Trying to explain consciousness in terms of brain function is like trying to explain radio waves as an effect of radios.

As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the present moving past to future.

Yet the reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

It's like a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.

The energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

The energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting that consciousness functions as an energy. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, the nervous system sorting the information and the circulation system as feedback in the middle.

Which would explain this love/hate relationship consciousness has with order. Both building it up and when it becomes too confining, breaking it down. Wave action is pervasive.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.