So, you want to discuss the nature of the Force? Strap yourself in, because it gets a little tricky. Keep in mind that no matter what your outlook or what may have been discovered or will be discovered…one thing still holds true after all these years. As Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, many things you hold true will depend greatly on your own point of view. Meaning, in particular, that much of one’s intent and outlook can have a larger impact on one’s relationship and standing in the Unifying Force than actual actions.
There is a lot about the Force that simply cannot be fully understood from the films only. As a viewer of the films, we can conclude that the Force is an energy field created by all living things that penetrates everything. There are many who are Force-sensitive, and those that devote their lives to the study of the Force may become Jedi. A certain “cult” if you will exists (or once existed) that concentrated on the raw power of the Force without its spiritual guidance…those were the Sith. Notice that I didn’t say that the Sith focused on the “Dark Side”. This is because the very existence of a dark or a light side depends greatly on how you view the Force and how the “sides” are incorporated into the Living and/or Unifying Forces.
Rather than delve into page after page of my own personal views (although I’m sure that it will follow after this post), I think the best thing to do is quote a long passage from the book “The Unifying Force”, the last novel in the New Jedi Order series. It is an exchange between Jacen Solo (eldest son of Han Solo and Leia Organa) and Luke Skywalker.
First, you must understand the background of the exchange, so here’s a brief encapsulation of what brought about this revealing dialog. Jacen has been through hell in last few years. The death of his younger brother, Anakin (once assumed to be the heir-apparent to Luke Skywalker due to the ease with which he wielded his above-average power) had left Jacen questioning his place in the Force. He went through a long period in which he abandoned all use of the Force out of fear of not knowing true light from true dark and the small steps it would take to throw it out of balance (ala Kyle Katarn). Then he met Vergere. A Fosh Jedi of the Old Republic, she was on Zonama Sekot when the Yuuzhan Vong first scouted into the galaxy almost fifty years prior. Long story short, she went along with them to study them, becoming a “pet” of sorts. During the first ten books or so, it wasn’t really known what she was, a Yuuzhan Vong agent, a spy for either side…it was confusing. She secretly and deeply expanded her knowledge of the Force during her time with the Vong in order to figure out why the alien species didn’t appear in the Force. Then she came across Jacen Solo. Another long story short, Jacen was put through a nearly fatal trial of sorts, never really knowing if Vergere was helping him or using him. Having been stripped of the Force, he had to endure physical and emotional pain, utter loneliness and abandonment, and the tearing-down of everything he though he believed in before Vergere revealed her true intentions of making him into the kind of Jedi needed in the New Order, one able to come to grips with the revelations to come.
In this exchange, Luke and Jacen are standing on a precipice overlooking the landscape of the living, sentient planet Zonama Sekot (actually a two-fold description, Zonama being the planet, Sekot being the mind, the “awareness”). Having once repelled an attempted Yuuzhan Vong attack fifty years prior, the planet is convinced by Luke Skywalker to come out of hiding and join the fight against the invaders, a war that the shattered New Republic (disbanded, now known as the Galactic Alliance) is losing badly. There was a lot involved in getting to that point, so you’ll have to read the books for more info on that. However, a sabotage attempt by Nom Anor has left the massive hyperdrive core of the planet in shaky condition and caused terrific damage to the planet’s structure, and Sekot is making microjumps to test its abilities fully before returning to known space. Sekot has taken to appearing in recognizable forms to Luke and Jacen…Anakin Skywalker to Luke and Vergere to Jacen. (Vergere having sacrificed her life to save Jacen and his sister Jaina previously.)
