...conscious as he >>could<< be...

If you can be conscious in the immediate present moment of your existence, the way you could be - not the way the "imaginary ones," have you told throughout their dark ages - you would wake up from your waking dream of words, no matter how titillating the self-aggrandizing self-concept arising therefrom.

If you could see the world around and within you in the present moment of your existence, you would not see trees as anything but simply, trees; you would not see birds as anything but birds; you would not see nature as anything but natural, in the same way you would see your own conscious apprehension of consciousness as natural to you, and wonder how you never did before.