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Topic:
Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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Ulicus
Registered:
Jul '05
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Date Posted:
5/17 6:07pm
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
- Date Edited:
5/17 6:13pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
Ulicus
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Arawn_Fenn posted:
IMO after 850+ years of using it successfully, Yoda's belief in the Force should be pretty damn near absolute.
That's a fair criticism of the idea, I think - though I do, obviously, disagree.
I think there are some things that some people are never going to be able to fully grasp, no matter how well they know the theory of its workings.
It's much like wondering why Morpheous isn't the one flying about the Matrix when he has all those years of experience on Neo. Neo "gets" the Matrix in a matter of days (or weeks) and in six months does more than Morpheous has in near enough forty-years of service to Zion. Why? Because Morpheous though a hero, is not The Hero. He is The Mentor. Same goes for Yoda.
They're not there to be the best. They're there to show The Hero how to become the best. (Though Luke, at least, doesn't really seem to take Yoda's lesson to heart until he has his talk with Mara in VotF)
Ultimately, I like the theory because it explains a lot of the niggling, annoying parts of the EU. Luke's difficulty with the Droideka in Survivor's Quest, for example.
It's much easier to understand this as a Luke who is trying to limit his Force use and "unlearn what he has learned", getting himself into the state of mind of how to do "more with less" than it is to reconcile it with the Luke who had been destroying battle droids with a wave of his hand and rebuilding castles with a thought.
In my mind, Luke *could* have blasted that droid to smithereens in an instant... had he been okay with "making noise" in the Force. By this point, however, he's not. He's trying to destroy it while staying "quiet" in the Force... in harmony with it.
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Dawud786
Registered:
Dec '06
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Date Posted:
5/17 6:49pm
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
- Date Edited:
5/17 6:52pm (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Dawud786
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Charlemagne19 posted:
In a nutshell, I think from the fact Obi Wan's Ghost is proven WRONG is enough to indicate he is not actually what you suggest is an avatar of God or at the very least, an angel.
I disagree. In fact, I suggest that Obi-Wan's not actually intending on Luke doing what he tells him to do and is rather betting on the probability that Luke will, like his father, chafe under the authority of his teachers and try to do exactly the opposite of what he says. More importantly, I'm saying that Obi-Wan is doing only what the will of the Force tells him to do in this specific state. The entire conversation between Yoda and Qui-Gon in ROTS on Polis Massa suggests this specifically because Qui-Gon says one must release all notions of self... which includes individual yearnings and opinions. Obi-Wan serves as a mouthpeice for the Force, and the Force tends to give gentle nudges and hints at what its will is in any given situation. Obi-Wan and Yoda both serve as more specific indicators as to its will.. or, in the case of Obi-Wan's encouragements to confront Vader and kill him, the Force working it's peculiar magic on Luke.
The entire gambit was for Luke to be the catalyst for the elimination of the Sith, and it worked. Obi-Wan had to tell Luke that he'd need to be willing to kill Vader if he had to. Based upon ESB alone any reasonable outside observer would have never banked on Vader coming back and Luke had to face up to that possibility. Obi-Wan was essentially telling him that. Still, Yoda and Obi-Wan use more nuanced language than "you must kill Darth Vader." Yoda says Luke must "confront" Vader, and Obi-Wan says Luke must "face" him again. Luke jumps to the conclusion that facing and confronting Vader means killing him and expresses his unwillingness to do so. Knowing Luke, spiritually specifically because of Obi-Wan's Oneness with the Force, he recognizes that Luke's unwillingness to kill Vader is a statement of his unwillingness to even face Vader. To which he says "then the Emperor has already won." How true is this? Luke is essentially saying he won't even confront Darth Vader again... and he attempts to NOT confront Vader until he realizes his very presence on the Endor mission necessitates facing Vader because it's going to happen one way or another. Surrender himself to Vader, or Vader comes and takes him and dooms the entire mission in the first place and results in the deaths of Han, Leia, Chewie, the entire strike team, and ultimately the entire Rebel fleet! From ROTJ alone we should be able to get this.
Neither Obi-Wan or Yoda says specifically that Luke has to kill Vader, nor do they say he's irredeemable... Obi-Wan says the reality to Luke in response to "there's still good in him." Charles... I know you've argued that Vader was twisted and evil right up to the fateful moments in ROTJ. It's true. Luke was just sensing that small, mustard seed sized, spark of Anakin Skywalker's light in Darth Vader. It took not only Luke defeating Vader, but Vader watching his master... nearly his surrogate father, almost frying Luke to death before he really snapped out of it. How could Obi-Wan be "proven wrong" when he doesn't actually say anything that he's, strictly speaking, wrong about?
EDIT: I don't want to cut out the earlier parts of my post because I prefer to let you see how my thought on the subject flowed naturally. The later portions are coming from having just viewed, as I was in the midst of typing this thing, the scenes with Yoda and Obi-Wan in ROTJ about Vader.
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Ulicus
Registered:
Jul '05
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Date Posted:
5/17 7:00pm
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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Honestly, I think Force-Ben knows more than Yoda.
Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No, there is another.
(Off screen)
Yoda:I mean, duh, you were there!
