The Force

The founder of aikido, Morehei Ueshiba, understood ki completely when he had a vision that he described having after refusing to fight with a swordsman even as the swordsman cut at him until exhausted.  Ueshiba said on the road home; "All at once, I understood the nature of creation: a way of a warrior is to manifest Divine Love, a spirit that embraces and nurtures all things. Tears of gratitude and joy streamed down my cheeks.  I saw the entire earth as my home, and the sun, moon and stars as my intimate friends.  All attachment to material things vanished."  Roland Barthes would say that Ueshiba experienced a punctum.

George Lucas spoke to several masters of the martial art Aikido prior to coming up with the idea of "The Force" in his first "Star Wars" movie.  Aikido translates to "The Way of Being in Harmony With the Energy of the Universe,"  with ki being that "universal energy."  However, in aikido, there is no dark or light side to ki nor is there hard or soft ki.  "There is no fat or skinny ki..." said aikido master Koichi Tohei in the 1992 book Ki: A Road Anyone Can Walk by William Reed, "There is only one ki, though it may be extended softly or weakly."

Like a Jedi Knight, however, how softly or weakly one is extending ki (says Tohei) can be seen in their eyes; "When you see a person claiming to use ki who is staring with hard or transfixed eyes, then you know he is a fake.  The eyes are designed to reflect, not to stare."