Scott.Safier%CMU-CS-CAD@sri-unix.UUCP (06/22/83)
The reason that the emperor can't sense yoda is that the influence that yoda has on the force has always been there. Yoda is 900 years old. We do not know how old the emperor is, but RotJ Book tells us he was a senator who used political tricks to be named emperor at the downfall of the republic. From other books we know that the empire is not that old (probably about 10 - 15 years old). The emperor (according to the book) was beginning to get old at the fall of the republic. If you beleive that the race of the emperor had a "normal, human" lifespan (since the emperor is humanoid), Yoda must have been alive at the time of the emperors birth. This would mean that any disturbance in the force caused by Yoda would have always been felt by the emperor, and he could easily have grown accustomed to it, or never thought about it. After all, the influence was always there. Question: Who did train the emperor? The book clearly says that those blue lightning bolts are manifestations of the force, so who trained him. I seem to recall something from the ANH book about the emperor being a Jedi. Does anyone else remember this? Finally, the reason that only Luke can see "the holy trinity" (the father, the muppet, and the holy ghost) is that they have become part of Luke's force. When Yoda and Ben explain what the force is, they mention that every living thing contributes to it. This means that everything has its own force. Since Luke was influenced so greatly by these 3, their ideals and the good in them have come to "be absorbed" into Lukes force. Scott