'With entire fading out and cessation, friend, of the six contact-bases, there is something else' – saying thus, one diversifies non-diversification. 'With entire fading out and cessation, friend, of the six contact-bases, there is not something else ... there both is and is not something else ... there neither is nor is not something else' – saying thus, one diversifies non-diversification. So long, friend, as the six contact-bases continue, so long diversification continues; so long as diversification continues, so long the six contact-bases continue. With entire fading out and cessation of the six contact-bases, ceasing and subsidence of diversification. A. IV,174 (ii, 161-2) -- Ven Nanavira translation.
Ven. Ñanavira footnotes this sutta with a passage from Sartre:
It is through human reality that multiplicity comes into the world...B&N, p. 137
http://www.nanavira.org/index.php/writi ... tas-sartre
I believe he is contending that so long as the arahat goes on living he is susceptible to
papanca, only that he no longer appropriates it, and doesn't delight in it. Since he no longer appropriates it, its presence (i.e. the consciousness thereof) is non-indicative, i.e. it doesn't result in a
self-consciousness in either reflexion or reflection). Liberation from
papanca requires an effort on the part of the living arahat by the focusing the mind on its cessation, on what Ven. Ñanavira refers to as the “singularity of the real” (cf. SN Mano, footnote
b).
‘Nippapañcārāmassāyaṃ, bhikkhave, dhammo nippapañcaratino, nāyaṃ dhammo papañcārāmassa papañcaratino’ti, iti kho panetaṃ vuttaṃ. Kiñcetaṃ paṭicca vuttaṃ? Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhuno papañcanirodhe cittaṃ pakkhandati pasīdati santiṭṭhati vimuccati.
“When it was said: ‘This Dhamma is for one who delights in non-proliferation, who takes delight in non-proliferation, not for one who delights in proliferation, who takes delight in proliferation,’ with reference to what was this said? Here, a bhikkhu’s mind launches out upon the cessation of proliferation, becomes placid, settles down, and is liberated in it. AN 8.30
With the breakup of the arahat's body the six-bases cease for good, as does their presence, i.e. the consciousness that is indelibly linked to their being.