The Absoluteness of Consciousness
Consciousness did not arise suddenly.
It was not a gift.It was not a blessing.It was not designed.
It grew.
Like mold spreading through the warm folds of a primitive mind, consciousness emerged the moment the first humans learned not only to see the world, but to remember what they had seen. Memory became the first fracture in the wholeness of existence. Thought was the second. Self-awareness was the final, irreversible break.
Before that, existence was simple. An animal did not know that it lived. It moved, fed, reproduced, and died without leaving a trace within itself. But one day, a human looked backward — and the world cracked. The past ceased to vanish. The future became anticipation. The present turned into a prison stretched between the two.
Ancient tribes did not understand what they were doing when they entered trances near water, beneath the sound of rain, or within the pulsing rhythm of fires. They called it communion with spirits, but in truth they were learning to control attention. Consciousness contracted, then expanded, allowing them to perceive connections where none existed — or, far more dangerously, where such connections had always existed but were never meant to be perceived.
For the first time, humanity understood that the world did not merely exist.It was observable.
With time came priests and philosophers. They were the first to dare a blasphemous thought: the mind is an instrument. It can be sharpened. It can be strengthened. It can be turned against itself.
In the temples of Egypt, the schools of India, and the dust-filled halls of Hellas, people practiced concentration, detachment, and self-observation. They discovered that consciousness could separate from the body without leaving it. That thought could weigh more than stone. That fear was not weakness, but a form of knowledge. That pain was information.
But every step forward demanded a price.
Those who saw too clearly lost the ability to live simply. They were haunted by recurring images, obsessive ideas, and the sensation of a foreign presence within their own minds. They heard thoughts that were not their own. They dreamed dreams belonging to no one. Thus were born the first madmen — and the first prophets. There was no difference between them. That distinction came later.
In the Middle Ages, consciousness was bound in dogma. It was feared. It was named temptation. It was declared the source of sin. Yet even then, monks gazing into the black water of wells and seas recorded thoughts that belonged neither to God nor to man. They sensed that truth did not dwell in revelation, but in the depth of attention.
In the modern age, consciousness has once again become an object of worship. It is studied, measured, stimulated. Neural networks, psychology, pharmacology — all in pursuit of expanding the boundaries of the mind. And yet, the deeper humanity penetrates its own psyche, the clearer one truth becomes:
Consciousness does not fully belong to us.
It merely allows us, temporarily, to believe that we are its masters.
The Point of Rupture
What happens when a human acquires absolute power over consciousness?
The ability to know everything with a single thought.To understand everything.Or to create.
What if consciousness ceases to be an instrument and becomes the foundation of existence itself?
The answer did not arrive as revelation.It manifested.
His name was Zenon Altzven.
An ordinary schoolboy. An ordinary morning. Spring air brushed gently against the skin of laughing girls and teasing boys. Life went on, unaware that its meaning was about to be rewritten.
Zenon sat on a swing, moving slowly, almost mechanically. His thoughts wandered aimlessly.
A moment.
His body jolted. His thoughts suddenly lost their weightlessness and became dense, almost material. Pain exploded in his skull — sharp, overwhelming. And then… everything.
The world unfolded.
Not as an image.As a structure.
Images flooded his consciousness. Not of a single planet — of all of them. Not of one time — of all times. Futures, pasts, countless variations of the present unfolding simultaneously, overlapping, conflicting.
"What… is this?" he whispered, no longer recognizing his own voice.
He stood — and felt no weight. He looked down and saw his body sitting lifelessly on the swing. And himself — nothing. An abstraction. Pure consciousness, freely drifting beyond form.
He knew.
He did not guess.He did not infer.He knew.
With a single thought, he moved. Not through motion, but through a shift of focus. His consciousness appeared in a parallel universe, within the body of another version of himself. A medieval world. Stone. Smoke. Blood. Here, he was an adult.
The sensations were alien and disturbing. The body felt cramped. The thoughts slow. He abandoned that world.
To exist as a self-aware abstraction felt… good. Terrifyingly good. The awareness of power generated an almost physical pleasure. Authority over reality felt natural, as though he were merely remembering what he had always been.
But after exhilaration came curiosity.
In one world, his body was already dead. He could not enter it. A question arose — could he inhabit a being that already possessed a soul?
The answer was affirmative.
He entered the body of a young woman.
And in that instant, her consciousness extinguished.
Not suppressed.Not displaced.It ceased to exist.
The body submitted to Zenon completely.
The horror did not strike immediately. It arrived later, when comprehension settled. Ten minutes earlier, he had been an ordinary student. Now — a murderer. This was the first fracture in his ecstasy.
He began to see more.
Every consciousness emitted light. This was willpower. Kind people shone brightly, densely. Their consciousness was stable, resistant. Murderers and the worthless glimmered dimly, sinking into a filthy violet void. Millions of shades. Millions of unique entities.
Thus he understood: there exists a hierarchy of consciousness.
And the brighter a consciousness burned, the harder it was for him to penetrate it.
The Price of Absoluteness
The Absoluteness of Consciousness implied limitlessness.
The ability to exist beyond the entire multiverse.To control it.To continue existing even if it were annihilated.
This was mental freedom.
And simultaneously — a curse.
Conscience did not vanish.
He saw everything. Every murder across all worlds. Every act of torture. Every form of violence. All of it engraved itself permanently into his memory. Infinite information. Infinite pain.
Freedom revealed itself not as salvation, but as a form of suffering.
The past could be altered — but why? Everything had already been known. To correct the infinite was to condemn oneself to eternal labor without completion. Universes were countless.
And then Zenon understood.
Freedom does not exist.
It is impossible in any form except death.
Only the disappearance of consciousness is absolute freedom.Without pain.Without sensation.Without responsibility.
The power granted to him did not elevate him.It destroyed the very nature of his existence.
Such is the limit of absolute consciousness:
Either the absence of personality.Or an omnipotent personality condemned to infinite suffering.
There is no third option.
This is my philosophical prose, an idea about the metaphysical freedom of consciousness as such. I may not be a master writer, but I think I have expressed my idea. It seems to me that the absolute freedom that people dream of so much is the death of consciousness. The shutdown of neurons after death.
The next chapter will be like a story about the history of a certain creature, probably a monster.