Yogācāra presents a vision of reality in which all that appears—self, world, and the seeming multiplicity of objects—is understood as “mind-only” (cittamātra, vijñaptimātra). What ordinarily seems to be an external, independently existing world is described as a field of mental representations, manifestations of consciousness rather than things standing apart from it. In this view, there are no truly independent external objects; what is taken to be “out there” is inseparable from the knowing activity of mind. Reality, as experienced, is thus nothing other than the dynamic flow of consciousness and its own projections.

This flow is analyzed in terms of multiple layers of consciousness, culminating in the storehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), which holds karmic seeds (bīja). These seeds mature into particular perceptions, tendencies, and even entire experiential worlds, so that the diversity of reality reflects the unfolding of these latent imprints. The five sense consciousnesses, the mental consciousness, and the afflicted, ego-clinging consciousness all operate within this larger matrix, giving rise to the familiar sense of a subject confronting an external object. From the Yogācāra standpoint, this duality is not an ultimate feature of things, but a constructed pattern emerging from conditioned mental processes.

To clarify how this construction works, Yogācāra speaks of three “natures” (trisvabhāva). The imagined nature (parikalpita) is the falsely superimposed duality of subject and object, the conceptual fabrications laid over experience. The dependent nature (paratantra) is the stream of conditioned mental events themselves, arising from causes and conditions, especially karmic seeds in the storehouse consciousness. The perfected nature (pariniṣpanna) is reality seen correctly: the nondual suchness of experience, free from the imagined split between inner and outer. This perfected nature is simultaneously the realization of emptiness (śūnyatā) and the recognition that all phenomena lack inherent, independent existence.

From this perspective, spiritual practice does not aim at rearranging an external world, but at transforming consciousness at its very base (āśrayaparāvṛtti). Liberation involves seeing through the imagined nature, understanding the dependent nature as mere mental construction, and directly realizing the perfected nature as nondual, luminous, and empty. As grasping at independently real objects and a solid self relaxes, the storehouse consciousness is purified, and its deluded seeds are transformed into wisdom. In this way, Yogācāra treats the path as a radical re-education of perception, a turning of the mind that reveals reality to have always been nothing other than consciousness-only.