M

Goddess of the supreme strength; with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the aṭṭahāsya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance.¹

Mahalakshmi

Goddess of the supreme love and delight ; her gifts are the spirit’s grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing.¹

Mahasaraswati

Goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit ; hers is the yoga that is skill in works and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies.¹

Mahashakti

Original Power, supreme Nature, holding in herself infinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos.²

Maheshwari

Goddess of the supreme knowledge ; brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity and illumination.¹

Mahima

Hathayogic siddhi.³ By perfect mahima one can, without muscular development, outdo the feats of a Hercules.⁴

Manas

Manas is the sense mind, that which perceives physical objects and happenings through the senses and forms mental percepts about them and mental reactions to them; it also observes the reactions of the Chitta, feelings, emotions, sensations etc.⁵

Manipura

Navel centre. Nābhipadma – governs the larger vital.⁶

Mantra

The theory of the mantra is that it is a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has been brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental, framed in the heart and not constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the waking mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally – the silent word is perhaps held to be more potent than the spoken – precisely for the work of creation. The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the production of material forms on the physical plane.⁷

The function of a mantra is to create vibrations in the inner consciousness that will prepare it for the realisation of what the mantra symbolises and is supposed indeed to carry within itself.⁸

When one repeats a mantra regularly, very often it begins to repeat itself within, which means that it is taken up by the inner being.⁹

Matter

Matter consciousness is inert as well as largely subconscious – active only when driven by an energy, otherwise inactive and immobile.¹⁰

Mechanical Movements

Activity of the physical mind.¹¹ The mechanical movements are always more difficult to stop by the mental will, because they do not in the least depend upon reason or any mental justification but are founded upon association or else a mere mechanical memory and habit.¹²

Meditation

Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject.¹³

A process leading towards knowledge and through knowledge; it is a thing of the head and not of the heart.¹⁴

Memory

Memory is the indispensable aid of the mind to preserve its past observations, the memory of the individual but also of the race.¹⁵

Mental Being

The true mental being is not the same as the inner mental ; true mental, true vital, true physical being means the Purusha of that level freed from the error and ignorant thought and will of the lower Prakriti and directly open to the knowledge and guidance above.¹⁶

Mind

Part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental visions and will etc. that are part of the intelligence.¹⁷

Mokṣa

Liberation;¹⁸ spiritual liberation;¹⁹ liberation from māyā.²⁰

Morality

A part of the ordinary life ; it is an attempt to govern the outward conduct by certain mental rules or to form the character by these rules in the image of a certain mental ideal. The spiritual life goes beyond the mind ; it enters into the deeper consciousness of the Spirit and acts out of the truth of the Spirit.²¹

Mukti

Salvation; liberation from the Ignorance.²²

It is an opening out of mortal limitation into the illimitable immortality of the Spirit.²³

Muladhara

The seat of the physical consciousness proper, commanding the physical consciousness and the sub­ conscient.²⁴

The physical centre is also the sex-centre. The apex of it is at the end of the spine and it projects forward from there – commanding the organ and its action.²⁵

The mulādhāra from which the Kundalini rises is not in the physical body but in the subtle body ; so also are all the centres. But as the subtle body penetrates and is interfused with the gross body, there is a certain correspondence between these chakras and certain centres in the physical proper.²⁶

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