Jacen has returned from a conversation with Sekot appearing as Vergere, explaining a little more about why she told Jacen that the Force has no dark side. It was the first Ferroan Magistar (early settlers) that coaxed Sekot to awareness and taught it that the Force was part of the Potentium…for lack of a better word, the energy of existence itself, of which the Force is a manifestation. The mystery of why the Yuuzhan Vong don’t appear in the Force is revealed…it isn’t because they don’t exist as part of it, but because at some point in their development, they were stripped of it. (I haven’t finished the book yet, so I don’t yet know why or how.) They are still a part of the Potentium. Sekot was taught by the Ferroans that evil doesn’t exist in the Force, but the Vong taught it that evil actions do. This is a quote from what it said to Jacen after he asked if Sekot would use its power against them…
“If neccessary, but without contempt. If I defeat them aggressively, if I hate them for what they have become, then I will have separated myself from the Force, and permitted ego to triumph over my desire to merge and expand my consciousness. I will have corrupted my light with darkness, stained it forever. Self-awareness tricks us into believing that there is us, and that there is the other. But in serving the Force we recognize that we are all the same thing; that when we act in accordance with the Force we act in accordance with the wish of all life to enlarge itself, to rise out of physicality and become something greater. In that sense, all beings are seed-partners, Jacen, passionate to unite with all life and to help give birth to grand enterprises-whether a starship, a work of art, or a deed that will echo through history as a noble action. To triumph over the Yuuzhan Vong, we must simply go where we wish to go. That is also what I must do to return us to known space. But the task entails far more than simply focusing on a set of hyperspace coordinates. Unless the destination is a place I wish to go, nothing will work out. Even if I execute the jump flawlessly, my actions will come to nothing…”
Ok, so having this to think on, Jacen approaches Luke as he awaits the final jump. There has been a rift of sorts (actually more like a differing of philosophies), and this sequence puts it out on the table. You could probably learn more about the nature of the Force from these few pages than in anything else you’ve read or seen, so I’m going to reproduce it here rather than explain my interpretation of it. It’s a bit long, but it’s what you asked for…
Luke felt Jacen approach from behind him, but he didn’t turn from the view.
“Something has happened,” he said, finally.
“I feel it, Uncle Luke,” Jacen said, “The Jedi, our friends…”
“It’s not only them. The danger is widespread.”
Jacen came alongside him. “Another Ithor, another Barab One?”
“Not yet,” Luke said, “but a new evil has been unleashed.”
“By the Yuuzhan Vong?”
“By the Dark Side.”
Jacen nodded. “Your real enemy.”
Luke turned to him. “You should be thinking about your own course, Jacen, not mine.”
Jacen exhaled with purpose. “I have no one but you to look to, to know which path I should take. Our courses have entangled.”
“Then I guees I’d better listen to what you’ve decided about me.”
Jacen took a moment to collect his thoughts. “From everything you’ve told me over the years about confronting your father and the Emperor, it has always seemed that neither of them was your real enemy. Each tried to entice you to join him. But they were never the source of your fear. You feared falling to the dark side.”
Luke grinned faintly. “Is that all?” he said finally.
Jacen shook his head. “On Coruscant, at the ruins of the Jedi Temple, Vergere said that the Jedi had a shameful secret, and that secret was that there was no dark side. The Force is one. And since there are no separate sides, the Force can’t take sides. Our notions of light and dark only reflect how little we know about the true nature of the Force. What we’ve chosen to call the dark side is simply the raw, unrestrained Force itself, which gives rise to life as easily as it brings death and destruction.”
Luke listened closely. Now I shall show you the true nature of the Force, the Emperor had told him at Endor.
On Mon Calamari, Vergere had tried to lead him down the same path, by implying that Yoda and Obi-Wan were to blame for not telling him the truth about the dark side. As a result of their neglect, when Luke had cut off his father’s hand in anger, he assumed that he had had a close brush with the dark side. When he stood at the side of the cloned Emperor, he had truly felt the dark side. Ever since, he had come to equate anger with darkness itself, and he had passed that along to the Jedi he had tutored. But in fact, according to Vergere, Luke had been misguided by his own ego. She had maintained that, while darkness could remain in someone by invitation, it could just as easily be jettisoned by self-awareness. Once Luke accepted this, he would no longer have to fear being seduced by the dark side.
“You’re suggesting that I’ve held myself back by not wanting to incorporate this raw power into my awareness of the Force,” Luke said.
“Vergere received years of formal training in the Force,” Jacen said. “The things she told me must have been common knowledge among the Jedi of the Old Republic.”
“Vergere was corrupted by the years she spent living with the Yuuzhan Vong,” Luke said evenly.
“Corrupted?”
“Maybe that’s too strong a term. Let’s say strongly influenced.”
“But she felt she hadn’t been influenced by them.”
“She can’t be blamed. Each of us stands at a kind of midpoint, from which we’re capable of seeing only so far in either direction. Our senses have been honed over countless millennia to allow us to navigate the intricacies of the physical world. But because of that, our senses blind us to the fact that we are much more than our bodies. We truly are beings of light, Jacen.
