kewms

There are some who will tell you that aiki can be trained completely outside of a spiritual context, and certainly independently of Ueshiba's rather idiosyncratic milieu.

There are others who will tell you that aiki -- at least as it manifests itself in the art that Ueshiba created -- is a deeply spiritual thing, and without that spirituality one is left with only bits and pieces of the whole.

The two sides seem to come to rhetorical blows on a regular basis.

Which is not to say that the topic you raise isn't worth investigating. Just that this forum has proven itself largely incapable of doing so.

Katherine