Entry 3: Death and Immortality in the Force
It is the nature of all living things to die. Like a flower rising from the ground, we grow, we bloom, we wither and we decay. The rate of decay and the length of life is not standard, and varies from species to species, and even then to individual to individual. All that lives and breathes must die. Yet it is not only the certainty of death that unites all living things. It is the attempt to prevent it, to break the hold that death has and become everlasting, immortal. This is the most basic desire of all things, and here the various methods through which the Force is believed to grant this power.
First, however, we must look at how the state of being "dead" is achieved. While the factors that may lead to it are many and varied, death is, in itself, the cessation of bodily functions and it therefore becoming inactivate and unresponsive to external factors, such as other organisms. Once this occurs, sentient individuals are known to enter another realm of existence, which is given the title "Netherworld of the Force."
When a deceased person enters the Netherworld of the Force, they lose their sense of individuality and their consciousness. Once they have lost both, their souls dissipate into pure energy that is fed into the Cosmic Force, becoming a part of the galaxy as a whole.
However, while this is the fate of most sentient beings, there are several exceptions to this rule. By becoming "one with the Force" and achieving a state of perfect union with it, a person can maintain both their conscience and individuality even after death. To this requires an individual to obtain perfect balance in the Force, releasing all attachments they possesses within the physical realm and giving way to utter harmony within the mind.
For this reason, most of the individuals who do manifest a consciousness after death are Jedi, as the entire Jedi code revolves around lack of attachments, inner peace and the abolition of passion. This therefore makes it much easier for them to become "one with the Force" than their Sith counterparts, who disdain the very concept of death, as it interferes with their doctrine of personal power and freedom.
Not to say that there have not been Sith who have become "Force ghosts" but these occurrences are few and far between, even more so as time passes. Most of the Sith who became one with the Force lived long before the era of even the Great Galactic War. Now, these spirits may remain, but no new members join their ranks.
On the other hand, even then this state of union does not last perpetually; eventually even Jedi will still fade and become part of the Cosmic Force. But for a brief time, they will be able to interact with the physical world and its inhabitants, even if they do not any longer possess physical forms of their own. So, what other routes to everlasting life does the Force offer?
The extension of life was often done by using more unconventional or even "unnatural" Force practices, ones that were in turn associated with the Dark Side of the Force. Such practices included sustaining one's life force via a physical object, such as a talisman or set of artifacts, the most notable of these being the Muur Talisman. Another example is using the Force itself to sustain a body's processes even when said processes would have long since ended in any other case, an act most notably done by the Sith Darth Sion.
Yet the most popular method of extending life was known as "transfer essence". Initially developed by the Sith Darth Andeddu, this power enabled a person to move the consciousness and/or life force of one body into another, sacrificing the body that was left behind and preserving the life of the person who inhabited it by placing it within a new body. This most was most often to ensure the survival of the user, transferring the consciousness to a new body as their old one began to fail.
By placing their minds within new bodies repetitively, it would be theoretically possible for a person to never actually die so long as they had a new body to migrate into. However, if the person who already possessed the body resisted this usurpation, then it would be nearly impossible for the person transferring their essence to succeed in taking over the body of their would-be host. And should the process fail, the user would spend the remainder of their existence in perpetual agony, unable to become one with the Force or even lose consciousness as all other beings would.
Give the ability's inherent difficulty in performing and executing as well the consequences of failure, modern users of the technique choose to use it on bodies that have next to no conscious of their own, such as clones. But should any of the transfers fail, then the chain of transfers and extended life will be broken. Indeed, even with any attempt at extending life without end, all it takes is one twist of fate to put an end to it all.
But in the end, is life without end truly the ultimate goal of all who pursue it? Though no mind exists that can do so entirely, try to at least partially comprehend the scale of the idea of living forever. To live forever would literally mean life without end. Even when the last stars burnt out, when all life in the galaxy faded and everything in it turned to dust, the immortal would still remain. A million billion trillion years from now, the one who is immortal would be alive. And even then, they would have only experienced a small fraction of infinite life. An infinitely small fraction.
No, what those who quest for immortality seek is not the absence of death, but rather control over it. To pick and choose when they will die, not to have that time forced upon them. That is the true goal of any who seek immortality, and it is because of this distinction, searching for one thing while wishing for another, that none have ever truly succeeded.