Consciousness is simply the light by which the contours of mind and body are known. It is that which is aware of feelings such as joy, regret, amusement, and despair. It can seem to take their shape for a time, but it is possible to recognize that it never quite does. In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Consciousness is the ability to understand, that is, to be able to have a sentient experience of sensations and feelings and to understand their meaning. This goes beyond what a computer can do. Consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges from a deeper reality that cannot exist in space-time and cannot be explained by classical physics. Only the 'quantum state' can describe conscious experience, so by necessity consciousness must exist before matter, energy, space and time. Physical phenomena, which are more virtual than real, are the creation of a conscious field that observes objects moving in spacetime through the body controlled by the field. The quantum state of the field is the representation of qualia, i.e. the sensations and feelings that constitute a conscious experience. Qualia can only be known by the field that is in that state and go beyond what is representable by a mathematical concept.

Consciousness means to become aware of something by oneself. This, in turn, does not mean to discover something that others do not know, nor does it mean that one should not learn from others. To become aware of something by oneself refers to things, no matter whether learned from others or discovered by oneself, that one digests deeply in one’s mind and makes one’s own. Moreover, if we distinguish consciousness in terms of social class, we come up with several differences. The consciousness of a priest is not the same as that of a politician. The consciousness of a priest is also probably different from that of a philosopher. In fact, even priests, depending on their geographic location and historical period, cannot be said to all be the same. Thus, there are myriad differences in consciousness, depending on the person, time, and place; however, there must be something that is common to them all. There must be something that is at stake for all of them, as they all live in this world. The learned and the uneducated, the noble and the lowly, the rich and the poor – there is something they must become conscious of through cooperation. This is what I call “common consciousness”.

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

Consciousness is the basis of both the examined and the unexamined life. It is all that can be seen and that which does the seeing. No matter how far you have traveled from the place of your birth, and however much you now understand about the world, you have been exploring consciousness and its changes. Why not do so directly?

I will argue that consciousness is not a thing. “Consciousness” is the word we use to describe the subjective feeling of a number of instincts and/or memories playing out in time in an organism. That is why “consciousness” is a proxy word for how a complex living organism operates. And, to understand how complex organisms work, we need to know how brains’ parts are organized to deliver conscious experience as we know it.

Chalmers: It’s awfully hard to define consciousness. But I’d start by saying that it’s the subjective experience of the mind and the world. It’s basically what it feels like, from the first-person point of view, to be thinking and perceiving and judging.

Consciousness is something hooked across the top of your nose, like glasses, only as thick as the cosmos.

To be conscious is to be consciousness: Consciousness, the knower in you, cannot be known, although it can be experienced. You can experience consciousness now by experiencing the fact that you exist.

Consciousness is the one thing in the universe that cannot be an illusion — even if I'm a brain in a vat, all my memories are false, and my perceptions are of a world that doesn't exist, I'm still having an experience.

Consciousness is of paramount importance to all of us. By definition it is the universe of our awareness. On the assumption that many other species are conscious or sentient I have suggested that our morality is based upon a concern for all sentients-which I have called sentientism, although I could equally have called it consciousism (but that is even more horrible as a word!). Pain and pleasure are the two great poles of consciousness, between which all sentients swing ... .

In brief: consciousness is a phenomenon in the zone of evolution. This world lights up to itself only where or only inasmuch as it develops, procreates new forms. Places of stagnancy slip from consciousness; they may only appear in their interplay with places of evolution.
If this is granted it follows that consciousness and discord with one's own self are inseparably linked up, even that they must, as it were, be proportional to each other. This sounds a paradox, but the wisest of all times and peoples have testified to confirm it. Men and women for whom this world was lit in an unusually light of awareness, and who by life and word have, more than others, formed and transformed that work of art which we call humanity, testify by speech and writing or even by their lives that more than others have they been torn by the pangs of inner discord. Let this be a consolation to him who also suffers from it. Without it nothing enduring has ever been begotten.

Consciousness is the basis of both the examined and the unexamined life.