Consciousness is generally equated with 'it feels like something to be...'. Apart from examining the role that 'like' plays in this, as if you are comparing experience to some reference already in place, as if it is always a repetition with a difference, there is also the 'feels'. Feeling seems to require a body, or to produce one, that is, something persistent in time and space, something with a here and a now. Even if it is diffuse it implies a point of view and orientation - all of which belong to the physical body in the waking state, the only one you know, apparently. Body in this sense is highly contingent, it changes in all sorts of ways, you can imagine it differently, with some effort you can imagine a disembodied consciousness, not necessarily fixed in space or time. So, is feeling essential to consciousness? What is prior to feeling? How does feeling feel? How do you identify it as feeling?