We give the name CONSCIOUSNESS  to the essential identity
that makes us what we are---
which just goes to show that naming something doesn't necessarily explain it.

"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the
unconscious....
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of the human existence is to
kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." Carl Jung

"Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits.
Such words as 'chain' or ' 1 train' do not describe it fitly....
It is nothing jointed; it flows.
A 'river' or 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described.
In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness,
or of subjective life." William James

"The conscious is the executive part of our total being.
It is the conscious that make decisions and translates them into actions.
Were we to become all unconscious,
we should be indeed like the new-born infant,
one with God but incapable of any action that might make
the presence of God felt in the world." M. Scott Peck

"Consciousness is a licensed rover, independent, free in time and free in space,
a sort of psychological time machine dispersing itself in the past,
present and future simultaneously.
It goes back and forth, unifying our tomorrows with our today's and yesterdays....
Consciousness can traffic in things that are not, but perhaps could be.
Its spontaneity is not even shackled by the laws of logic and deter monistic
cause and effect.
It has the power to doubt and imagine, and in order to imagine it must be able
to escape from the world.
Its nature is to conjure up possibilities....
By unifying past and future,
consciousness modifies the past by giving it a new context.
The content of our lives up to the present moment is a fact,
and must stand as it is.
But we can interpret our past from the standpoint of what we are
and of our future possibilities.
As a result, the meaning of the past is always being altered,
much as in a novel where the later chapters make the reader see
earlier ones in a different light." Jeremy Campbell

"Few questions have endure longer or traversed a more perplexing history than this,
the problem of consciousness and its place in nature.
It is the difference that will not go away, the difference between what others see of us
and our sense of our inner selves....
The difference between the you-and-me of the shared behavioural world
and the unlocated location of things thought about.
Our reflections and dreams, and the imaginary conversations we have with others,
in which never-to-be-known-by-anyone we excuse, defend, proclaim our hopes and
regrets, our futures and our pasts.
All this thick fabric of fantasy is so absolutely different from handable,
standable, kickable reality  with its trees, grass, tables, oceans, hands,
stars---even brains!
How do these ephemeral existences of our lonely experience fit into
the ordered array of nature that some how surrounds and engulfs
this core of knowing?" Julian Jaynes

"To be too conscious is an illness----a real thorough-going illness."
Fyodor Dostoevsky