A definition of consciousness is the awake state of the individual, a state during which
mentality, feelings and physicality are available to the ego or “I”. The famous founder of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, in describing the ego reported that it was conscious and
unconscious. But is consciousness a reality or just an assumption? If the “I” can think and
perform other mental functions such as remember and imagine, can feel emotions as well
as pain and pleasure, can run and walk, eat and drink when the individual is awake, is
there any need for consciousness when the individual is awake? What is necessary is for
the “I” or ego to be awake. The definition, then, can be altered as follows: The awake
state is when the ego or “I” is functional; consciousness, therefore, does not exist. The
“I” or ego is the brainbody that is aware of itself. As Descartes said “I think therefore I
am”.
All that exists is dynamic and interactive, therefore consciousness meets the criteria.
But, the old way of thinking must be overcome.
Consciousness’ is not a thing, it is multitude of processes merged in the brain as mind.
An aspect of consciousness is data collection, processing, and storage.
Data referring to interactions converted to a form that can be processes using a priori evolved methods - interpreted.
As such, life is conscious whether the ego - lucid part - is aware or not.
Using this definition we can say that plants have a rudimentary form of consciousness, even if they have no central processing hub, brain, and no nervous system to collect, transmit, interpret and synthesize data, and so cannot develop an ego, i.e., lucid part of mind.
All life is manifest Will.
Will always has a core objective, which is survival, to begin with.
All life shares the objective of self-preservation.
Will To Life, as Schopenhauer called it.
Will to Power refers to the expansion, growth, of an organism’s range of probabilities - its freedom.
If space is possibility and mater is probability, then a life wants to encompass and order space, organizing it in accordance with its objectives.
Thanks for your post. The universe may be conscious and that would include plants. Mentality, itself,
may be equivalent to consciousness. Consciousness may be just another concept without existence or
it begs for an accurate definition.
Escaping the rigid absoluteness of the past is necessary to redefine concepts, such as consciousness, morality, free-will, god etc.
All is energy…all is act.
Consciousness refers to actions, processes, not to things, to absolutes.
We begin with the act, not the word, referring to an idea, a concept. We begin with what is experienced.
Existence can only be defined, if we wish to escape the fossilizations of Abrahamic nihilism, coming to us via secular ideologies like Marxism and Postmodernism, as a state of dynamic interactivity.
The mind reduces existence to a static thing, an idea, to make sense of it - to survive its fluctuations.
Consciousness doesn’t really know what consciousness is. I don’t think anyone even knows what thinking even is. Descartes included.
Knowledge is different from both consciousness and thought. Knowledge must be created and discovered, earned. One must have actually assembled it and become strong enough to endure it. Knowledge is close to truth, it is what makes consciousness and thoughts become close enough to truth to be infused with it, like the fiery reflections of a sun which warms and enlivens you yet to which you cannot get so close. Not even because it will burn you, although it would, but more just because you can’t even process the brightness of the glare.
Learning takes time, it is a physical substance. This seems to go unnoticed in our weird pseudo-philosophical paradigm of “mind or body?” which has pervaded just about everything. Mind or body, or no… its all mind! or no. its all body! Lol. No its both!!! 
Stupid philosophers saying stupid things over time has created, has physically constructed a Learned substance which yet masks as knowledge and at least temps some of us to look deeper. Where is the spectre of consciousness in that? Hold all three or four of those objects independently in your mind, fully phenomenologically expand them from their eideticly-reduced necessity cores, then notice where and how they overlap. What, but where is the consciousness, you ask? You don’t see it. Ah but you are seeing it. What you see is what you are conscious of. And consciousness is merely the contents of consciousness itself.