What Did the Buddha Say About Consciousness and Self?

I was recently asked a question about whether there is an intelligent consciousness recently. This is my response from the Buddha's perspective....

"I don't know if I would say it's an intelligent consciousness. There is an organizing something, but to postulate about what is is or means is a bit out of knowing possibility. What is knowable is the mind, how it works and how to practice to become free from mental defilements that prevent happiness.

Kamma is not a personal thing. It is more like a continuum of momentum from what the Buddha teaches. He actually doesn't even go that far, monastics do, but if you read the teachings he keeps it really simple. He didn't want people to get into grandoise ideologies about the way the universe works, whether it's infinite or finite, for example. He knew that there was a much more important task at hand than figuring out something that really doesn't affect us. Beliefs don't really matter in the end. What matters is how we think and feel and our experience and whether we are happy and kind or not. This is what the Buddha wanted us to focus on.

This is an excerpt form an important sutta (teaching of the Buddha) https://www.accesstoinsight.org/.../sn44/sn44.008.than.html

"Vaccha, the members of other sects assume form to be the self, or the self as possessing form, or form as in the self, or the self as in form.

"They assume feeling to be the self...

"They assume perception to be the self...

"They assume fabrications to be the self...

"They assume consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness. That is why, when asked in this way, they answer that 'The cosmos is eternal'... or that 'The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.'

"But the Tathagata, worthy and rightly self-awakened, does not assume form to be the self, or the self as possessing form, or form as in the self, or the self as in form.

"He does not assume feeling to be the self...

"He does not assume perception to be the self...

"He does not assume fabrications to be the self...

"He does not assume consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness. That is why, when asked in this way, he does not answer that 'The cosmos is eternal'... or that 'The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.'"