The Way of The Force

In honor of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I am rewriting some of the material I have posted recently, substituting “The Force” for previously used appellations.

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The Force permeates the Universe and everything in it, energizing all that is and shaping the flow of its manifestation.  It is the source of spacetime, which is the matrix, and of energy, from which come matter and life.

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The Force is beyond personhood, beyond being, beyond description, beyond effability.  It is a paradox; perpetual yet ever-changing, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal, everything yet nothing.

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The Force is One.  It is neither male nor female.  It emanates both light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction.   It does not reward good deeds or punish ill, nor exact karmic retribution for imperfection.  It does not take sides; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.

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The Force animates without claiming possession; bolsters without requiring gratitude; stewards without exercising authority.  It does not demand our submission, obedience, penitence, worship, adoration, praise, prayer, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, benediction, love, respect, or even belief.

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The title here, “The Way of The Force” is a pun.  One of the books in the Extended Universe has suggests that in the early days of the awareness of The Force, those studying it called in The Way, which is the literal English translation of ‘The Dao’.  As described in patches here and there throughout the films and the Extended Universe, The Force is a combination of The Dao, or The Way, and Native American concepts such as the Orenda of the Iroquoian peoples, the Manitou of the Algonquian peoples, and the Wakenda of the Siouan peoples.