How Long is it

More on Karma materiality on Page One Thirty seven;

that each consciousness moment has three stages, arising, standing and passing away. At each stage, new karma-produced Rk's are formed.  During one thought process, 51 (17 X 3) Rk's are made.  That's 17 for each of the three stages.   I think here he is referring to the Abhidhamma, which states that an Rk is 17 times longer than a given consciousness moment.  Here is a cool study link:


The Life-time of Rupa
"The life-time of rupa or corporeality is 17 times longer than that of citta. So we can say that the life-time of rupa is equal to 17 cittakkhanas or 17 conscious moments or 17 x 3 = 51 short instants as there are 3 short instants and there are 3 short instants in a moment of consciousness.
"Thus rupa also arises and dissolves at a tremendous rate of more than 58 billion times per second. The difference between citta and rupa is that citta arises one after another whereas rupa arises by thousands of units at a small instant and it goes on arising incessantly at every small instant. Therefore rupa may be piled up to large masses which are visible to the naked eye whereas the fleeting stream of consciousness is invisible to the naked eye.
Anuruddha (2002) in the Summary of the Topics of Abhidhamma and Exposition of the Topics of Abhidhamma explains that:
"In the summary of process, six sets of six should be understood: six bases, six doors, six objects, six consciousnesses, six processes, six kinds of presentation of objects.
The six consciousnesses are eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, and mind-consciousness.
The six kinds of presentation of object should be understood as the very great, the great, the slight, and the very slight at the five doors, and the clear and unclear at the mind-door.
With regard to very great and so on, [the presentation of an object] that comes into range after one consciousness-moment has passed and lasts for sixteen consciousness-moments is called very great; that which does so after two or three consciousness-moments have passed and lasts for fifteen or fourteen consciousness-moments is called great; that which does so after from four to nine consciousness-moments have passed and lasts from thirteen to eight consciousness-moments is called slight; that which does so after from ten to fifteen consciousness-moments have passed and lasts from seven to two consciousness-moments is called very slight.