Consciousness = Intelligent thought or just feeling?

I have come to think that consciousness is a lot more simple a thing than we think.

We think, we solve complicated problems, we realize we are alive and we feel. Not all animals share all of these things with us but I think we all share the most important thing. Feeling. Not talking about sadness or happiness, but actual input through our senses.

Wouldn't it be safe to assume that if a living thing "feels", than it must be conscious of that feeling? What does higher thought have anything to do with sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch? Isn't problem solving and all thought just a way of organizing all of the basic input from our senses? Even if you lost all ability to think at the high level that you do and lost all knowledge, wouldn't you still feel the pain that comes from the prick of a needle?

I think that consciousness should be based on if an organism has sensory input or not, and if that input is received by a central nervous system or what have you. Because isn't that all you would need to know if something was feeling the world around them or not?

You are a living organism that takes in at least one or more kinds of sensory input. There you are. You should need no more than that. Something is there to feel it. There should be nothing special about the sensory input of humans compared with other animals. What is feeling all that input? A soul? Whatever it is, it's you and it's everything else that has the senses that you have.