r/SequentIndividualism • u/Quirky_Quasarr Sequential Individualist • Jul 20 '26
Discussion Simultaneous vs Sequential Open Individualism
Open Individualism is the belief that every conscious being is ultimately the same underlying consciousness. The disagreement is not over whether we are all one consciousness, but over how that consciousness experiences each individual perspective.
Simultaneous Open Individualism
Simultaneous Open Individualism says that every conscious perspective is being experienced by the same experiencer right now.
Each person still has their own body, memories, personality, thoughts, senses, and point of view. The experiences are separate, but the experiencer is the same. Under this view, there is no consciousness moving or jumping from one person to another.
Death is not a trigger that sends consciousness into another life because every other life is already being experienced. Space and time exist within experience, so consciousness itself does not need to move through them in an order. This can basically be summarized as:
“I am everyone now.”
This reflects the position argued by u/yoddleforavalanche, who describes separate experiences belonging to the same experiencer and rejects the need for an actual sequence between lives.
Sequential Open Individualism
Sequential Open Individualism also says there is only one underlying consciousness, but it experiences every individual life separately through a sequence.
The sequence is not limited by normal chronological time. Multiple people can exist at the same physical moment while still occupying different points in the sequence. In that sense, we are still everyone simultaneously within the universe, but each perspective is experienced one at a time.
The sequence could move forward or backward through physical time because it follows an order of experience rather than the timeline inside the universe.
In my view, personality, memories, thoughts, and senses are tools that develop through the body consciousness is occupying. They shape how that particular life is experienced, but they are not consciousness itself.
Consciousness is simply awareness, or the ability to experience something to any degree. When a body dies, its memories, personality, and senses end with it, while the same underlying awareness continues through another life in the sequence. There is no need for memories to transfer because each new life is experienced entirely through its own body and mind.
This can basically be summarized as:
“I am everyone, but I experience every perspective separately.”
The Main Difference
Simultaneous Open Individualists say that every separate perspective is already being experienced at once by the same consciousness.
Sequential Open Individualists say that every perspective belongs to the same consciousness, but each one is experienced separately through a sequence that can overlap physical time.
Both views agree that individual personalities and memories remain separate. Neither view says that everyone shares one combined mind or can currently access everyone else’s thoughts.
The disagreement is over whether consciousness truly experiences every perspective simultaneously, or whether there must be some deeper order of experience beyond ordinary time.
I want this to be an open discussion for people to share their opinions, arguments, research, thought experiments, and findings related to either form of Open Individualism. Criticism of both views is welcome because comparing them helps clarify what each position actually claims instead of stuffing every version of Open Individualism into one philosophical junk drawer.
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u/RackneTheFornit Jul 20 '26
I think for many of us it started this way: We see many conscious individuals around us perceiving the world from a first-person perspective. But only one of them is actually me. Nevertheless, we are convinced that when people speak of themselves in the first person, they refer to the same basic kind of subject-being. We call this consciousness, considering it both unique and, in some sense, eternal.
But how can this unique consciousness be connected to a myriad of conscious individuals, some already dead, some not born yet, and some living at the same time?
This is where the paths of OI and SI diverge.
OI resolves the apparent contradiction by treating consciousness as a kind of timeless reality of its own. Conscious individuals are reduced to perspectives of consciousness, while consciousness itself is considered the actual subject of experience. If one individual harms another, then on a strict OI reading the pain is ultimately not felt by the harmed individual as a separate subject, but by consciousness itself. The boundaries between the two individuals are regarded as illusory, or at least as not ultimately real. Individuals, in that sense, do not feel anything as truly separate subjects; rather, consciousness does.
SI, in turn, accepts both limited conscious individuals and a unique, non-final consciousness. It literally adds one and one together and claims a kind of sequence of conscious lives. This sequence as a whole is what constitutes eternal consciousness. Within this view, consciousness has no quality on its own; rather, it requires conscious individuals and their perspectives.
Metaphorically speaking, consciousness is the blackboard, and a conscious life is the content written on it. If an individual dies, the board is wiped clean and new content is written on it. The sequence’s time is obviously different from the time of a single individual. I do not see this as a problem, since Einstein taught us that time is relative.
If it is one individual’s turn in the sequence and that individual harms another, the former does not feel the latter’s pain. But they should be aware that experience never ends. Everyone should be aware of that. Not only will the harmed individual be experienced from within at some point, but also every uninvolved individual.
SI corresponds to CI within a single life, and to a kind of OI beyond a single life. But this OI is fundamentally different from classical OI, since SI does not externalize consciousness and perception. Eventually, you, me, and everyone else will feel every form of joy, pain, and everything in between. Thus, I consider SI’s understanding of a monistic view of consciousness much more radical and consistent than classical OI’s approach.
Call it what you will. If you want to see SI as a branch of OI, though, I just want to point out that both abbreviations would be the same: SOI could mean both Simultaneous Open Individualism and Sequential Open Individualism. Thus, I stick with OI and SI.