Mind "parts"

Harris says that when he walked out on stage, he saw water and a glass perched on a table next to the speaker's stand. "Good," he thought to himself, "they remembered the water." 
Then he added a thought: "But who was I telling this to? I'd already seen the water."
This is an excellent pointer to one of the questions about nonduality. And of everyday living. To what extent is it necessary, and desirable, to divide experience -- such as into (1) someone who sees, (2) what is seen, and (3) the process of seeing?
When Harris saw the water as he walked out on stage, what really was going on? (Assuming there is such a thing as really.)
Like all of us do, part of himself told another part of himself about what another part of himself had just experienced. This leads New Age'y sorts of nondualists to decry conceptual thinking as something unnecessary that obscures the pristine pure awareness of "as it is."
But this strikes me as a bunch of crap, substituting one form of duality for another. Meaning, now we've got a duality between thinking and reality. Yet if the world truly is nondual, everything is encompassed within that mysterious notion.