Does consciousness exist? Why is it different from gravity? Can consciousness not be the name we give to a phenomena which is in fact not something that originated from within us, but the sum total of all the chemicals and energies that are acting on us all the time, whether or not we can sense them?

If a ball rolls down a hill, it takes its path according to how gravity works on it. Why is the ball, which seems to have chosen its path, not conscious as we think we are?

Viruses mutate all the time in response to their surroundings. The are able to adapt without needing a neural network based brain. Why are viruses not conscious?

Can the "self" be an internal "gravity" no different from an external "gravity", that interact with each other such that we need to differentiate the inner gravity from the external gravity, thus resulting in the phenomena we call self-consciousness?