Consciousness is as real as the pain you feel when you hit your finger with a hammer; in other words, undeniably real, with 100% certainty.
Objective things might not be real because we can't possibly be 100% certain of them. Things like: The hammer that you see, the finger that you think you have, the nerves that transmit pain, and the electrical signals in your brain that comprise pain, can all potentially be simulated by a matrix simulation, hallucination, or dream state. You might be an 11-dimensional being with a brain made of anti-matter simply dreaming of the Earth, and part of your brain that actually perceives pain might be a piece of this anti-matter, rather than some electricity in your neurons. There is no physical component of pain that is sure to exist.
However, there is something you know for sure when you feel pain, and that is that you are feeling pain. It doesn't make sense to say "pain might be an illusion" or "I might only think I feel pain" because thinking you feel pain is the same as actually feeling pain. There is no room for illusion and nowhere further to go: Pain is pain.
This is the essence of consciousness, the "inexplicable yet sure feeling of being".
The gap between consciousness and the real world is the gap between what we know for sure and what we don't know for sure. Please see: Max Loh's answer to Where is our consciousness, and is it a thing that has mass/matter? in which I prove that consciousness cannot possibly be only matter and energy. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me where my proof went logically wrong without misrepresenting my argument!
