Consciousness as an immediate awareness of what is happening, so that it can happen. For example, if self is intention, there is the immediate knowledge of that which is not itself intention without which there could be no such happening as an intention. When this is called witnessing, a distance is implied, as in the phrase, 'innocent witness', but there can be no such distance and hence no witnessing - and yet there is an awareness independent of whatever it is aware of. The distance, the innocence is a kind of deniability, a space for judgment or for uncertainty, for alternate worlds. Consciousness is awareness with out alternate worlds, without judgment and without innocence.