What does discourse AN 9.37 describe?
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The passage in AN 9.37 omits the sixth sense sphere because the sixth sense sphere is conscious/percipient of the immaterial spheres:
[Ven. Udāyin:] “When not sensitive to that dimension, my friend, one is percipient of what?”
[Ven. Ānanda:] “There is the case where, with the complete transcending of perceptions of (physical) form, with the disappearance of perceptions of resistance, and not attending to perceptions of multiplicity, (perceiving,) ‘Infinite space,’ one enters & remains in the dimension of the infinitude of space. Percipient in this way, one is not sensitive to that dimension [i.e, the dimensions of the five physical senses].
And further, with the complete transcending of the dimension of the infinitude of space, (perceiving,) ‘Infinite consciousness,’ one enters & remains in the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. Percipient in this way, too, one is not sensitive to that dimension.
And further, with the complete transcending of the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, (perceiving,) ‘There is nothing,’ one enters & remains in the dimension of nothingness. Percipient in this way, too, one is not sensitive to that dimension.
MN 43 does not say: "The mental faculties are very clear". When MN 43 uses the term 'faculties', it is referring the five physical sense faculties, as follows:
Friend, there are these five faculties each with a separate range, a separate domain, and they do not experience one another's range & domain: the eye-faculty, the ear-faculty, the nose-faculty, the tongue-faculty, & the body-faculty.
Friend, what can be known with the purified intellect-consciousness divorced from the five [sense] faculties? Friend, with the purified intellect-consciousness divorced from the five faculties the dimension of the infinitude of space can be known [as] 'infinite space.' The dimension of the infinitude of consciousness can be known [as] 'infinite consciousness.' The dimension of nothingness can be known [as] 'There is nothing.'
But in the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception & feeling, his bodily fabrications have ceased & subsided, his verbal fabrications ... his mental fabrications have ceased & subsided, his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not subsided, & his [five sense] faculties are exceptionally clear.
Also, the translation "clear" sounds misleading because it gives the impression the five sense faculties are lucid & conscious. The Pali is vippasanna, which can mean 'pure', in the sense of 'clean', rather than 'lucid' or 'sinless'.
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