PART ONE
“I have not come to found a new religion. I have come to teach the art of Self-realization, which is neither an ideology nor a religion, but benefits people of all religions and those who have none. I seek to express that which I am through you; for this I come.” — Maitreya
Scottish-born painter and esotericist Benjamin Creme has spent more than 30 years preparing the world for the most extraordinary event in human history: the return of our spiritual mentors to the everyday world. Creme has appeared on television, radio and documentary films worldwide since 1982 when he announced that the Lord Maitreya, the long-awaited World Teacher and spiritual master of Jesus Christ, Buddha and many other teachers, was living in London, ready to present himself openly when invited by the media to do so. This event is now imminent.
Creme, based in London, continues to carry out his task as messenger of this news. He has written 14 books, most recently The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007) and The Awakening of Humanity (2008). He is editor of Share International magazine, which circulates in more than 70 countries and is dedicated to the emergence of Maitreya.
Perhaps out of fear that the physical presence of Maitreya signals a being who potentially could control the world, Creme has been called an agent of the antiChrist. But in an interview with Edge Life, speaking by phone from San Francisco during a visit to America, Creme reminds us that Maitreya is a teacher who, when he makes his long-awaited emergence telepathically into the consciousness of every human being on the planet over the age of 14 on the imminent “Day of Declaration,” he will give each of us a glimpse into who we truly are as humanity and offer us the personal choice of awakening.
The process is described thusly: Maitreya, who can change his physical form at any time, will come forward as a consultant on global issues and will be interviewed on American television. Those public and corporate leaders who have met with Maitreya at a conference in 1990 will come forward and support his ideas. Then, when enough people begin to respond to his ideas, the Day of Declaration will take place and Maitreya will emerge to teach and inspire. Maitreya teaches equality, the Law of Karma, the law of cause and effect, and the interconnection of all life.
For those unfamiliar with the Master Maitreya, will you acquaint our readers with who he is and why he is now among us in human body?
Benjamin Creme: Maitreya is the master of all the masters. The masters are men like us who have evolved ahead of us and come to the end of the evolution as a human being on planet earth. Many of them are able to go on to higher planets or higher solar systems, but many of them take what’s called the path of earth service. Those who have taken that path or others who elect to be here for so many thousands of years do so to oversee tile evolution of the rest of us, to bring us to the same point eventually that they have now reached.
From our point of view they are perfect. They have nothing more to learn from living on planet earth. It is for them only a field of service, but they seek to help us speed up our evolution as much as possible — and so many of them stay behind to do just that. They have been behind human evolution for countless millenniums, and they have lived in the remote mountain and desert areas of the world for thousands and thousands of years — but we have come to the end of a cycle that requires their re-entry into human life and into a field of service on the dense physical plane.
The masters can be physical or not physical, depending on their particular path, and about twothirds of the masters, some 14 masters, will eventually take incarnation as ordinary men on the physical plane. At the moment, my information is that there are 14 masters in the world at present, plus Maitreya, the master of all the masters, the world teacher. He holds the office of world teacher in that group, which we normally call the spiritual hierarchy of planet earth.
And I understand that these masters knew that this was a predestined experience, that they would all be coming back to the planet?
BC: The masters have known for more than 500 years that eventually this would take place. It was thought at first, until very recently, that it would be another 1,200 or 1,300 years before we were ready for all this, but, so far it has been the evolution of hearts and humanity — and so great are the problems facing humanity, problems to do with the earth, the state of the earth’s physical body, and the creation by us of the nuclear bomb that has put a big question mark over the future of humanity — so the masters have come forward far earlier than they would have expected.
On June 19, 1945, at the very end of the last World War, Maitreya made a statement to all his assembled group of masters and high initiates. He said that humanity and its own free will — we have free will, and that’s sacrosanct to the masters, for they never infringe on that free will, even if they could help us by doing so — can take the first step by cleaning house and putting its house in order.
The world teacher, Maitreya, has long been awaited as the Christ by Christians, as Imam Mahdi by Muslims, as the Messiah by Jews, as Krishna or Kalki Avatar by Hindus, and under his name as Maitreya Buddha by Buddhists. They’ve all been awaiting the return of a teacher under these various names. From the esoteric point of view, from which I am speaking, these are all names for one and the same individual, the Lord Maitreya, the head and leader of the spiritual hierarchy of the earth.
