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After a time distant starlight poured through a crevasse in the stone ceiling above us, allowing us to perceive shapes and the wavering rippled reflections of stars in the pool’s bubble-wracked mirror. The algae in the pool gave off a dim glow itself, outlining the edge of the pool, but doing nothing to dispel the black murk of its depths.

Luke’s voice filled the grotto. “This is an exercise to help you concentrate and attune yourself to the Force. The water is a perfect temperature: you will float, you will drift, you will reach out and touch the rest of the universe.” As the last of his words echoed through the cave, the water rippled outward from where he had been standing, indicating he had somehow silently slipped into the water.

Without waiting for more of an invitation, I shed my robe and eased myself into the pool. The water at first seemed scaldingly hot, but I knew that was only because I had been cold once I stripped out of my robe. I sank myself gingerly up to my waist, then released the pool’s edge and sank beneath the surface. The water washed the last of the cold from my hair and goatee while bubbles marched up through the hair on my chest.

I broke the surface again and shook my head to clear water from my eyes. The pool eased aches and pains easily, with the heat pouring in through my flesh to warm muscle and bone. I stretched my arms out and brought my legs up, doing my best to relax so I could float there. Tipping my head back, I looked up at the stars and idly wondered how many of them I had visited in my lifetime.

I heard the occasional splash and whispered apology as one apprentice floated into another. With the warmth of the water and the way it held us up, it was very easy to forget our physical bodies. I recall Luke remarking that Yoda had told him we are all luminous creatures, not crude conglomerations of flesh and bone. Here in the grotto pool, warm and isolated in the dark, forgetting our physical selves became more easy than ever before.

And absent contact with our physical selves, we are left feeling the Force within us.

Luke’s voice again broke the silence. “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no death, there is the Force.” He spoke the words of the Jedi Code with such power and solemnity, I found myself whispering them along with him. My voice joined that of the other students, until our declarations filled the grotto, binding us together.

Master Skywalker urged us to use the water and the warmth to free us so we could feel, really feel, the Force. I lay back and could hear the echoes of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I concentrated on it, knowing it as a sign of life. I let my heartbeat meld with the rhythms of the Force and felt the sizzle of the Force soaking into me.

I heard Luke saying more, but the words lost their meaning in what I was seeing through the Force. Instead of hearing every syllable, stringing them together, then translating sounds into concepts, through the Force I saw his intent create eddies and currents. He herded our attention to the stars above us, then redirected us back down and into the pool.

I rolled over and floated vertically, staring down into the pool. The sky’s reflection sank beneath the rippling surface, then took on depth. The sliver of sky expanded as if the rocks above us had become transparisteel. As Luke asked, “Can you see it?” the pool was gone and I found myself floating in the limitless depths of space.

With my mind I reached out and grafted my thoughts to those of the Jedi Master. I clung to his energy as he soared us through various solar systems. Nebulae gave birth to stars as we flew past, and suns went nova, consuming whole planetary systems. Worlds flashed past, some which I recognized, others I did not. We visited systems where Imperial warlords battled each other for supremacy, and planets where refugees sought new lives.

On our journey I caught a flicker of something I recognized. I wanted to linger