Is the Force sentient?

Question

In thinking about this excellent question it occurred to me that what's probably first needed is an answer to whether the Force has an awareness of itself?

Equivalently, we know that living organisms generate the Force, and that there are two sides if we can say that it favors one over the other then the answer must be yes (Presumably the Light Side, if we can show that).

Note that this question implies that the Jedi have an agenda to eliminate the Dark Side if at any point we can say the Force always keeps at least a remnant of The Dark Side alive then again the answer must be yes.

Answer 1

Darth Sidious and Darth Plagueis seem to think so (and no Midichlorians are involved! Three cheers for Disney!)

According to New Disney Canon novel "Tarkin" by James Luceno,

Darth Plagueis had once remarked that “the Force can strike back.” The death of a star didn’t necessarily curtail its light, and indeed Sidious could see evidence of that sometimes even in Vader—the barest flicker of persistent light. Attacks like the one directed against Tarkin’s moon base and discoveries like the one on Murkhana were distractions to his ultimate goal of making certain that the Force could not strike back, and that whatever faint light of hope remained could be snuffed out for good.

Now, that doesn't prove it 100% (they could both be wrong), but you don't "strike back" unless you're aware of yourself, since you need to be aware that you youself have been struck first to strike back.

Additional weak evidence is that in the much-discussed-recently episode of The Clones Wars "Altar of Mortis", we had Celestial-descended "The Ones", who were meant to "represent" the Force and its light and dark side... You generally can infer that if a sentient being represents something, that something might be sentient as well.