Life is proposed as being more expansive in terms of reach and capability than currently understood. Aspects of life are presented suggesting it should be considered as a distributed intelligence that has established structures and designs in the realms of computation/information, memory/quantum mechanics, and even consciousness, before these realms were discovered by modern intelligent humans. The nature of consciousness is discussed in depth, referencing specific research including advances in renormalization techniques that imply consciousness exists at a fractal critical point in the brain and that consciousness is most likely fractal and holographic and exists on a space-time boundary where consciousness and memories are stored and operate external to the human mind, analogous to cloud computing. A "grande vista" of life conceptual framework is proposed noting life’s progression of "existential leaps."