Up until now the masters, when they came out into the world to help humanity, did so through the agency of a disciple, never themselves. So, the Buddha took over the body of his disciple, the Prince Gautama, and eventually became Buddha. Maitreya took over the body of Jesus for the last three years of Jesus’ life and demonstrated through Jesus what we call the Christ.
Maitreya is the embodiment of the Christ principle on earth. He embodies the energy of love, the Divine energy aspect of love as the Buddha embodies the Divine aspect of wisdom. In a sense, Jesus was not the Christ, but for the last three years of his life he was overshadowed by the Christ and demonstrated the Christ to those of his time.
So, you indicated that this grand gathering of the masters on planet earth is corning sooner because we have evolved quicker, but also because of the state of affairs on the planet. So both of those things are happening?
BC: Above all, we have the nuclear bomb. If there was a war, a big war, a major war on the planet, it would be a nuclear war, and it would destroy all life, human and subhuman, on planet earth. So the masters are here for many reasons, including their own evolution, but they are here to make sure, so far as they can without infringing on our free will, that we do not have another war big enough for nuclear weapons to be used.
One important thing that you write about, and Share International also tells us, is the corning of Maitreya to each of us through this Day of Declaration. How imminent is that?
BC: I believe it is very true that not even the masters know the exact timing of the Day of Declaration. It depends very much on the speed of response of humanity to the teachings of Maitreya when he talks openly, which he is beginning to do very, very soon.
My information is that the coming forward into the open arena of the world of Maitreya is as near now as it has ever been. It is so close, and then there will be a gap between his coming forward and the Day of Declaration. In that time, he will come on radio and television and everyone will have an opportunity to assess his credentials, to listen to his teachings, to evaluate them, and to take their stance for or against them, and they are to do with the creation of the one humanity.
He says again and again, “Humanity is one. We are brothers and sisters of one humanity. We are all stemming from the same Divine source, whatever the color, whatever the religion, whatever the traditions. We are, underneath all of that, we are one family, one group called humanity.”
And, it is the realization of that oneness that he seeks to infiltrate in humanity. Because that is just the truth, then the discrepancies in living standards — particularly between the developed world and the developing world — are so awry that they have within them the seeds of a third world war. That war would be nuclear and would destroy all life on earth, human and subhuman alike, and this earth would become vacant of life for millions and millions of years.
We recognize about nine nuclear powers in the world. The masters have said that this is not honest and true — not nine, but not less than 24 nations have nuclear bombs of various numbers, various degrees, various weights and intensities of explosion. If these were used, then it would destroy everything else.
The masters are coming for one reason: to make sure that this does not happen by lifting humanity above the level where that would be allowed to happen; to inspire humanity to create the one humanity and to demonstrate that in our structures.
The structures of today, the political and economic structures in particular, do not reflect the true state of humanity. Humanity, Maitreya says and all the masters say, is Divine. Each one of us is Divine. We’ve come from a great Divine source. We are each of us a spark of the Divine. That spark could not demonstrate itself at the dense, physical level, so it reflects itself at the soul level.
The members of humanity are really and truly souls. We’re all part of one great oversoul. We are individualized aspects of that oversoul, and the individualized soul — yours and mine and everyone else’s on the planet — incarnates over and over and over again in a physical body, emotional astral body and mental body. These three bodies are temporary bodies that the soul creates and uses for a given time, long or short. In this way, the soul brings its vehicle, the man or woman, and the personality aspect, forward upward more and more towards the light, which the soul itself is. In this process, the physical atoms of the body are reconstructed into subatomic particles, and these become the body of the growing disciple and gradually become the initiate.
There are five great expansions of consciousness that finish the evolution of every individual. The last few lives — it might be 20 or 30 lifetimes, but it’s the last few relative to hundreds of thousands of lives before that time — are the five initiations that bring you from the first to the fifth degree, from the very beginning discipleship up to the master himself. All the masters are fifth-degree initiates or more. The Buddha is an eighth-degree initiate, the one who demonstrated as Gautama Buddha, and in this way they are overseeing our spiritual evolution through the experience of planet earth.
