Professor Singh,
What an interesting quantum theory you have proposed your ref [6]!
As it happens, I find the idea that there is a very deep relationship between space and matter to be very plausible, though in my case I would suggest that it is a dualism that emerged at the time of the "big bang" due to the emergence of both classical time and classical information, which I would describe as two sides of the same coin. I'm not sure that this fused reality is all that distant, either, since my quick explanation of quantum physics to novices is "physics for which history has not yet been set," that is, physics for which the Feynman path integral and all of its possibilities remain open.
I note that in your approach you took what I call the Deep Leap, that is, the drop down to the Planck level of space that is shared by quantum gravity and string theory. I would respond that despite the the extreme popularity of the Deep Leap, it has this intransigent little problem of invoking absolutely astonishing energy levels that, well... maybe aren't even real? After all, observable physics doesn't seem to like actual point objects nearly as much as it does the ability to approach point objects as closely as you want... but only at a high cost in terms of energy.
Physicists began doing the Deep Leap in earnest in the 1970s due to the amazing success of the Standard Model, as a way to bring super-weak gravity into the quantum boson-mediated fold of fundamental forces.
But to me the most amazing and perplexing Deep Leap, one far more faith-like rather than scientific, was the one that Joel Scherk and John Schwarz took in 1974 to create string theory. They grabbed the experimentally very real hadron and meson level Regge trajectory work, with its at least vaguely graviton-like proton-sized string-like vibration implications, and decided somehow that these hypothetical but experimentally plausible proton-sized spin-2 vibrations were ... actually gravitons? ... projections of gravitons? ... instances of something graviton-like? ... I never quite could understand the link, seriously. To me it just looks like they took a simple numeric coincidence and used it redirect 40 years of funding away from experimentally verifiable physics and into a domain whose energy levels are so high that they not only are inaccessible experimentally, but literally may not exist anywhere in the universe.
But the point there is just that not everyone in the world agrees that the Deep Leap was such a great idea.
Regarding your mention of mesoscopic quantum systems... well, you are of course at this very moment relying on an absolutely lovely example of a macroscopic room-temperature, extraordinarily robust quantum system to read this text.
That would be your eye corneas and lens, which require every individual photon to use their their history integrals to "view" the entire large shapes of your lenses to figure out where to land on your retina. The only reason we don't think of light as macroscopic examples of very robust quantum wave functions is that we have so many nice "classical" approximations that provide a lovely illusion that photons are little billiard balls shooting through space. If that was really true, we'd all be blind, since no such point particle could ever make it through the tangle of atoms and molecules that form our lenses.
Back to your response: I kind of lost the thread of your argument at point 4, which I gather with your deep background in this area must feel very clear to you, but was a bit of head-scratcher for me? The problem is I think was with the phrase "self-awareness", which is an amazing topic (my day job included working with cognitive scientists) that to me invokes the highest level of brain function. The very fact that I see it as high-level makes your assertion that it is a dual-purpose, more neural-level entity very difficult for my poor mind to interpret meaningfully. So, my apologies, and I'll try again, but I honestly do not think that the clarity you see on this point is as readily available to all readers as you might think.
Regarding maths, here's a different thought for you: Might maths simply be the most refined forms of physics, the rules that emerge from the underlying simplicity of the universe? Things such as translation and rotation are, after all, deeply reflective of how our most fundamental rules of physics operate, so wouldn't the constructs the we as biological being use to live in that world also be deeply reflective of that physics? A rock in the world rotates, and if we can model that rotation in our neural systems, wouldn't that give us a huge advantage for finding something useful or valuable under a rock?
So I tend towards a more mundane view of maths: Just as language is a latticework that enables humans to explore and organize simpler perceptions and and ideas in far more detail, maths use that same symbol system to organize and expand on our innate ability to model existing physics to our advantage.
By that view, some maths, such as those of translation and rotation, are more fundamental than others, just as some sentences (e.g. those that describe real situations) are more "attached" to reality than other (e.g. novels).
And my point overall? Well, just that there are many other interpretations of much of what you are looking at... and I think that that reason some care is needed in levels of confidence.
As for your argumentation, which is the issue for the essay, I like the more specific hypotheses of your reference materials, and find them a lot more understandable. And again, I particularly like the idea that there is a very deep connection between space and matter, even if I lean towards more of a dualism interpretation of that issue.
But the kernel of your essay argument still seems to be this idea that there is a self-awareness component to biology at a very low level, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to make that leap along with you. I am sorry that I don't "get it", but also I suspect others may have trouble following that part also.
Cheers,
Terry