What if consciousness is a universal field, something like the Higgs Field, or space-time: a fundamental property of the universe and complexity causes the field to 'bend' in the same way that gravity does. The structure of the network that's bending our universal consciousness field dictates the quality of conscious experience by changing the deformation of the field slightly.

Here's my analogy: those keycards you use to get into and out of your office building each create a unique electromagnetic field that can be read. The cards are unique because the different patterns printed on them in magnetic ink create different fields.

Maybe your brain is like that keycard. Each architecture is a little different, so each consciousness is a little different. Anywhere you have integrated information (computers, plants, animals, even maybe molecules and atoms) creates a tiny dimple in the field of consciousness and has some 'level' of consciousness corresponding to the depth of the dimple.

In this model, information does not *create* consciousness, nor does the brain receive it, but rather, consciousness is a universal fundamental that information bends towards it in the same way that mass bends spacetime.

I was sort of inspired by Phillip Pullman's idea of 'dust' with this.