Will the Day of Declaration experience shift our energetic vibration to a higher level?
BC: It will be an extraordinary experience for humanity. Maitreya is omniscient. He is omnipresent, and he will create — and this is the miracle — a telepathic rapport with every adult on earth. Many of them are against the whole process. They call me the Devil’s Advocate, or the leg man of the Antichrist. They have terrible names for Maitreya and for me. However, the vast bulk of humanity will respond to Maitreya.
Very many years ago, through the Agni Yoga teachings that were given through a great Russian disciple named Helena Roerich, Maitreya wrote, “There was a time when 10 true men could save the world. Then came a time when 10,000 was not enough. I shall call on 1 billion.”
Five or six years ago I asked my master, with whom I am in constant telepathic communication, if Maitreya had his billion people yet.
He said, “One and one-half billion.”
That 1.5 billion a few years ago is now, according to my master, about 1.8 billion. So nearly 2 billion people are ready to respond to Maitreya, and he is absolutely assured that they will begin the process of transformation of planet earth. They will engage themselves on the actual physical well-being of the planet, which is desperate at the present time.
Eighty percent of global warming is the result of man’s wrongful use of the resources of the planet and the dumping of millions upon millions of tons of nuclear and other waste in the world, creating great toxic areas all over our skies, our oceans, our rivers, and the earth. The very air we breathe is so toxic. That pollution, the masters say, is the greatest killer in the world today. It diminishes the working of our immune system and opens us up to all sorts of illnesses and diseases, some of which are ancient and some are new. Ones that we thought we’d gotten over years and years ago are coming back, and new ones are forming over time.
We’ve poisoned our planet to a desperate degree. We have no idea of how severe the toxification is. We think we have 50 or 100 years to deal with this. The masters say we have about 10 to 15 years to prevent certain aspects of the damage from becoming irreversible.
So he is coming out immediately — very, very soon — he assures us, the group with whom I work, which calls itself the Reappearance Group. He is giving them all sorts of indications that this is the time. In a very, very, short time from now, he will come forward and start talking on television and radio, and then they will gather round him. More and more people will respond.
He’ll say what we need for the world. We need a total renunciation of war. He says we have to learn that war is no more. We must renounce war totally, because now we can destroy all life on earth. To bring this about, he says we have to have trust. This renunciation of war can only happen through trust, and trust can only be achieved by a sharing of the resources of the world.
Humanity must accept that the food, the raw materials, the energy, the scientific knowledge and so on, belongs to everybody, that it is given by Divine providence for all peoples, the rich nations and what are called the developing nations. No one has the right to corner the goods of the world as is done today, whether that be oil or food or any of the things that we think are so important.
Sharing, he says, is the answer for humanity. When we share, he says we recognize that God is our brother, and unless we have that trust created by sharing, then nothing can be done. As soon as trust is established by sharing of the resources, then every other problem can be solved — everything. Nothing needs a war. There is no problem that needs a war to bring it to a resolution.
PART TWO
”The essence of market forces is greed and separatism. The more one is attached to these forces, the more they create cells of imprisonment. This leads to spiritual’bankruptcy and mental disequilibrium.” — Maitreya
In your book, The World Teacher for All Humanity, you write that Maitreya calls speculation the great disease of humanity,
Benjamin Creme: Absolutely. Speculation for the Masters is anathema and is the greatest disease that humanity has, and it ends up, of course, in commercialization.
What is the future of the financial markets in America and Europe? Having them collapse and then rebuilt with new ideas?
BC: Maitreya says they will never have the same role again. The present stock exchanges of the world have very little to do with the real economy of the world. Trading is a small part of the work of the stock exchanges. They are really to do with financial speculation, and they speculate on the value of the yen, the dollar, the pound, the franc, or the euro, at any given time. Billions are lost and billions are made by this speculation, and that’s what the stock exchanges are about. They are for greedy minds.
The Masters say that perhaps some segment of it might be retained for these greedy minds to play with, but for humanity as a whole, they have no major part to play. The Masters, through their disciples, have worked out various interrelated plans that will solve the problems. Anyone of them would solve the problems of distribution, which are at the heart of the economic problem.
