Star Wars - The Oriental Connection

ASidCast discusses Star Wars and the Asian mythologies and philosophies that inspired it.  Thanks again, Couch.

The movies were not my introduction to Star Wars, though. That would be Knights of the Old Republic, which I had played shortly before watching the movies on STAR Movies. Knights was one of the first RPGs I ever played, and it blew me away. I knew the game was based on the lore of the movies, and it made me want to watch them. I played the sequel Sith Lords shortly afterwards, and against all my expectations, I loved it even more than the original (except the ending, which was later fixed by the cut content patch). I still prefer Sith Lords more, because (among other reasons) it is not your typical Star Wars story, but it deals with the underlying concepts- especially the Force and morality- in a much deeper way.

Both of the games made me very curious to know about the concept of the Force. It was perhaps mostly due to studying in what can be described as a Hindu missionary school, where we had to study a lot of religious texts and Indian myths, but I found something very familiar in how the Force was handled in Star Wars lore.

The Force has been described as an all-encompassing field of energy that connects every living thing to each other. When I first came across the description, I immediately thought of the concept of what we studied about Brahman. Brahman (not to be confused with Brahmin or Brahma) is a Vedic concept of the ultimate reality or truth, which has been adopted by Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and other religions. It is also said to be an ever-present energy or entity or concept that connects all life. The concept of Qi is also somewhat similar.

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