` (UTC)       The book-length basic dialectic (one of many dialectics) in Phenomenology moves from unconsciousness (thesis)      to consciousness (antithesis) to self-consciousness (synthesis), also called self-realization.  Your reference to       ``the [one] dialectical step`` is incorrect: the master-and-slave parable covers both dialectical steps: (a) unconsciousness      to consciousness and (2) consciousness to self-consciousness.  Be careful about putting too much literalism and human      psychology in your interpretation of ``absolute knowledge.``  By absolute knowledge Hegel means newly acquired knowledge      by an observer (``subject``) that every external ``object`` (previously regarded as ``alien,`` or something different from      the observing subject) is really himself, because everything  both subject and object  is Spirit, which is the      inner reality of everything.  Before self-realization and absolute knowledge arrive, ``the object is revealed to it [to       subject] . . . and it does not recognize itself`` (Phenomenology, Miller trans., paras. 374, 771).  When       self-realization occurs, ``subject`` finally recognizes itself in all external objects.  Subject realizes that everything,       including both itself and all observed ``objects,`` is Spirit, Hegel's ersatz nonsupernatural God.  Absolute knowledge is      the knowledge that everything is God and that the God of supernaturalism does not exist.  In other words,       self-realization is becoming an atheist by treating humanity (the essence of Spirit, Spirit's Mind) as God.        23:21, 29 August 2013`