Also, we need to distinguish between "consciousness" and "self-awareness." The latter presupposes the former, but the former does not necessarily presuppose the latter. That is, consciousness does not necessarily presuppose self-awareness.
Yes. Bernardo Kastrup thinks that consciousness is primal. However, that primal consciousness isn't self-aware. The reason for the existence of the universe is for primal consciousness (
mind-at-large, m-a-l) to explore self-awareness: for it to come to know itself in a novel way.
Come to know implies that the universe apparently has to exist in time, and that implies in turn the apparent existence of
things as a
means of exploration
.
Mind at large simply has to desire something for it to eventuate. BK puts it this way in
Brief Peeks Beyond:
What mind-at-large has to do is what it wants to do; what it wants to do is what it has to do. The necessity is the desire; the desire is the necessity. We can say that mind-at-large desires irresistibly to do precisely what it does, because it is its nature to desire so. That it is free to carry out what it desires is the very expression of its unbound metaphysical free will.
M-a-l wants to create a system within which it can come to know itself. I don't think the universe is strictly speaking an illusion, and nor its product, self-awareness. However, it comes at a price: the apparent
multiplicity of apparent
things in apparent
time. That is, the existence of alters of m-a-l that perceive themselves as
separate beings. And
that, if anything, is the illusion.
Just as mathematics can be transcended using mathematics (think of Godel here), there comes a point in the system at which self-awareness causes the realisation that separation is an illusion. A point at which we get glimpses of the interconnectedness of lots of apparently separate beings. Increasingly, we sense that we are all apparent embodiments of the desire of m-a-l and not separate beings at all. At that point and beyond, I don't think our
selves disappear. We still possess self-awareness, realising that we are specific interconnected perspectives on the whole from within the whole.
If m-a-l could come know itself in some different way, sans apparent time, matter and separation, then it presumably would have done so. But there you go: undeniably, we have self-awareness: this is the way that m-a-l has chosen to eventuate its desire, like it or lump it. It is only through the perception of its unity by apparently separate beings that m-a-l can come to a self-aware knowledge of itself. The weight of that knowledge can be
shared by lots of interconnected perspectives. I'm reminded of what Alan Watts said about Indra's net:
Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
M-a-l is the whole thing; each of our self-awarenesses is one of the drops. At some point, each of us has the potential to experience this, and through us, the whole to experience itself. M-a-l doesn't have the intrinsic ability to do this, though it does have the intrinsic ability to create the whole system by exercising its unbounded free will. It
needs us, and
we need it. Everything is necessary; nothing can be dispensed with, and that includes what we think of as suffering, through which we (and it) can arrive at the realisation of what's going on.