Of Models and Metaphors-- MATHICALITY

When we reason, we are applying tests for consistency, coherence, and completeness to a conception (model, metaphor, or representation).  We cannot consistently conceptualize an original creation.  Nor can we reason our way to a consistent and coherent conceptualization that can provide a model or representation that is a complete.  As mortals, we function as perspectives whose identities of self-ness are co-related to a reality that is superior to our births, lives, and deaths.  We are not permitted to traverse outside it in order to define it. 
I suspect every model we push to try to explain our reality will eventually find it most consistent and convenient to conceptualize that the ultimate root of the system that defines us has always existed and always will exist.  (I am that I am.)
That is not to say that sub-systems and sub-cosmos are precluded from phasing in and out of local relevance. 
Whether or not information about them can reasonably be said to be lost, it morphs through various forms and permutations of signification and expression.  There seems ultimately to abide a Trinitarian flux among Information, Substance, and Consciousness.  To define its ultimate "causal" mechanics is simply beyond our pay grade.

MATHICALITY:

The Universe is not a bubble.  Not a balloon.  Not flat.  Does not have a center.  Nor an edge.  EMR is not a wave.  Nor a set of particles.  There is no ultimate particle-in-itself.  Those ideas/models serve calculations for some purposes that often turn out to be extremely practical.  But they do not put us closer to understanding infinity or eternity.  Nor do any such models consistently serve every practical need.

There abide various overlapping and fluxing frames of commonizing reference which tend to avail unfolding communication and evolution among inhabitants acculturated to them.  But there is no universal Nowness that is fathomable to any particular mortal, nor any universal model or frame of reference, nor any ultimate explanatory TOE.

Reconsider:  What can reasonably be said about the character/nature of Consciousness?

My C is self-evident.  It is self-evident that it interacts with other perspectives of C.  It connects and changes.  In its essential aspect, C continues regardless of the death or passage of any temporal, mortal, particular perspective.  The capacity for I-ness to persist -- even after change and death of its conveyer -- is beyond calculable limits.  That innate potential and capacity is spiritual, perpetual.

There may be a universal Nowness, but not one that any mortal can fathom.

There are fractals, that seem to cascade in coordinate reconciliation.

What persists in one series of fractals and sub-fractals may not be tolerated in another.  Even if the fractals occupy parallel aspects of space-time.  The CSI adapted to a series of fractals will be nurtured by its acculturated nutrients.