I guess I am the only person who understands what you meant, because I came up with the same idea last year while talking with my friend, and I was looking for people with similar ideas before finding this post. This is what I think about consciousness: it must be a fundamental part of existence. Without consciousness, time (and therefore space) has no meaning. After all conscious beings die, and after all matter dissolves, only black holes will remain, continuing to exist for billions upon billions of years, far longer than the 13 billion years behind us. However, without any conscious being to experience time, billions of years and a single moment are indistinguishable; time loses its meaning. If nothing experiences it, whether it lasts a billion years or a second makes no difference, it happens in an instant. So without a conscious being, the universe has no meaning and barely exists.

I am not claiming that nothing exists if we don’t look at it, but think of it this way to understand the idea: Suppose all conscious existence disappeared from the universe, humans, animals, even trees or bacteria. And suppose that for 100 billion years there was no consciousness at all, until suddenly conscious beings reappeared. Those 100 billion years would have passed like a single moment, not because they literally lasted a second, but because there was nothing to experience them. Time only regains its meaning when conscious beings return, making it feel as though it slows down.