It is not economics per se, it is non-distribution. There is more food in the world than we could possibly use. There’s a huge surplus of food per capita, but it’s locked away and rotting in the storehouses of the Western world, whereas in the East, in many parts of Africa, India and South America, people are starving to death. Millions of people are dying of starvation in a time in which there is a huge surplus of food.
Maitreya says, “Nothing so moves me to grief as this shame. The crime of separation must be driven from this world. I affirm that as my purpose.” So preventing the starvation of millions of people in the world is the number one priority. After that, the number two priority is the saving of planet earth from decay and death, because this is a very sorry state.
Capitalism, as it’s practiced in America, seems to go against these values shared by Maitreya.
BC: Yes, it does. But Maitreya asks us to think of the problem of the world as a cart. It has to have two wheels. If you have one wheel, the cart doesn’t go. If you have one wheel called socialism, it doesn’t go. If you have only one wheel called capitalism, it doesn’t go. It needs two wheels. These two wheels are capitalism and socialism.
Because of what they call the “new economy,” the economy of market forces, the world is moving more and more toward a complete commercialization of life on earth, and the Masters find this a desperate state of affairs. One Master has said that commercialization has humanity by the throat and is removing humanity, men and women, out of life.
Others say life is not about commercialization. It is not about market forces. Maitreya calls market forces the forces of evil, because they benefit the few at the expense of the many. How long do we expect the many to go on? He says it’s reaching a point when these many will not put up with this state of affairs forever and will revolt. There will be massive upheaval, social destruction, revolutions of one kind or another, and eventually war – and that war would destroy all life.
We have no alternative but to share, and sharing is the divine plan. The Plan of Evolution is the plan destined by the Logos (God) of Our planet for the evolution of the earth, and the governments of the world try all they can to make the economy work, but they can’t. Nothing works anymore, because it’s of the past. All the technology, all the ways, all the ideas, all the theories of economics don’t work. They work for a time and build for certain people a lot of money, and then there’s a depression and the whole thing collapses for a time, and then they build it up again, and for a time it works for a few, and then again collapses. This same pattern is repeated year after year, decade after decade.
Maitreya says governments are dealing only with the ways of the past, and we have moved into a new cosmic cycle. Humanity is no longer the same. Its needs are no longer the same, and the needs of all around the world are recognizable. We need jobs. We need food. We need shelter. We need health care. We need education. These few things are the absolute necessities of all people everywhere, and yet even in the most-developed world, like America and Europe, no one has all of these things by right, unless they have money — and this is the rub. Unless you have money today, you cannot live life according to your need.
Politically it seems as though we have a candidate in this nation who is encouraging a renewal of hope through the removal of fear. Is this in line with Maitreya’s blueprint?
BC: All the thoughts and ideas that move in that direction are the result of the effect of Maitreya’s ideas. They saturate all the planes, from the dense physical to the high spiritual planes, and people respond to them according to the state of their heart. If the heart is relatively pure, they respond to the highest level, and downwards to just common sense — although it takes heart sensitivity at times to recognize it as common sense.
Politics seems to be a part of Maitreya’s message in terms of how to lead people responsibly. What has Maitreya thought about the course of these past eight years of America’s leadership, in proclaiming a war on terrorism?
BC: America, like all nations, has to renounce war. It’s an utter, utter necessity to renounce war forever. And nothing new can be built until this is done. The wars of today, the terrorism of today, are the result of injustice, and that injustice is the Outcome of our greedy, selfish, competitive way of working through commercialization and market forces. They no longer work and have to be seen to be of the past, and relegated to the past, so that we can build new structures, new forms of living together and sensing Our common bonds of brotherhood and justice and freedom for all peoples — not just some of the people, but for all people.
One of those ancient civilizations, the Mayans, have their calendar ending around 2012. What’s the significance of that time period from Maitreya’s perspective.
BC: None at all. There’s no significance. The Mayans disappeared as a culture, which was for the time extremely high. People have asked me this question many, many times, and the Masters say that when you wake up on the next day, the sun will rise as usual and you’ll have your bacon and eggs as usual. Life will be the same as what we have reached by 2012.
One thing that some of us do feel is that time is speeding up. Is that actually happening?
