Can I ask how you've come to the conclusion that there is a realm of reality we know almost nothing of and that this is where "life" and "consciousness" are expressed from?
"Dark energy" and "dark matter" and the fact that we have no idea what they are or how they relate to the universe as we know it. The fact that cosmologists estimate that we know only about 7% of what there is to be known about the universe. A percentage so small that it could be overwhelmed by the degree of error it inhabits. The fact that there are numerous unexplained examples of cognitive information being transferred between life forms via a medium that we have never been able to detect. By the fact that the more we learn the more we realize we don't know.
As far as consciousness is concerned, it seems likely to me to be a product of evolution as I've said previously. As for life? Abiogenesis seems to be a likely candidate. The thing both of these have in common is that they are subject to the natural pressures that give a framework for these things to work around
The functional mechanisms are just functional mechanisms. They do not tell us why they are functional when none other is. They do not tell us what is driving existence to fulfill those functional possibilities.
The laws of natural and competition with other organisms, seems to me
Why are there any "laws" at all? Such parameters of possibility "design" their results when enacted. And this implies some sort of intelligence and purpose. Yet we know nothing of these.
There seems to be a point in the evolutionary tree where having the capability to make complex decisions improves the chances for certain organisms to compete and survive better - especially against other organisms that are able to make complex decisions
There is no evolutionary explanation for the exponential increase in imagination and reasoning within the human brain as compared to all other life forms on this planet.
I don't know if "set to be fulfilled" would be the terminology I'd use. As far as I'm aware, these building blocks of life seem to be drawn together and assemble when the conditions are right. If this turns out to be true, it seems to me that life becomes less of a chance and more of an inevitability assuming the conditions are right
But for those conditions to be right, the possibility of their "rightness" had to be there all along. If we combine some number of objects in just the right way, we get a bicycle. The bicycle did not exist until we combined the right set of objects in the right way, but the possibility of them being combined as such was always there. Even when we were completely oblivious to it.
The possibility of life has always been, even from before the universe exploded into being, ... waiting and wanting to be fulfilled. Life happened because it could. Evolution was just the mechanism that gave it it's physical form. Consciousness was always a possibility waiting to be fulfilled as well. And so it was. The brain is just a mechanism enabling it to happen within the physical realm.
