Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, What is Qualia?

In the book of “Mind wide open,” the author, Johnson (2004) refers to “qualia.” I’ve heard of this word before again and again, but I’ve never taken a real understanding of the meaning. It is my understanding that qualia are our subjective feelings, in other words, our sense of feelings themselves. For instance, when we smell good, electronic signals corresponding to the stimulus are produced in our brain. However, these electronic signals are not qualia. Qualia are our pleasant feelings themselves in this case. 

Regarding qualia, I came up with the following questions: Where do our qualia arise from? Where do our qualia exist? In my view, our qualia show up from our consciousness and also reside in our consciousness. However, I still don’t know the process of production. What creates our qualia? How do our qualia come from our consciousness? By the way, what creates our consciousness? The list of my philosophical questions goes on.