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From a perspective of the human-animal systems as algorithms, I think that consciousness is only a passive observer of inputs and outputs to/from our brains. External stimulus is interpreted, then we aware of it or them (conscious experience of “reality”), after that some underlying mechanism makes a decision that is informed to the conscious layer (conscious experience of making decisions), and, finally, we act. Sometimes we are not aware of any of these three steps, as in the zombie behavior, for instance.
I think consciousness is independent of reality or whatever “reality” means (there are many ways to define it). One way is to define reality as the stimulus that our sensor system can perceive and our brain transforms in conscient sensations, but this is a very limited definition since there are other devices which can perceive higher/lower wavelength radiation than our eyes, for instance. Anyway, “Do you think this is really the only true knowledge that you have?”, yes, because from a scientific perspective, the reality is the only “scenario” and “actor” object of study. Even illusions are based on experiences of reality. “Can we ever be sure that the experiential world is not an illusion?” No, we cannot. Our experiences are trapped in this four-dimensional space-time. “Does it matter?” It doesn’t matter in the discussion of consciousness, because in different states consciousness we can be aware of reality (awake) or illusions (e.g. REM).