Yogācāra portrays the relationship between mind and reality through the doctrine of “consciousness-only,” suggesting that what appears as an external world is in fact a manifestation or projection of consciousness. The objects that seem to stand outside and apart do not possess independent existence, but arise inseparably with the cognitive processes that present them. Reality as ordinarily experienced is therefore “appearance-only,” shaped and structured by consciousness rather than accessed as something wholly outside it. This does not amount to a claim that nothing exists at all; rather, it emphasizes that subject and object are not ultimately separate domains.

At the heart of this vision stands the storehouse consciousness, ālaya-vijñāna, a deep, ongoing flow of mind that carries karmic seeds (bīja). These seeds ripen into both the perceiving subject and the perceived world, so that the duality between “inner observer” and “outer object” is itself a product of consciousness. The familiar sense of an ego-center, along with the six sense consciousnesses and their objects, emerges from this underlying continuum. In this way, what is taken to be an objective world is actually the transformation and unfolding of these latent tendencies within consciousness.

Yogācāra further clarifies this relationship through the teaching of the three natures (trisvabhāva). The imagined nature (parikalpita) is the falsely superimposed view that subjects and objects exist as independent, inherently real entities. The dependent nature (paratantra) is the actual dependently arisen flow of causes and conditions—especially the ripening of karmic seeds in the storehouse consciousness—that gives rise to experience. The perfected nature (pariniṣpanna) is the realization that the duality of subject and object is empty of inherent separation, revealing a nondual suchness that is free from conceptual fabrication.

From this standpoint, the ordinary world is not an objective truth standing over against a knowing subject, but a shared pattern of projections shaped by karmic and cognitive structures. Beings whose karmic seeds are similar participate in compatible experiential worlds, which explains the intersubjective stability of experience without positing independently existing objects. The active, discriminating mind generates distinctions and categories, reinforcing the illusion of solid, external things and a solid, internal self. Insight into the mind-only nature of experience loosens this grip, allowing attachment and misperception to fall away and opening the way to a purified, nondual mode of awareness.