You want to know what consciousness is, but the terms in which the query is framed and the desire to know that moves the inquiry are all produced within consciousness, within its diegetic reality, so are mere representations in relation to the real which they would reveal, puppets wanting to see their own strings. As this becomes more and more apparent the force is drained out of the desire. At the point at which the predicament was fully revealed there would be nothing left of the desire to overcome it. Nothing? Well, let's say instead that the desire is attenuated by a certain factor. If the initial desire was much stronger there would enough would remain to punch through the thin membrane at the limit, the representation-reality barrier.