Yoga Vasiṣṭha presents a vision in which consciousness (cit) is the sole, ultimate reality, and mind (manas or citta) is understood as its modification or manifestation. Consciousness is described as pure, self-luminous awareness, unchanging and beyond all subject–object duality. It is not affected by the movements that appear within it, remaining the silent witness of all mental and phenomenal processes. Within this framework, consciousness is the ground of being, the absolute that underlies and pervades every experience without itself undergoing change.

The mind, by contrast, is portrayed as a movement or vibration within this unchanging consciousness. It arises from consciousness through imagination or ideation, and in that arising, the appearance of duality is born. Mind functions as saṅkalpa, the power of volition and conceptualization, and through this power it projects the world of names and forms. When mind is active, the manifold universe appears; when mind subsides back into its source, the world-appearance also ceases. Thus, the mind is not an independent substance but a mode of awareness in which consciousness seems to fragment into observer, observed, and the act of observation.

From a philosophical standpoint, the mind is regarded as empirically experienced yet not ultimately real; it is a superimposition upon consciousness, comparable to a wave on the ocean. This apparent separation gives rise to the sense of individuality and the illusion that there are many minds distinct from a universal consciousness. Through ignorance and the clinging to this imagined individuality, the mind constructs and sustains the phenomenal realm of time, space, and causation. Yet throughout, consciousness itself does not become bound; only the mind appears to be bound by its own projections.

Liberation, as presented in Yoga Vasiṣṭha, consists in recognizing the true status of mind in relation to consciousness. When it is clearly seen that mind has no existence apart from consciousness and is merely its modification, the false sense of separation dissolves. This is described not as the destruction of consciousness, but as the stilling or dissolution of mental movement into its own source. What had been taken as “mind” is then understood to be nothing other than pure consciousness itself, free of all limiting constructs.