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The question here is; how does nonlethal damage work in psychic duels? The rest is my musings on the subject.
How does non-lethal damage work in a psychic duel? This is relevant for a kineticist with burn, but a character might begin the duel with nonlethal damage or take nonlethal damage to their physical body.
"she uses the following statistics as they were prior to entering: her current hit points..."
The rules seem to imply that nonlethal damage do not transfer to the mindscape at all, since they are not a part of but an adjunct to current hit points.
"Regardless of the effect's form, damage dealt by a manifestation is always untyped damage, and can be mitigated only by defensive manifestations."
It seems you cannot inflict non-lethal damage in a psychic duel. This is not 100% sure, but as I understand things physical combat maneuvers (such as Power Attack or the option to do "Nonlethal Damage with a Weapon that Deals Lethal Damage" do not exist in the mindscape.
"However, while the mind is engaged in a psychic duel, only damaging and healing spells and effects cast on the body of a combatant have an effect on the battle."
A physical attack is an effect, and nonlethal damage is still damage, so it seems that nonlethal damage inflicted outside of the mindscape does transfer to the mindscape.
"The duel ends immediately if one of the combatants reaches 0 or fewer hit points..."
It doesn't seem that nonlethal damage can end a psychic duel. This raises the question of what happens to the character's physical and mindscape bodies when it would normally go unconscious from the compound effect of lethal and nonlethal damage. The implication is that the character's physical body goes unconscious but the mindscape body remains conscious in the binary mindscape.
I may be overthinking this; maybe nonlethal damage is included in "her current hit points". But if so, that adds a big hurdle to the debate on Diehard and nonlethal damage for the kineticist - if nonlethal damage can reduce your current hit points to zero, thus ending a psychic duel, then Diehard does indeed protect against going unconscious from nonlethal damage. Diehard doesn't work in the mindscape, as feats do not transfer there, but it does in the physical world where kineticsist live and act.
Another hurdle. Conditions inflicted while in the mindscape do not transfer to the character in the mindscape. Dead is a condition. So an assassin doing a successful death attack on the physical body does not affect the psychic body in the binary mindscape. I suppose it has an effect once the duel ends, that is not entirely clear.