Theories of consciousness, or of self in so far as these coincide, and there are some quite good ones around, sophisticated, nuanced, au courant with all the latest research, etc. confronting the 'explanatory gap' at whatever level, all resemble Job's comforters. They are the best thought through, the most pious attempts to square the problem, to draw the optimum conclusions, but they exist only as the more or less indirect occasions for God to break His silence and come raging out of the whirlwind and blow them all away. There is no answer at any level of intensity that they command, whatever it might be. Or at least there shouldn't be, don't you dare even dream of it.