(M.J.E. Spirit / Glossary / M - Z)

Spirit Dialogues

Explorations of Spirit
by Michael Edwards

Front page: Foreword - Site Map
Introduction
Glossary
A - B
C - G
H - L
M - Z (this page)
First dialogue -->

Glossary

(Still under construction - some entries are still partly or entirely unwritten)

Go quickly to alphabetic sections with the following links (letters in bold, larger type are on a different page from this; smaller letters are further down on this page):

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Links to all entries in the Glossary follow now, with the entries for the four pages grouped separately. Entries for pages other than the present one are in bold type, and entries for this page are in normal (large) type.
Notes on the perspective from which I wrote the Glossary can be found on the front page for the Glossary.

A - B

akashic - angel - The Apostle Paul - archangel - Archangel Michael - Ascended Masters - Ascension - Ashtar, Ashtar Command - astral plane - Atlantis - aura - Bivalia

M Masters
The Masters, or Ascended Masters, as they are sometimes termed, are very highly evolved human beings who have passed the stage of obligatory reincarnation for personal spiritual development, although some of them may continue to make incarnations from time to time to assist humanity's growth in one way or another.
The term "Master" is not intended to have any authoritarian overtones whatever, and the Masters do not tell people what to do or believe. The mastery implied in the term is mastery over oneself - complete self-control, that is - not mastery over anyone else.
Many channellers receive messages which they and their listeners believe come from one or other of the Masters. Although it would not quite be true to say that messages from the Masters have imparted to me specific knowledge I have adopted as true (with perhaps one exception), my encounters with them have nevertheless had a general effect on my spiritual outlook, and the Masters are now a part of my spiritual landscape, so to speak. The one possible exception is the very first message I heard from a Master, in October, 1993, when Sananda replied to a question I asked him at a channelling session, and gave me a detailed past-life history.
The Masters who have had the most prominent place in my own life have been Sananda (Jesus), Hilarion, Ashtar, and Kuthumi, and to a slightly lesser extent Serapis Bey, St. Germain, and Archangel Michael (often loosely classed with the Masters, although technically not a Master but an archangel, and, like all angels, from a completely different evolutionary stream). There are a number of others whom I have heard or read about from time to time, who have had a more peripheral bearing on my own spiritual life.

Maya
In reincarnation teachings, Maya is the veil of forgetfulness that prevents us from remembering previous lives. The term is also sometimes used with the connotation of "illusion", with the implication that everything about one's physical life is illusory, only Spirit being real.
The concept doesn't figure a lot in the dialogues, but is mentioned in the past-life history given to me by Sananda in October, 1993.

mental body
[... description to appear later.]

merkabah
Another term for light-body.

Michael, Archangel
The archangel who, according to the Book of Revelation in the Bible, will lead the forces of God in the fight against the forces of Satan in the apocalyptic Battle of Armageddon at the end of the world.
He also figures in the New-Age and channelling movements, although it is not clear to me just how closely connected he is to the Biblical Archangel Michael. He is regarded as wielding a flaming blue sword of protective energy which channellers and meditators sometimes call upon for protection against dark forces or adverse influences not in keeping with the highest light.

N nature spirit
[... description to appear later.]

New Age
This is a term I don't entirely like, because of the connotations it has picked up, particularly from those who want to denigrate or find fault with the spiritual outlook the New Age represents. Yet it is a term I use often, with some misgivings, simply because I cannot think of any other term that means approximately the same thing, which will be understood by as many people.
The New Age is that body of alternative spiritual belief and practice that has arisen in recent decades, influenced quite strongly by Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but not being either of these, and perhaps even sometimes showing an influence of other primitive or nature-based religions such as Wicca, Paganism, or Shamanism. A belief in karma and reincarnation (rebirth in a succession of human lives) is taken for granted by most New-Age believers, and practices such as astrology, numerology, Reiki, clairvoyance, spiritual healing, and many others are common; and certain subsets of the New Age are interested in such matters as extraterrestrials and Ascension. The New Age is so diverse that it is difficult to describe comprehensively, and yet there is a certain loosely-organized body of belief and practice that links it all together - but even this is not invariably found in groups that nevertheless are beyond doubt New-Age.
Yet none of this is formalized in anything approaching official doctrines, and there is no central, organizing body promoting an "official" New-Age view; and indeed, official, rigid doctrines seem quite opposed to the inherent nature of the New Age.
This is sometimes raised by believers in traditional religions as a fault of the New Age - yet many New-Agers would regard this as a point in its favour. They would say (and I would agree whole-heartedly) that you cannot really lay down doctrines that are supposed to apply to all of humanity, that you cannot prescribe a single path of salvation that alone will work - because in the end all such ideas are nothing more than human opinions: the real truth of most spiritual questions is simply not self-evident from the available hard evidence, considered apart from purely subjective and personal interpretation of things. The New Age takes account of this simple fact more than most traditional religions do, and explicitly acknowledges the idea of different people having different paths, different views of truth, that suit them where they are at present.
Although I have difficulties with such central New-Age ideas as karma, and thus feel I cannot fully regard myself as a New-Ager, I nevertheless identify with the New Age better than I do to anything else I am so far aware of, and I suppose if I had to apply a label to myself, I would reluctantly choose the New-Age one rather than any other I can think of.
In this glossary, and in the dialogues, I use the phrase "New Age" ("New-Age" for the adjectival form) quite freely, in spite of my unease about the label, especially with regard to the negative connotations it has in many people's eyes (including some New-Age people themselves, who don't like the term); and in using it, I do not imply any hint of negativity or denigration; I simply use it (somewhat reluctantly) as a plain, descriptive phrase for this diverse, yet easily identifiable movement, of which I am at least on the fringes, and which has had a considerable influence on my Spirit dialogues and on the spiritual outlook I've tended to have over most of my adult life.

