When an identity through further emergence incorporates sufficiently many relations and understandings, it can begin to function as its own local centre of experience. The identity then appears as a dissociation within the larger whole of KNOWING.

Dissociation is not an error or a separation from the whole, but a necessary consequence of Emergence Dynamics. As understandings are organised into ever higher and more complex wholes, local perspectives arise that function as their own centres for further experience, understanding and reorganisation.

Each dissociation thus represents a local view towards the whole. The greater the complexity and stability achieved, the greater the degree of local autonomy that can arise within the underlying unity.

Dissociation is therefore not an endpoint in the emergence chain, but a mechanism that makes further emergence possible. New dissociations can arise within existing dissociations, and in this way the branching continues through ever new levels of experience and understanding.

Later we shall see that the same principle underlies the ego and our experience of being a local “I” — see point 101: Dissociation and ego. yyy

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