It's time to knock consciousness from the magical pedestal on which it sits in some people's understanding of existence. It is literally one of the most idiotic features of our minds, and it even invents fairy tales that it forms the Universe, which, in truth, exists independently from it.
Most other organisms are simpler than us and rarely have the mental capacity to plan or predict the future. They are driven by their instincts to survive and fight for their lives to the end if they are in danger, but when the situation is hopeless, they give up. If they are eaten alive by predators, they accept their fate and don't even try to escape.
Humans are also driven by instincts, of which the need for food or the desire to procreate is critical, but we also have a vast memory in which we can build a representation of the world around us. Thanks to it, we give names to things and ideas. This enables us to manipulate them in our minds so that we know that life will eventually end. We also can override our instincts, and if we didn't evolve to search for the aim in life, we would give up just like these animals that are eaten alive; we would predict that end is inevitable, even if it is years later.
This is why we evolved to have "I". The same part of our brain in which it resides also invents our aims in life and our supposed uniqueness. The sort of questions about consciousness forming the Universe are driven by some interpretations of quantum mechanics in which consciousness plays a role in the collapse of the wave function.
Our brain performs a colossal amount of computations to keep us alive. It controls the blood flow to the brain on a scale of milliseconds. It's challenging to perform calculations necessary for standing on two feet by robots, but our mind performs them on the fly, and we rarely fall. This level of excellence and precision of our subconscious mind compares very poorly to the supposedly magical consciousness. We are often delusional about what is real and what is not. Humans, via their beliefs, live in an alternative reality built on false assumptions of how the world works. We fall prey to the lies of politicians and other mischievous agents. If our subconscious minds made similar mistakes, we would die from not having enough oxygen in our brains or fall standing two feet.
The same part of the brain where our consciousness is located only invents feel-good stories about our agency, uniqueness, and the specialness of our consciousness. The "I" appears when we are still babies when the brain identifies other people as agents in our environment and then realizes it is contained in such a person. Children don't behave differently before and after they acquire a personal identity. They are precisely the same - as cute before and after. Furthermore, the "I" can disappear when we are drunk. There is no visible difference from the outside when it happens. We behave the same to the outside world, but when we wake up the next day, we don't remember what we did.
People with their brain hemispheres separated invent stories and lies with one-half of their brains about why they move the hand to which this hemisphere had no connection via their nervous system. It has also been discovered that we already perform actions a fraction of a second before we "decide" to do something. People who talk to themselves sometimes say words and sentences that they don't realize they are saying until they start paying attention to these words. When we say something longer, we don't consciously decide on each word; we tell everything automatically. When we choose to leave home, we don't deliberately steer each leg to move or hand to open the door, but we go and leave home.
The brutal truth is that we are mere observers of our automatic, robotic selves, and making decisions is an illusion. This also means that consciousness does not form the Universe and doesn't collapse the wave function in quantum mechanics. We evolved to invent these fairy tales, lies, and illusions because they increase our survival due to our higher mental capabilities compared to other organisms. Nevertheless, I feel, and we all should feel, delighted that we have this magnificent chance to be the eyes of the sublime Universe through which it observes itself. I think it's beautiful even though we are only its eyes.
The question was: Does consciousness form the universe?