P Paul
See Paul the Apostle.

Paul the Apostle
This Biblical figure is regarded by some as an incarnation of the Master Hilarion (q.v. for a discussion of this possible identity between the two figures, and the problems it raises).

R reincarnation
The idea that we all get reborn again and again in this world, and have many different lives with different bodies and personalities, but with the continuity of one's spirit or Higher Self providing one's identity.
The concept is central to Hinduism and Buddhism, and also to Theosophy and the New Age, which are much influenced by those two Eastern religions. It is often linked with the concept of karma, and it is believed that everything one does generates karma of some sort, and that in the long run karma always must be balanced, that every action will, sooner or later, generate an equal and opposite reaction.
This may take some time, and may not even happen in this physical life-time. If you consider only one particular life-time, it is obvious that in some cases karma (if it exists) is not balanced: there are many instances where people do certain things, yet don't get the consequences you would normally consider to be merited by those actions - or in other cases people suffer tragedies or enjoy great fortune that they don't appear to have merited in any way. Obviously, if you want to maintain that karma is nevertheless balanced, you almost have to postulate reincarnation, as the only possible way this balance can be restored. (Admittedly, if reincarnation is not real, and we live in this world only once, this balancing could happen in whatever world we pass into after death - but for some reason karma believers rarely suggest this possibility, and rarely believe in it.)
So it is obvious why the teachings of karma and reincarnation are often linked together, and I even occasionally get the impression that some people carelessly use the two terms almost synonymously, even though they mean quite different things. Yet neither teaching requires the other as a logical necessity: you could postulate reincarnation without any concept of karma, and hold the purpose of incarnations to be something other than karma; and, as suggested above, you could postulate karma without reincarnation by suggesting that karma will be balanced in the life (or lives) after death.
The concept of reincarnation plays a slightly ambiguous role in the dialogues and in my own spiritual outlook. I'm not quite sure whether I do believe in it, although it does seem a reasonably plausible view of things in many ways. I and my Higher Self do sometimes talk about reincarnation as if it were a fact, and yet the concept doesn't feel to me to be of central importance. But perhaps part of the reason it figures to the extent that it does is that my recent spiritual outlook has been largely shaped by the New Age, to which reincarnation is a central concept, almost completely taken for granted and almost never questioned.
I'm not this accepting, and do question it; but nevertheless, because of the New-Age influence, the concept hovers around a lot in the background of my spiritual outlook. At any rate, I do find the concept far more plausible than the Christian theology which is more normal in the society I live in, and which I was brought up in. (Is there really a lot of sense in having people live one life only, some far more disadvantaged than others, and then judge them after death on that single life, and consign them either to eternal damnation or eternal bliss, purely on the basis of that life, and the beliefs adopted in that life? It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. Even if it were a level playing field, such judgement of a single life and the consequences of that judgement seem far too extreme to me - but what makes it worse is that life is not a level playing field.)
The concept of karma, often linked with reincarnation, is even more ambiguous for me than is reincarnation, and I have great difficulty accepting it. See karma for a brief explanation of why; and see the dialogues for more detailed treatment (in various dialogues).

S St. Paul
See Paul the Apostle.

Sananda
One of the most prominent of the Masters, frequently identified as Jesus. (Jesus is supposed to have been one of the incarnations of Sananda.) Sananda is also regarded, like Jesus, as the holder of the Christ energy.
Sananda was important to my own spiritual life in recent years, because it was at a channelling workshop given in October, 1993, by the U.S. channeller Crea, that Sananda gave me an answer to a question I put to him which had quite an influence on my spiritual development in the following several years. See the following channelled message for more on this, including a complete transcript of the question I asked, and of the answer I received.
Perhaps partly as a result of this, I refer to Sananda in the dialogues more often than any other Master. I have also subsequently heard or read more channelled messages from him than from all other spirit beings put together, and Sananda easily has a higher profile in the New-Age movement than any other being, with the possible exception of Ashtar, who is the centre of a certain subset of the New-Age movement, but largely ignored outside that subset.

soul
[... description to appear later.]

starseed
[... description to appear later.]

St. Germain
One of the Masters. He is usually identified as the mystic and adventurer Le Comte de Saint-Germain (dates of birth and death uncertain, but lived during the 1700s). He is often regarded as the guardian of the violet flames of transmutation, by which negative energies surrounding one can be transformed into their positive equivalent.
His name usually seems to be written as "St. Germain" or "St Germain" in channelled messages, New-Age books, and the like, which could give the impression that he is a Saint in the sense that the Roman Catholic Church employs that term. Yet I can find no evidence that he is a canonized Saint, and it would appear that "Saint" is merely part of his name, that he was in fact the Count of Saint-Germain, a location in France, and as a Master is still referred to by that earthly name.

T Theosophy
[... description to appear later.]

Front page: Foreword - Site Map
Introduction
Glossary
A - B
C - G
H - L
M - Z (this page)
First dialogue -->

This page created on Wednesday, 25 July, 2001, as part of a reorganization of the formerly one-page Glossary.

Spirit Dialogues

Explorations of Spirit by Michael Edwards

Glossary

(Still under construction - some entries are still partly or entirely unwritten)

A - B

C - G

H - L

M - Z

Explorations of Spirit
by Michael Edwards