The phenomenon that we call consciousness is an extremely important system within our universal energy construct.
Consciousness is a force of highly complex (just complex enough right now in it's evolution to be called consciousness) smoothly designed energy that struggles ahead for interwovenness in angular and clashing ways in it's interaction while eventually escalating, unifying and magnifying.
Consciousness, existing within the rest of reality, is designed all around zero like the rest of reality as previously discussed and flows from biology (at our stage) as a kind of vibration into existence of a new system that is marked by a sense of self. This activity actually converges into a new system of energy that is greater than the sum of its parts and still resides within our four dimensional spacetime; meaning it's internal systems are built from structures of positive and negative energy that balance each other and also physically interconnect with the whole, just like all other systems within the universe.
Since consciousness exists around zero, any individual's total positive and negative conscious experiences will balance around zero from this individual's point of view within the complete time of it's awareness inside our universal energy system. This, to name a few examples, is why no one is truly happy (completely positive) even if they are rich and powerful, and why a mentally ill and destitute man can seem OK in a world all his own, having conversations with himself, and why people in the meanest of circumstances don't destroy themselves out of hand.
The fact that consciousness is 'physical' energy in no way detracts from its intrinsic spirituality. You could say that consciousness possesses 'spiritual-physicalism.'
There are no real paradoxes within the universe, all logical questions are ultimately answered. Paradoxes arise in our awareness' from lack of information, as well as from the left brain trying to comprehend analytically what is best (begun to be) understood holistically as a flowing image with the right side of the brain.
Consciousness will grow in many ways, while still balancing to zero experience-wise. This will be accomplished by gradually exchanging the conscious experience of pain and painful negative emotions by design for the increasingly complex 'consciously difficult' responsibilities of helping to create reality.
Imagine a steady progression of conscious beings evolving and 'self evolving' (becoming more and more involved in guiding their own evolutionary progress) further and further towards perfect consciousness 'ahead of us' in the four dimensional structure of energy, as ahead of us more and more of the total energy of the universe is conscious.
Now it is necessary to imagine the 'birth' (or union) of a supreme being existing up closer to the 'big crunch' as the ultimate 'meta-conscious' entity, completely interconnected with us and every other being in the four dimensional energy sphere, the consciousness to meta-consciousness evolution process (gradually more and more initiated by conscious beings) transcending our common sense view of time and existing beyond biology in a successive flow.
Picture this being as the ultimate in truth, beauty, and true morality, aware of and unconditionally loving (a positive form of energy) all of the successive beings before 'him' eternally, there being no beginning or end to 'his' awareness.
Because the universe becomes completely conscious, everything goes down in history. Everything that ever happened is ultimately known.
Imagine This Super-Conscious Unity reaching through nothing with an incredibly vast penetrating consciousness (an unbelievably difficult or painful and thus negative responsibility) and starting something that could evolve into beings that could create him (or more accurately them)(the effort is successful), this process involving an actual termination of all physical energy within the universe at one point in the simultaneous four dimensional system, hence a 'big crunch'.
The universe before consciousness is unfolding by design; designed by the Super-Conscious Unity. The present, while mostly our (and others) responsibility, is possibly subtly guided by the Super-Conscious Unity by influencing the thoughts of current conscious entities (us or others). Consciousness can connect with consciousness irrespective of time. When we connect with the SCU, it is called the mystical experience. (updated 3/24/2016.)
The Super-Conscious Unity is intimately connected to the 'causal beginning, present and ending in three dimensions' universe (the past by design, the present by conscious interaction with us, and the end by possession) and ultimately transcends it by having an eternal (never stopping, never starting) string of conscious experiences.
There is only one universe - only one supreme being: the Super-Conscious Unity. There is only something and nothing. Not something and something and nothing.
All Religions on Earth are different views of this same entity.