There are two types of gradient though, conceptually. If consciousness is some state of matter that is unknown still, and each neuron, for example, contains "one bit" of consciousness, then the gradient is that as you add more neurons, you add more complexity to the consciousness, but you do not change the fundamental experience of consciousness. You add more content but not more experience in itself.

If on the other hand consciousness is this emergent phenomenon that depends on neurons and their connections, then the gradient (and thus the experience) would be far more diverse and there would be a lot of different ways consciousness could "feel".

The problem I have is that for example, as far as my brain can remember, stimuli has looked the exact same all throughout my life. If I saw my a tree when I was 10, and I saw the same tree now, the conscious "qualia" of this would look exactly the same. To me this is a mystery, that the connections in the brain do not change the experience of qualia at all. Red looks like red no matter what the neuronal state of your brain is. I don't have an answer to this but just something I've been thinking about.