As for Yogacara asserting that consciousness/mind is real, just to try and help :
From a link that Astus also used : http://www.acmuller.net/yogacara/articles/intro-uni.htm
And from the book by Traleg Kyabgon :Yogācāra doctrine is summarized in the term vijñapti-mātra, "nothing-but-cognition" (often rendered "consciousness-only" or "mind-only") which has sometimes been interpreted as indicating a type of metaphysical idealism, i.e., the claim that mind alone is real and that everything else is created by mind. However, the Yogācārin writings themselves argue something very different. Consciousness (vijñāna) is not the ultimate reality or solution, but rather the root problem. This problem emerges in ordinary mental operations, and it can only be solved by bringing those operations to an end.
There's plenty of other things from the book that some of you might find interesting, will maybe post back later.To say Yogacarins believe the world is nothing but a creation of the mind is to miss the point.
As we have discovered, our experience of subject and object may be constructed by mind, but reality itself is not constructed by mind or there would be no reality.
We first have to turn our mind to thought processes and images and then we begin to discover that our experience of objects is also constructed by our own mind. The practitioner begins to realize that subject and object do not exist; they are created by mind. When we realize this and the notion of subject and object are removed, reality reveals itself.
Actually, while I'm here, one more extract from the book :
As far as the Yogacarins are concerned, once the subject/object distinction is removed, once the workings of the three levels of consciousness are removed, things begin to exist in a harmonious way on the level of tathata, "reality."
As we go along, we will discover this has some affinity with the tarntric notion of "one-flavoredness" or ro chig. Yogacarins are saying that, as far as the ultimate existence of the world is concerned, every single thing has the same nature as everything else, so every single thing shares the same reality. Only one type of thing exists: equanimity. Tantrikas would say everything has one-flavor, which means the flavor of reality is the same in everything. However, the Yogacarins had already developed the notion of the all-pervasiveness of reality within everything, so that in an ultimate sense things exist in a harmonious way even if they are opposites.