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To Be A Jedi: Part 4

© Paul F. McDonald

To begin this final essay and bring this inquiry to a close, we can start by recalling how Anakin Skywalker comes full circle in the Star Wars saga, as he is initially damned by his attachments only to be saved by them in the end. This is not the contradiction some would claim. After all, it is only be letting go of the Empire’s illusion of the galaxy as nothing but isolated things, of all the Imperial security that went with it, and indeed, of his very own life, that he comes back to his true self. And as the Gospels claim, he loses his life only to find it saved after all.

The dark side is given perfect expression by the Empire because it takes no notice of the whole at all, only of surface disparity. This is the danger of possessive relationships, whether one is trying to make an object out of a single person or the entire galaxy. The British writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley once wrote in a lecture titled "Who Are We?" that "Idolatry is in fact the worship of a part - especially the self or projection of the self - as though it were the absolute totality." This is Anakin’s central dilemma, particularly in his relationship with Padme Amidala. It’s been noted in an early essay that she is indeed as much a pattern in the Force as anything, and therefore not antithetical to oneness with it. At his best, this is the way Anakin sees her, but the loss of his mother has no doubt laid the groundwork for his unwillingness to let Padme go in Episode Three. That will most certainly be his undoing.

Yet again, it is his particular love for his son Luke that leads him back to the whole. Anakin’s shimmering apparition in the Force at the end of Return of the Jedi is enough to prove one can still appreciate multiplicity while being rooted in union. This is really the key to everything, and the synthesis of East and West mentioned in the first article is perhaps already firmly in place, a natural consequence of religious experience that slipped in while no one was looking.

It is quite appropriate if the name Yoda is indeed derived from the Sanskrit "yoga." That word itself is based on the verbal root "yuj," which is generally translated as "to link." So in all the training sessions in the prequels and sequels alike, Yoda is really doing exactly that - linking particular beings with the ground of all being. The purpose of most yoga exercises is to bring about an awareness of "advaita," or non-duality. And that’s largely what the Force is. It surrounds, it penetrates, and it binds together.

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