted by the eighth consciousness; the eye consciousness, the mind consciousness, and the gross physical sense organ of the eye cannot contact it, nor can the manas contact it. After the eighth consciousness contacts the essential object, it further manifests the reflected object based on the four great elements' particles of the essential object; this portion of form can be contacted by the manas and can also be transmitted to the gross physical sense organ of the eye. What the gross physical sense organ of the eye contacts is the four great elements' particles of the reflected object manifested once again by the eighth consciousness, not the four great elements' particles of the essential object. Therefore, the gross physical sense organ of the eye cannot contact the material sense-object of the essential object; only when there is a certain distance from the essential object can the material sense-object be transmitted into the supreme faculty. When faculty and sense-object make contact, the eye consciousness then arises to see form.

If the gross physical sense organ of the eye were to directly contact the material sense-object of the essential object, with no certain distance in between, the tathāgatagarbha would be unable to transmit the reflected object manifested from the essential object through the gross physical sense organ into the supreme faculty, and the eye consciousness could not arise to see form. Because the transmission of the material sense-object by the eye faculty is rather special, there is an imaging principle of the eye faculty: only when there is a distance between the material sense-object and the eye faculty can an inverted image be formed on the retina of the eye faculty. The other faculties do not have this phenomenon; they do not require a certain distance from their corresponding material forms. Thus, the eye's seeing of form has one additional condition compared to the other faculties' discerning of dharmas: the condition of spatial distance.