When we are born we are just pure awareness that reacts to stimulus without attachment. As cognitive development and associative meaning begins to form, so do layers of duality: here vs. there, me vs. you, like vs. dislike, want vs. not wanting. Although cognitive layers are not initially formed, there is still a consciousness there. Otherwise, who/what is reaching out when a baby reaches with his hand to touch something, or recoil from pain, or laugh from pleasure? And yet, there is no association or attachment. The stimulus happens and then it's released. It's over as fast as it happened.
The thing is... the original core consciousness, the pure awareness, the non-associative presence, the non-dual state... it exists simultaneously with the subjectively formed dualistic layers, always. The two constantly co-exist. Without meaning, without association, there is only oneness; but without duality, the organism cannot exist. The body-mind would not be able to form survival boundaries, navigate needs, or discern solutions to environmental challenges.
The dualistic layers that post-date the core consciousness are also where early trauma is formed. My understanding is that so-called enlightenment as a state of being can't happen until the extraneous dualistic layers are reconciled with the original core consciousness -- that is, connecting them to one another seamlessly. This isn't divine oneness that is "out there" somewhere; it's the personal divine-as-you which is right here on earth. This requires the resolution of trauma that formed as the associative body-mind was forming. Even if there was no trauma, self-concept and attachment patterns are also part of this irrational coil.
If your goal is being happy and blissed out with your life, then the reconciliation of the cognitive dualism with the original consciousness will be the end point. If enlightenment is the goal, then the reconciliation is merely a pre-requisite. Once reconciliation is achieved, one discovers the state of non-achieving, and this is where the road to enlightenment (for lack of a better word) actually begins. The core consciousness is always free, always untouched by anything that happens "to you". When people say they want to be free, they are really asking for self-reconnection, and the question arises from some awareness that freedom already exists within them -- because it does, always, as the original consciousness never went away.
As long as you are still operating from the early associative programming that occurred before age 7, any attempt to "enlighten" will be a wild goose chase because you are essentially chasing something down a rabbit hole without realizing you're in one. To get out of the rabbit hole, you have to become aware of the omnipresent original consciousness, which is not absolute-as-emptiness but rather the personal absolute-as-you (and no one else). The truth is that we are both personal and non-personal, but the attachment layers which obfuscate this are usually rooted in the personal aspects which formed before age 7. They are part of the body-mind associations and aren't core consciousness. To boil it down... once you fully realize that you are the divine manifest as a personable human being and realize your unique position so strongly that it cuts through any reactionary trigger or associative mind-body psychology that arises from early dualistic experiences, you will essentially be blissed out for the rest of your life. After all, you are Brahman wearing a mask. He wants to be you and no one else -- he wants to do the things you love while being you. He doesn't want you to just dissolve into him; he wants to dissolve into you. He wants to play as the unique musical chord that is you, and not someone else's chord. It's your paradise on earth.
If you attempt, with drugs, "spirituality", or other methods to directly bypass the reconciliation of the absolute-as-you by jumping into the absolute-as-all (usually looks like: "I am not this body, I am not this mind, I am oneness, I am emptiness, there's no difference between me or anything else," etc.), you will end up further in the rabbit hole while believing you have actually escaped it. In reality, the so-called self-dissolution has actually created another duality layer "on top of" the core personal consciousness which is still asking to be seen. It's true that everything is all one, but you are YOU within that oneness. You can't not be you. That is the paradox.
This is the main reason I don't do psychedelics anymore. They temporarily dissolve the personal level in favour of the Divine All which causes further pain because it only exacerbates the mind-body trauma, trauma which wants desperately to be resolved through this real-self personal divine core rather than dispersing the being into the ether of the universe. It reconciled through direct actionable living as the absolute-as-you. You'll notice that many "gurus" who go the oneness route sound really wooden and most of them have health problems that they won't reveal to their students, problems which are a direct result of spiritual bypassing. The people who have actually "got it" are very happy, personable people who can reflect on their past traumas with ease. There's no need to "transcend" because there's nowhere to go. The desire to transcend and the false experience of ascension are both products of the rabbit hole, and not the genuine enlightened experience. For if you were reconciled, you wouldn't need to go anywhere because you'd already feel awesome being you.