That requirement is still very much there.
Because of having a default character of feeling and only feeling, the consciousness cannot help but to feel all the time. It cannot avoid any feeling, irrespective of whether it brings pleasure or pain. It is innocent, not intelligent, something like a small clild who can feel the pain and pleasure but neither can deduce why he is feeling so nor can do anything about to change it.
It is the mind which is supposed to bring the consciousness into pleasurable circumstances. But, mind has to learn how to do that. That is precisely the reason why all this labyrinth is created.
I above explained the reasons why consciousness has nothing to do with the perception. I think that the one of the main reason why this misunderstanding is because of the language.
The apparent similarity between the terms of conscious and consciousness gives the impression that both are related, but they are not, at least in the way as it is perceived generally. Many other mythologies and languages use entirely different terms for these phenomena.
In Hinduism, Chetana/Shruti is used for consciousness while Buddhi for mind, and Ruh and Nafs is Sufism/Islam respectively.
To understand the issue better, we can use an analogy of a man and a set of 3d glasses. If the object/picture is in 3d, a spectator cannot see it without 3d glasses, even though he has the capability of seeing. The same is with the mind and consciousness. Consciousness is open to the terms of pleasure and pain only. It cannot do anything beyond that, thus it needs some another entity to translate all observations into its only known terms, and that is mind.
Consciousness is not interested in awareness or perception, or, being an unchangeable entity, it can neither learn or evolve, in the first place. These things are beyond its capabilities. Yes, its associate mind can certainly learn and evolve with time and experience. And, as the result, consciousness also becomes able to feel the new things, though again only in the terms of pleasure and pain only.
As I explained above, consciousness can experience/understand only in the terms of feelings, not deduction. It needs someone to translate everything in its understandable terms. Only then, and only in that way, it can be conscious of anything.
Because, beside consciousness, we also have one such an entity in the form of the mind, which can also learn, evolve and analyze things.
I do not merely think that but rather know for sure for some valid and reliable reasons that it is not going to happen ever. Consciousness is not what science is assuming it to be. Forget about it, the science cannot even create mind similar to organisms, which can learn and evolve completely on its own. Both of mind and consciousnes are not the manifeststions of the organic brain, as it is perceived generally.
Science/humans can only create a pseudo mind, which can recognise and implement input information only, nothing else. But, that is neither mind nor consciousness. Merely complexity cannot create either of these. If that was not true, being able to have the access to all the knowledge of the mankind at a single place, the servers of Google and Wikipedia would have become conscious on their own long ago.
The claim of creating mind/consciousness is not less bizarre/unachievable than creating an universe. And, given the present pace of the science, it is not long before humans would realize this reality too. In the globalised world of today, it is merely a matter of one clear incident/evidence anywhere, which is bound to happen.
With love,
Sanjay