Obi-Wan: No. There isn't. Only Luke has enough love for the man Anakin was to redeem Vader.
Still, I'm not convinced Force Ghosts are omniscient or anything.
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Persephone_Kore
Registered:
Jan '06
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Date Posted:
5/18 12:20am
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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To be honest, Obi-Wan's ghost struck me as not merely still his own personality, but imperfect enough to be defensively self-justifying through sophistry. It is not unreasonable that in life he might have mentally separated Anakin and Vader, nor that he would metaphorically refer to Vader murdering Anakin, but the fact remains that he meant to deceive Luke because he gave the kid no sign that he wasn't speaking literally of two separate people. Claiming that it was true "from a certain point of view" doesn't really answer that.
I suppose if you maintain that he (or the-Force-through-him) deliberately gave Luke the impression he had to kill Vader in order to inspire him not to, then you can equally well argue that instead of offering a cop-out "Well, I didn't exactly lie to you," he was trying to give Luke a hint (perhaps to be perceived only in retrospect) that he shouldn't be looking for the most obvious outcome. This strikes me as something of a strain, but I can see that it's a supportable interpretation.
Also, Stover wrote an interesting blog entry well after RotS came out in which he admitted he didn't even remember that the "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view" line was in RotJ, let alone recall the context. So it's possible that for the purpose of coordinating RotJ and the philosophy in the RotS novel, "something of a strain" isn't a very good objection. 
What I suspect is that the key is realizing that you're already part of the Force, that part of the nature of the Force is to form/support/come from individual living beings even as it unites them, and letting go of the idea that you have to be somehow separate from it in order to be fully yourself.
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Dawud786
Registered:
Dec '06
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Date Posted:
5/18 9:46am
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
- Date Edited:
5/18 9:47am (1 edits total)
Edited By:
Dawud786
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Ulicus posted:
Honestly, I think Force-Ben knows more than Yoda.
Obi-Wan: That boy is our last hope.
Yoda: No, there is another.
(Off screen)
Yoda:I mean, duh, you were there!
Obi-Wan: No. There isn't. Only Luke has enough love for the man Anakin was to redeem Vader.
Still, I'm not convinced Force Ghosts are omniscient or anything.
I don't think omniscience need be the important thing, though I know I somtimes sound like that's what I'm saying. All I'm saying is that upon discorporealization and the dissolution of "self" to join with the Force... Obi-Wan is no longer acting as Obi-Wan, but as a vessel for the will of the Force. He's only ever told Luke what he truly needed to know at any given moment, and the implication from ROTJ is that eventually Luke and Yoda were going to reveal the truth of Anakin Skywalker to Luke when he was ready to bear that burden. The Force is using Obi-Wan to tell Luke what he needs to know to do what needs to be done, that is... to do the will of the Force. Luke knew from within that he had to face Darth Vader his father and the Vader of his own being(his shadow-self and greatest fear), but refused to do so because despite his protestations of there still being good in Vader he assumed he'd have to kill him if he confronted him again(if there was so much good in him, why did he think he'd have to kill him?). Neither Obi-Wan or Yoda tell Luke to kill Darth Vader outright. They tell him to face and confront him. What that meant was determined by Luke, not by his Jedi Masters.
I think a Force spirit is more like a Prophet in the Abrahamic tradition. They speak what God tells them to speak, communicate what knowledge they are given... the knowledge that they need and that need be communicated to their followers... but they are not by any means omniscient. They are messengers of the Force, not avatars of the Force or the Force-incarnate.
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AlrikFassbauer
Registered:
Apr '03
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Date Posted:
5/23 8:22am
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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[quote=Charlemagne19The depiction of the afterlife of the Force varies. The Jedi believe it is an awesome Light and Wonderful Experience where you merge with the Force and become a Godlike Being where your consciousness dissolves into the whole of the entirety of the universe.[/quote]
Sounds almost like Buddhism.
George Lucas "stole" several things from there.
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Dawud786
Registered:
Dec '06
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Date Posted:
5/23 7:23pm
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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AlrikFassbauer posted:
[quote=Charlemagne19The depiction of the afterlife of the Force varies. The Jedi believe it is an awesome Light and Wonderful Experience where you merge with the Force and become a Godlike Being where your consciousness dissolves into the whole of the entirety of the universe.
Sounds almost like Buddhism.
George Lucas "stole" several things from there.
[/quote]
Borrowed is perhaps a better word to use.
I think what GL did with the Jedi Order is amazing. He's essentially created an entire fictional religious warrior society that is Traditionalist/Perrenialist. You know, Rene Guenon's whole spiritual/philosophical movement. All religions have their origins in one primordial religious collective consciousness and each are variously nearer the primordial(also, Perennial) religion. I know people from all over the religious spectrum that love Star Wars and see their own tradition in the Jedi and the Force. Taoism and Buddhism are probably the most easily picked out for less exhaustively read people. But you can find darn near anything.
I still need to work on a Star Wars Islam/Sufism book.
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AlrikFassbauer
Registered:
Apr '03
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Date Posted:
5/25 8:28am
Subject:
RE: Force Netherworld/Heaven and Hell
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Yes, okay, I should've written "borrowed".
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