I think one very basic idea to consider is how reality is fundamentally dichotomous and yet our function of perception is necessarily linear.
For example, think in terms of a production line and the product it produces;
The product, lets call it the 'object,' goes from initiation to completion. Meanwhile the production is consuming raw material and expelling finished product. So effectively their arrows point in opposite directions. Now just about any 'object,' be it a cup of coffee, or an individual being, goes from start to finish. Meanwhile the processes going on around it and within it, are constantly throwing up and then dissolving these forms. You might say the individual goes from birth to death, while the species moves toward the new, ie. birth and sheds the old, away from death.
We could then look at galaxies in terms of this relationship, as mass forms and falls inward, getting ever more dense, while the constituent, dynamic energy is constantly expanding, either being absorbed by and growing prior forms, or breaking away from and radiating out across space. It should be noted that photons, light as a particle, are an effect of its absorption by prior form. Otherwise it would seem to just expand out as a holographic wave.
Now when we consider this process of constructing the 'object,' be it a widget in a factory, or mass falling into a galaxy, enormous amounts of energy go into the process, ie. entropy. Yet while the energy is lost to the closed process of constructing the object, it is still conserved and radiated away to be used in other processes.
So what then is this thing called a quantum? Yes, it does 'collapse" out of some larger field and is more dense than that field, much as mass is more dense than light. The wave is like that process, but when we measure it, we collapse that object out of it. Much as a widget coalesces out of a production line.
The problem seems to be one of the process of perception. A baby is every bit as aware as an adult, but hasn't developed that cognitive process of creating memories. Much like a factory creates widgets, or a galaxy creating mass, by accumulating and condensing energy and the information it contains. So as cognitive adults, we are very intellectually biased toward that process of creating that nugget of conception, called a thought, meanwhile the process of creating it seems nebulous and not distinct, like a new born consciousness. So we go around in these discussions and everyone has their particular nuggets of insight, which clarify particular aspects of the larger whole, yet seem somehow distinct from the larger processes going on around it. Much like a flashlight will illuminate one spot, but blind you to what is next to it.
Not that I'm questioning anyones particular points of view, hypotheses, theories, observations, etc, but suggesting that rather than trying to condense them into ever more precise descriptions, to step back instead and just let them get a little fuzzy(horrors!) and see if that fuzziness doesn't lead to some networking from which your particular nodes emerged. Sometimes when I let go of a thought, it floats/fly off in my vision, like some spot or rippling wave, or shadow being lifted. After years of this, I sort of just let the thoughts run along by themselves. Horrible for the memory though, but very useful in dealing with animals.
Just a passing thought...
Probably been signed out.
Regards,
John Merryman