Hi,
That seems to be circular reasoning which doesn’t address my point. You say anidassana viññāṇa has a special meaning so we can’t “break it apart”. But that is coming from the assumption that it has a special meaning in the first place, which you base, at least as you’ve argued here, on the order of the words.
But to give a simple example of how the order of words isn’t as meaningful as you think, let’s take Dhp360:
cakkhunā saṁvaro sādhu - Restraint of the eye is good
sādhu sotena saṁvaro - Good is restraint of the ear
ghānena saṁvaro sādhu - Restraint of the nose is good
sādhu jivhāya saṁvaro - Good is restraint of the tongue
Why does the order of the words change from line to line? Because otherwise it doesn’t fit the meter of the verse. The position of the word sadhu carries no semantic meaning at all. In fact, that’s also true in English in this case. It’s quite similar in the verses DN11, I say.
Anyway, I think we’ve exchanged our ideas. 
I’ll finish by saying that in neither DN11 nor MN49 is it stated that anidassana viññāṇa is only experienced by an arahant. You base that on the assumption that it refers to the enlightened mind, but that’s exactly what I don’t agree with. In MN49 Brahma Baka is said to have experienced it, and Baka surely wasn’t enlightened. This is according to most versions of the canon. It’s only in the Burmese edition where the Buddha speaks the line, but there the quote is still broken and even then doesn’t have to refer to enlightenment, I think. Aside from other reasons I’ve already given to not trust the Burmese edition see also this topic.
The whole point of these two suttas is that you can also experience this infinite consciousness without being enlightened. But it can be confused to be nibbāna, like the Brahmins were doing. The passage I shared therefore refers to the same infinite/unbounded consciousness as DN11 and MN49. That reference wasn’t me trying to be clever or something. It’s just how I understand it.
Hi Green,
This is not an easy question to answer briefly, since it requires a lot of details. First of all, the four elements are an ancient concept which doesn’t overlap with our modern ideas, which already makes them hard to understand. They aren’t just physical matter, for example. It also includes the perception of the elements, whether through the physical senses or the mind. How one understands all this will also depend on one’s interpretation of the jhānas—and that is a debate which I don’t want to restart here.
So to answer quite generally, the four elements in DN11 stand for ‘form’ (rūpa), according to how ‘form’ is usually defined (e.g. SN12.2). You can’t have a perception of form without a perception of space, the two go together. Form is said to have ceased in the formless attainments because the perception of space has fallen apart in them—or in other words space is undefined. Hence the first formless state is called “unbounded (i.e. undefined) space”. Here the concept of space disappears. (This is an internal perception of space, not the perception of that kind of space where rockets go.)
However, the state can still be disturbed directly by perceptions of form (see AN9.34 I mentioned before) when it moves back to the fourth jhāna. So only the second formless state is where form truly “can find no footing”, i.e. can not infiltrate. This is the second formless state, that of unbounded consciousness. Anidassana is a synonym for formless, a reference to which makes sense for the Buddha to include in his answer to the monk, for that monk asked about the cessation of form to begin with. In the state of unbounded consciousness, as I understand it, the concept of consciousness starts to lose its meaning to the mind as well. “Unbounded consciousness” may be a somewhat strange way to call this, but I think this terminology is largely inspired by Brahmanical thinking.
But that’s all words. In the end all these things only start making sense when experiencing the jhānas. Then still we’re dealing with things hard to describe and the sutta terminology is dated.
Hi also,
If you read the whole sutta and put it in context of the rest of SN12, you might agree that this simile illustrates the cessation sequence of Dependent Arising. This cessation sequence includes the cessation of consciousness. Therefore, if you ask me, this simile is in essence about the cessation of consciousness, not about some special type of consciousness. The idea is, when consciousness doesn’t get established anywhere, it will cease when the arahant passes away.
To give one very brief illustration, the not-establishing of consciousness is followed by “Where name and form are not conceived”. This just means the cessation of name and form, preceded by the cessation of consciousness. Compare to SN12.39, which mentions the same things, where it’s more clearly part of the cessation sequence:
If you don’t intend or plan or have underlying tendencies, this doesn’t become a support for the continuation of consciousness. With no support, consciousness is not established. When consciousness is not established and doesn’t grow, name and form are not conceived. When name and form cease, the six sense fields cease. [Followed by rest of standard cessation sequence.]
In other words, cessation of “choices” (sankharas, i.e. intentions etc) > cessation of consciousness (because it isn’t re-established in a next life) > cessation of name and form > cessation of six sences > etc.
Or in other words “consciousness is not established” isn’t a type of consciousness; it is what happens to consciousness. “Not established” acts as a verb, not an adjective.
I’ve been writing something on this that goes in much more depth which I intend to share next year, so I’ll leave it at this. But in essence I take it to be the same error of interpretation as DN11: what is about the cessation of the aggregate of consciousness is taken to be about the existence of some special form of consciousness.