Awareness, Mind, and the Act of Perception
The nondual understanding suggests that the ultimate reality, the ground of all being, is undifferentiated consciousness, the unmanifest source from which everything arises. In its essential nature, this pure awareness, in the absence of a localized, finite mind, does not think or perceive in the way we commonly understand these activities.
For the acts of thinking and perceiving to occur, awareness must assume a specific point of view in the form of a finite mind. This finite mind does not become a separate entity; it is awareness manifesting within necessary limitations. Through this localization, awareness gains the capacity to differentiate, to categorize, and to process information from the vast field of potential, and the thoughts that flow through awareness are universal patterns interacting with memory, concepts, and sensory input.
Thought and perception, therefore, are not activities of a separate entity, but rather manifestations within a unified field of awareness, dynamic expressions of awareness experiencing itself in the world.
In other words, there is not a multiplicity of awarenesses; there only seems to be a multiplicity of forms.