> why do we experience anything?

Because the Essence that is the arrangement of molecules replicates onto other molecules, and it is more effective at replicating when it dedicates some of it's molecules to perceive and model it's own existence, in order to run experiments on it. That way it's more likely to find a behavior for the rest of the molecules to successfully replicate. So the molecules experience themselves, and the experience becomes more intense the more advanced the experiments are that can be run on the model.

What is the Essence? In my head I picture movement or electrical fields propagating from some sort of proto cell like structure, but the more I try to “zoom” in, the more I try to find the finger that caused the ripple on the pond surface, so to speak