BC: That is literally true, yes. Maitreya has created a new relationship between this planet and the Sun. It is so slight that you could never measure it, but we are slightly closer to the Sun than we were before, and this speeds up the evolution of the planet. Therefore, our sense of time is speeding up.
But for the Masters there is no such thing as time. For them, what we think of as the past, the present and the future are all one. There is only this moment of time. That is it, all of it. I have been shown by the Masters that the past is still going on as if it were happening, and the future is already happening, although from our point of view it has yet to arrive. But on the level from which the Masters work and from which they look at the world, these are all now, just everlasting permanent now, and there’s nothing else but now.
PART THREE
“There will be no war as a result of the corruption and deceit of the politicians because I am among you. So far I have been acting behind the scenes, with My hands concealed, in order to give room to those in authority to change their ways and to serve the will of the people. But now the time is imminent when I will have to raise my hand so that people can converge on Me and look towards Me for guidance.” — Maitreya
What’s the future of organized religion in the bigger picture?
Benjamin Creme: Organized religions will remain, some of them for a very long time to come, but under the inspiration and guidance of the Masters there will be built another approach to Divinity. You can’t call it really a religion. It’s a very scientific religion, esotericism, a path to spirit, to union with your soul, and through the soul, union with the spark of God.
You could call it religion if you have to, but we have no word to explain it yet. This scientific religion, scientific path to God, is such that you become a disciple and then you become an initiate, and then you can become a Master and reach the top of the mountain that way. People will go to the mystery schools, which will be reopened, as they go now to university. When ready, they will seek training for these five initiatory processes, which take place in the last few lives of our evolutionary experience.
All of us stand somewhere in relation to that path. We’re either coming up to the first initiation, or have taken that and are somewhere towards the second, or towards the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. Eventually, in the crowning glory for all of humanity, all of us will have taken the fifth initiation and be Masters, and as far as planet earth is concerned, be perfected.
But, the Masters see this as only semi-perfection. They don’t even think they have finished the path of evolution on planet earth. They see stretching ahead of them vistas of being, of knowledge that we can’t even begin to imagine.
But, on the Day of Declaration, Maitreya will give people an inkling of this. He will show how old humanity is far, far older than we can imagine. There have been before us great civilizations that now lie under the sands and the deserts. We know very little about this, but the Masters know this, and they know the state of humanity and will inspire humanity to see itself in these terms, as growing towards a greater spirituality, a greater understanding of the spiritual nature of all life. We will see politics as having to be spiritual, economics as having to be spiritual, science and education and everything that we do as being essentially spiritual, lifting humanity to higher and higher levels.
Life is not about making money. It is about enhancing the quality of life for every single being so that they go from physical satisfaction to astral satisfaction to mental satisfaction to growing spiritual satisfaction, up and up and up, all the way. It’s all spiritual.
It’s been said that it’s a unique gift given to us to have been chosen to be incarnated at this time on the planet. Is this so?
BC: Indeed it is. We have the world to rebuild. We have the chance to build it rightly for the first time in 98,000 years, under the inspiration and guidance of the Masters who are returning to the everyday world.
At the moment, 14 Masters plus Maitreya, and eventually about 40 Masters plus Maitreya, will be in human bodies. This is a unique happening. We have known nothing like it since 98,000 years ago, and here it is happening. We can, through their guidance, enlist their love and concern and build a world like nothing that has ever happened on planet Earth before — a world of great beauty.
Before he died, the Buddha, through the prince Gautama, wrote a sutra that said a time would come when a great teacher, a Buddha like himself, by name Maitreya, would galvanize and inspire humanity to create a brilliant golden civilization based on righteousness and truth — and that is what will happen.
Maitreya Buddha is in the world now along with 14 of the Masters, and eventually more will come in. On the Day of Declaration, Maitreya will speak about his group of Masters. They won’t speak then, but one-by-one in the days, weeks or months following the Day of Declaration, the Masters will begin to come forward into the everyday world.