“The emphasis the Jedi have always placed on control operates the same way. Control blinds us to the more expansive nature of the Force. The Jedi of the Old Republic only wanted youngsters for this very reason. Jedi needed to be raised by the light, and to come to see that light as unblemished, undivided. But you and I haven’t had the luxury of that indoctrination. Our lives are a constant test of our will to exorcize any darkness that creeps in.
“In that sense, your instincts about me are correct, and so were Vergere’s. The dark side has, in a sense, dominated my life. I’ve suspected for a long time that the fatigue I sometimes experience when drawing on the Force during combat owes to my fear of abusing the raw power you describe.
“It’s true that the Force is unified; it is one energy, one power. But here’s where I think you and Vergere are incorrect: the dark side is real, because evil actions are real. Sentience gave rise to the dark side. Does it exist in nature? No. Left to itself, nature maintains the balance. But we’ve changed that. We are a new order of consciousness that has an impact on all life. The Force now contains light and dark because of what thinking beings have brought to it. That’s why balance has become something that must be maintained – because our actions have the power to tip the scales.”
“As the Sith did.” Jacen said.
“As the Sith did. The Emperor was perhaps the most self-assured person I have ever encountered, but he deliberately chose evil over good. And in the right climate, one individual, suitably driven and skilled, can tip the universe into darkness. For darkness has followers, especially where discontent, isolation or fear hold sway. In such a climate enemies can be fashioned, imagined out of thin air, and suddenly all good is lost, all perspective vanishes, and illness taked hold.”
Luke paused, then said, “Do you believe that you spoke with Vergere after her death at Ebaq Nine, or were you conversing with the Vergere who existed only in your thoughts and memory?”
Jacen thought for a moment. “I spoke with Vergere. I’m certain of it.”
“Do you believe that I had a vision of Obi-Wan, Yoda and my father after all three had died?”
“I’ve never had any reason to doubt you, Uncle.”
“Then, from where was Vergere speaking?”
“Maybe she learned to tap into a power that was more all-embracing than the Living Force.”
“The Unifying Force,” Luke said, “That might explain it. In fact, all the years since the deaths of Obi-Wan, Yoda and my father, I’ve felt as if the Jedi have been on a quest to recover the Force’s power to glimpse into the future, which is perhaps the nature of the Unifying Force. The search has been not unlike our search for Zonama Sekot. And there’s a power here, in the air and in the trees and in everything else, that convinces me we’ve found our way to something even greater than what we were seeking….”
Confusing enough? As I said, I haven’t reached quite the halfway mark of the book, but this has reinforced my views of the Force. Yes it’s true that light and dark do not exist in the Force, as it is one power. But we can bring light and dark into it. The Force is an enigma, as it envelops all life and all existence and cannot be seen from “the outside”, so to speak. Earlier in the book, Luke tells Mara that he may not fully be a Jedi Master until his final dying breath, when he finally becomes one with it. I think, in a way, that this is true. The Force has always been compared to real-life religions like Taoism and Buddhism, but this is where I feel that it is closest to Christianity in a way. God has said that there is no sin that cannot be forgiven, as it is belief in Christ and the nature of the Trinity that is man’s salvation. True belief will get you into heaven, as freedom from sin cannot…none of us are free from sin. But does this mean that we are given carte blanche to sin? No, it doesn’t. God wants us to go in a certain direction. It’s the same with the Force. The Force, as an occurance of nature, strives for balance. If one truly serves the Force, one truly serves natural balance. Using a Sith-like ability such as what’s commonly referred to as “Force Lightning” doesn’t automatically make one evil. Even using it in anger doesn’t necessarily condemn one to an irreversible path toward the dark side. Anger is an emotion, and no one is immune to it. But using it over and over at every instance of anger could very easily tip that scale. A Jedi must strive with every action to weigh the balance of his/her actions…not the actions themselves. It is how you use the power of the Living Force that determines how you exist within the Unifying Force. A Jedi levitating a rock is manipulating the power of the Living Force. The rock is part of the Unifying Force. The very action itself is part of the Unifying Force.
As I get to the end of the book, and if anything else comes up to further explain this, I’ll fill in the blanks. That’s the “canon” part of it. The personal part of it, the part that allows you to use these teachings in your own life is something that will never be fully learned, or understood.
I hope this has been of some use to you, and I’m fully willing to discuss further and help if I can…
…you’ve reached an interesting part of your training where the flashy lightsaber techniques and neat floaty tricks become secondary.
