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I don't see OSensei as having been so much "grandiose" as just dedicated to an otherworldly vision that nothing in the universe (except maybe Sokaku Takeda) had ever impeded and in fact which the universe seemed happy to endorse in his case. He didn't want to "be seen as" doing something mystical: he wanted to "do" it. He wasn't concerned about how others saw him and his words reflected only the way he saw his own role.
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That's a very good point, I think. And he did it, in fact. Thanks for the interesting discussion, everybody.
I cannot even imagine to get inside the head (body image, language to describe the body and its experiences; already the body/mind terminology gets me right here...) of somebody like Ueshiba Morihei, and I strongly believe it is impossible already for that reason to neatly divide his activities between spiritual and martial.
(Of course, there is no need to do that if we use history for clues on how to become better fighters now, as the OP does. Then we can be agnostic as to the spiritual altogether, and just go for the evidence we need.)
Also, just because person X today is an amazing fighter, uses an internal conditioning system and can teach it (and we may be grateful for that) does not allow the conclusion we know what Ueshiba Morihei did. That sometimes seems to get muddled up when discussing his person and aiki/internals, I find.