The Ladder of Awareness starts with a simple observation: Your body is made of the same atoms as a rock or a table.

Your eyes are like camera lenses with photodetectors; they don't "see," they gather light.

Your nerves are like copper wires; they don't "feel," they carry electrical pulses.

Your brain is like a hard drive; it doesn't "know," it processes data.

Matter is functional, but it is not aware.
Matter provides the equipment for experience, but matter is not the experiencer.

Level 2: The Silent Observer (The Self)

If the eye doesn't know it sees, then who is looking through it?
Behind your thoughts, your name, and your physical sensations, there is a "knower" and "Observer" that cannot be quantified.
If a scientists say they can pull memories from a dead brain, this is still in alignment with my theory because the brain is merely a storage and computation device that did not have responsibility for awareness to begin with, because it is matter. Awareness made use of the brain, the brain did not manufacture it.

What is established: Observed things are matter and matter is not conscious.
You can observe your hand; therefore, you are not your hand.

You can observe your thoughts; therefore, you are not your thoughts. Your brain can compute thoughts without being aware of them, like an AI.
Level 3: The Prism Effect (The Individual Awareness)

We feel separate because of our different experiences, but we are all working with different hardware to channel the same light, resulting in each person being a unique lens of that light. We are different because our "lenses" are different. If you put a red filter over a light, the room turns red. If you use a blue filter, it turns blue.

Our personalities and bodies are the filters due to our unique wiring.

But the same light passing through the filters to make us conscious. This is why I may say "We are one".

The Fact: Your "individual" awareness is actually a universal power being channeled through a specific physical form.

Tracing The Light of Awareness Back to it's Source

If you follow the ray of your own awareness past your thoughts, past your body, and out of this three-dimensional "room," you would be going inwards, not outwards. Eventually in a deep meditation I believe you could trace your awareness back to source, the only obstacle is your brain telling you otherwise and distracting your awareness away from this.

The Conclusion: We are not separate beings trying to reach a higher state. We are a single, higher-dimensional Being (god/source/life/awareness) extending its "rays" into this lower plane to experience life through billions of unique points of view. To go back to source we need to go within, and realize that we are not human mammals but a pure fractal of awareness at our core.