Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.
This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.
Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.
TLDR: i need to take shorter showers
The way you’re discussing ‘models’ seems to assume two points: (1) that all useful models will be physical models, and (2) that we have models that work in this context. Neither of these assumptions are correct.
For the first point, arguably the most popular model of consciousness we have at the moment is Integrated Information Theory (IIT). IIT is explicitly a panpsychist theory (all matter has some non-zero quantity of consciousness). This lends itself very well to non-physicalist interpretations (where consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the universe, irreducible to matter).
For the second point, all this discussion of models is largely besides the point. Because there is currently no model of conscious experience that works. No theory is widely accepted. And the theories that were once popular (global workspace theory and even IIT) seem to not the supported by evidence (proponents of these theories have tried to modify them to fit the data, but you can only do that so many times before things start to looks sketchy). So whether we use a model or not, it’s not really relevant to this discussion, because we currently have no scientific models of consciousness that work.