Yogācāra treats what is ordinarily called “self” as a conceptual construction rather than an ultimately real entity. The familiar sense of “I” and “mine” is seen as a mistaken imputation laid upon the ever-changing mental and physical aggregates, empty of any permanent, independent essence. This school upholds the Buddhist principle of anātman, denying any enduring soul or ātman, and regards the reified self as belonging to the “imagined nature,” a purely fabricated level of experience. In this view, both the inner subject and the outer world are appearances within consciousness, lacking inherent self-nature.

To explain continuity without positing a true self, Yogācāra speaks of a flowing “storehouse consciousness” (ālaya-vijñāna), which carries karmic seeds and underlies the stream of experience. The sense of a persisting person arises from the interaction of various consciousnesses, especially the afflicted mental consciousness that takes this storehouse as its object and clings to it as “I.” Yet even this foundational consciousness is not a permanent essence; it is part of the dependent nature, a causal process in which the illusion of self is generated. The self, therefore, is understood as vijñapti-mātra—nothing more than a projection or manifestation of consciousness.

Liberation in Yogācāra involves seeing through this constructed self and the subject–object duality that supports it. By realizing the perfected nature—where the emptiness of both self and external objects is directly known—the imagined self falls away, and the flow of consciousness is transformed. The defiled stream of mind, once purified of clinging and misapprehension, becomes wisdom that no longer fabricates an enduring “I.” In this transformed vision, the ordinary ego is not repaired or elevated but recognized as never having possessed true, independent existence in the first place.