One of the first of these is the one who was Jesus in Palestine 2,000 years ago. He is now a great, highly evolved Master, one of Maitreya’s closest associates. They are inseparable, and they will teach and advise and work with groups of disciples all over the world, and through these disciples the world will be changed. Everyone who is responsive to this reality has the opportunity to lend their all, their energy and their time and their focus, to save the world through right relationship, brotherhood and sisterhood.
Prior to the Day 0f Declaration, what can an individual do in preparation for the experience?
BC: Be prepared that it is going to happen. You will hear and see Maitreya on television long before that — no one knows how long — but the Masters don’t expect it to be very long. My guess is that they have a working idea of something like two to three years between the now very soon emergence of Maitreya and the Day of Declaration, but that depends on humanity — whether it responds.
I know your government doesn’t even acknowledge that the world is heating up, that global warming is a reality. They think they can overcome it by all sorts of technical advances, but really it isn’t a question of a little fiddle here and a little fiddle there. It is a huge work, and only the Masters know precisely the time involved and the amount of work involved. The sooner the people respond to Maitreya, the sooner they will get the information from the Masters on how to tackle global warming and all that causes global warming.
One of the deadliest issues is the nuclear radiation pouring from every nuclear power station in the world. With every atomic process and experimentation that is going on, high-level nuclear radiation is pouring out at the highest level. There currently is no technology to measure beyond a certain level. Scientists see only three levels of matter — liquid, solid and gas. But, in fact, the Masters and all esotericists theoretically know that there are four etheric physical planes above gas, and that the worst damage from nuclear radiation is on these highest levels.
The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease is growing at a pace like never before, affecting people at a younger and younger age. This is the direct effect of nuclear radiation polluting the air of our planet from the power stations and other nuclear experimentation.
The nuclear power stations they are planning to build by the dozens all over the world to overcome global warming have to be abandoned. The advice of Maitreya right away will be to abandon all power stations of a nuclear type. There is a way to use nuclear energy, but it is a fusion process, which is cold and simple and can be had from one simple isotope in water, which is everywhere on the planet. That information will be given to humanity when they have abandoned their nuclear fission.
But the true energy of the future is what Maitreya calls the science of light, in which we will receive all energy for every use directly from the Sun and this will be one of the crowning achievements of our new civilization.
In your two recent books, The World Teacher for All Humanity and The Awakening of Humanity, you mentioned that people can connect directly with Maitreya. How can this be done?
BC: In 2001 the imprint of a hand appeared on a bathroom mirror in Barcelona, Spain. Since it was in the home of one of our co-workers, a photograph was taken and sent to me. My Master confirmed it was the handprint of Maitreya, given so that people can come in contact with him, on subjective levels, and ask for his help. He says, “My help is yours to command. You have only to ask.” People should look at the center of the palm for a few moments and talk to Maitreya. Even if they don’t know it, this alerts him to their presence. He has no sense that we are separate. If we look at the handprint and ask for his help, that help will be given.
A photograph of this handprint has now been circulated throughout the world, and many people have confirmed that the help they asked for was received. The image is included in both of the books you mention and is also available free of charge from Share International. We have received reports that these handprints are now being discovered in other countries.
What is your personal relationship to Maitreya? Have you communicated in person?
BC: I am a “conscious disciple” working closely with one of the Masters and all of the Masters are the disciples of Maitreya. (There are many disciples ofthe Masters who are not conscious of that relationship.)
How does Maitreya share his writing and messages? Does he share them through his disciples and they are given to you?
BC: The first series of messages were given through me by a process of mental overshadowing during my public lectures in London between 1977 and 1982. These 140 messages have been published by Share International Foundation in the book Messages From Maitreya the Christ.
Later, between 1988 and 1993, Maitreya gave another series of messages to a colleague in the Asian community of London where he lives. That colleague was told to give them to either of two independent journalists, with further instructions to pass them on to me.
I published all of them in our magazine, Share International, and sent them, wherever they were relevant, to the media of the world. Maitreya also gave some unique and extraordinary forecasts. There is nothing of this kind of forecasting going back thousands of years. It is so full and so direct, and it has been borne out to the letter. Maitreya gave this information so that we could awaken humanity, and that’s what we’re trying to do.
For complete information on the emergence of Maitreya and the Masters of Wisdom, visit www.share-international.org or contact Share International USA toll-free at 1.888.242.8272.
