I come up with an analogy that is crude but people with decent grip on dhamma will catch up.
There is a driver driving a bus, the bus has many goods kept inside, the driver has money to buy different goods and when the bus runs out of fuel new bus is bought and driver again starts to drive it.
The bus is the physical body, goods kept inside are the ‘Rupakkhanda and its analysis Vinnakkhanda’ and the money is ‘gati & anusayas’.
A person makes contact with rupa and it is ‘filtered’ with his gati, in this crude analogy its money that is an intermediary between. The goods have a spacial location but Rupakkhanda and Vinnanakhanda have no spacial location.
When the driver drops all the money, he runs the bus until it has fuel and then comes out of the bus but has no money to ‘buy’ a new bus. This is when a being attains Nibbana, when ‘filter’ of gati and anusaya is removed.
But here comes the missing link, who is the driver?
This questions comes when some percipient like one reading this, looks/observes evolution of a lifestream from a perspective of a third person. When this questions comes one should take the awareness to oneself and see the things with first person perspective, here one will see one is doing vaci sankhara i.e. recalling the existing rupakkhanda or making contact with any outside rupa, now is the citta (which analyzes ‘what’ is presented to the senses) has a cetasika called Sanna which determines ‘what’ is recognized, so it places the value this is this, that is that, but it also has to determine ‘who’ is recalling? This ‘who’ is generally taken as physical body but the keypoint is that there is just Rupa and that ‘who’ can be placed on anything by the sanna, on what it will be placed is determined by the ‘filter’ or ‘gati’.
This is the reason I think why ‘Sanna’ is distinguished from other cetasikas in abhidhamma. Until there is Sanna and Tanha for Vedana there is bondange which is a suffering, and of course one get those because of ‘avijja’ at the previous cuti patisandhi moment. That is the why the only security from bondage is sannavedaitynirodha, the real and only happiness.
I am remembering that this driver bus analogy is discussed somewhere at this site. The thing one must know is that there is nothing which is unchanging in a lifestream and that is why it is possible for each and every lifestream to attain Nibbana by removing the gati via changing it towards good and cultivating Panna. And that is why Vyapada and Mana are ‘bonds’ even because they all arise out of delusion that there is a being which should be hated for his ‘bad’ actions and I am good for this this things.
If being has to be pinpointed it can be done to its ‘gati’ but that gati can also be changed, so the being cannot be pinpointed. This is a complex issue arising out of considering things with Third Persons perspective. This pinpointing is done by Sanna Cetasika and it can be done on anything (but nothing is absolute or unchanging) and Nibbana is of course realizing ‘Nothing’ is worth considering oneself i.e. placing value as ‘I’.
I hope I conveyed what I wanted to.
With Metta.