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Benjamin Creme, a British artist and long-time student of the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, has become the principal source of information about the emergence of Maitreya, the World Teacher. In 1959, Mr. Creme received his first telepathic message from a Master of Wisdom. Not long after, he was informed that Maitreya would return within twenty years and that he (Creme) would be given the opportunity to play an active role in this event if he chose to do so.

     In 1972, under this Master’s direction, Mr. Creme began a period of arduous and intensive training, as a result of which their telepathic contact became, and remains, continuous and immediate. This relationship has given him access to constant up-to-date information on the progress of Maitreya’s emergence and the total conviction necessary to present that information to a skeptical world.

     Mr. Creme lectures by invitation throughout Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim, and is regularly interviewed on radio and television. He receives no remuneration for this work and makes no claims about his own spiritual status. He has written twelve books, most of which have been translated and published in numerous languages by groups worldwide who have responded to his message. He is also co-editor of Share International, a monthly magazine read in over 70 countries.

Guy Spiro: You’ve been in touch with the Maitreya for a long time. I think I began to hear about this back in the ’70s?                        

Benjamin Creme: Believe it or not, this began for me as far back as January, 1959. I was contacted by one of the masters who told me that Maitreya was coming in about twenty years which seemed an enormously long time to me at the time. He said that I would have a role to play in his coming if I accepted it. At that time I was filled with an extraordinary feeling of love for all the world and in that situation, whatever I’m asked to do I’ll do, with pleasure. My master said that the time is coming when you will be expected to act upon it. I didn’t forget about it, but I put it to the back of my mind. Then the Master began to train me and prepare me for the work which I’ve been doing since 1972 and publicly since 1974.

     The work was to prepare the way for Maitreya and his group of masters who are returning to the everyday world, the masters being men like us who have gone ahead of us in evolution and no longer really need to be incarnated on this planet. Many of them choose to do so and they are the masters who guide and protect humanity’s evolution. They live in the mountains and deserts of the world and it’s from there that they are returning to the everyday world. Their work had become hidden and esoteric, and now the processes of change are at work and they are beginning to come out in the world. At the moment there are thirteen masters in the world plus Maitreya, the master of all the masters.

GS: Maitreya’s appearance has been promised to occur for quite some time now.

BC: Yes, since 1982.

GS: Do you have a sense of when this is going to occur?

BC: Everyday I’m told that it is soon. Every month the master writes an article for an international magazine, and in it, again and again, he writes that soon you will see him. I’ve gotten used to the word “soon.” Our sense of soon is one thing, but the masters’ sense of soon...

GS: Soon can be a very relative word.

BC: Exactly. But it seems to me from everything that I’m told and everything that I can see happening in the world, it is very soon indeed. I mean, it could be tomorrow; it could be next month; it could be six months or a year from now, but that for them is soon.

GS: How precarious do things have to get?

BC: I ask the same thing. When I see what is happening in the world, I think, my goodness. I’m in touch with him all the time and I can talk with him although he lives thousands of miles away in the high Himalayas, but he knows a date and it is always very soon.

GS: You are in his physical presence sometimes?

BC: I have spoken with him several times, and I meet him quite often while he is in disguise. He uses what we call “familiars” that are based on real people, sometimes based on me. He’ll appear to somebody as me although it’s not me. I may be several thousand miles away, but they see him as me. He only does that with people who know me and also know about him. But he can create people, create a semblance of people and vest it with some aspect of his consciousness. I have seen him in that guise very many times.

GS: So, some people, when they do see him, see him as you?

BC: Yes. I remember one woman and her daughter in Belgium. I ran into them on a bus and behind them on came a man who sat opposite them. They were talking and they were astonished and nudged each other because that man looked the same, exactly like me—same hair, size, clothes, and face. Only one thing was different. I’m white and he was black.

GS: So he has a sense of humor.

BC: Oh, fantastic. In my experience, all the masters do. My master has a tremendous capacity for humor. Maitreya is the same. You can tell. I remember one of his appearances in Japan. I go to Japan every year to lecture, and at one lecture he appeared and also the master who was in Tokyo. The master in Tokyo was looking through the books at the bookstore where I was speaking and had on a coat which was slightly old fashioned and a top hat. Very distinguished looking. But under the top hat was coming all of this stuffing. It was so funny. A lot of the masters behave like this. They are distinguished, very special; they could be dressed beautifully but wearing galoshes.

GS: When the declaration comes and the world goes through this change, we’re looking for a golden age to start?

BC: We would see it as a golden age. We will have a choice to make as we have free will. Free will, to the masters, is sacrosanct. They will never intrude on free will. So, it is dependent on the decision of humanity to continue in the way that we are—personal, political, economic, social structures which are going nowhere and need changing and cause terrible hardship to millions of people. The injustice going on right now that allows millions to be dying of starvation. Maitreya says nothing has moved him to grief as this has. The crime of separation must be driven from this earth. I form that as my purpose. What really moves him more than anything else is the fact that millions of people are starving to death and that billions of people are living on a dollar a day. He says, “This is a crime. How can you watch these people die before your eyes and still call yourselves men?” He has come to show that this will lead to self-destruction. If we continue on the path with the competition, the greedy competition for the markets of the world, this will bring forth a situation in which there will be another world war. This time it will be nuclear and will destroy all life; human, and subhuman alike. That is the truth.

GS: Are we going to have to fix these things before he will appear?

BC: No, but we will have to be willing. We will have to begin the process. We don’t have to be perfect but we have to show that our minds are moving in these directions and so far, they’re not. There are signs that we are beginning to concern ourselves with the planet. America is producing 25% of all the pollution in the world, but the present administration is not holding itself responsible for that situation. In the meantime, we’re destroying the planet. Maitreya says the priority is the saving of the lives of the millions of people who are dying of starvation and the number two priority is the saving of the planet. This involves every man, woman, and child on earth and we don’t have long to do it. He says that the time is running out. He says that we’re concerned rightly about global warming and all that means. He says that 80% of that is our own doing, but the worst aspect of that pollution, which has nothing to do with heating the planet, but with the health of humanity, is nuclear radiation. Nuclear radiation is the greatest pollutant of the planet. He says that the increase of the diseases of humanity is a direct result of the nuclear radiation coming through the walls of the nuclear power plants which we cannot measure. He says that our measuring of nuclear radiation is so crude that we only measure the lowest aspects of it and the higher aspects are the most dangerous. We must adopt a nuclear pollution process which he says is very simple. It requires a simple isotope from water which is everywhere in the planet.

GS: So they say that fusion will be okay.

BC: Fusion would be without waste. It would be a cold fusion process and would be unlimited. But he said that even that is a temporary matter. In the future Maitreya and the masters will release in the world an indescribable level of energy that will come from the sun and will solve all energy needs of the world.

GS: Well, what are we waiting for?

BC: To accept the principle of sharing, because this is in the heart of our problems. The governments of our world are seeking to solve the problems of the world, and there are many, with the methods of the past, and they don’t work. The present problems are of the past, concern the present, and, to a large extent, the future. But all our methods come from the past and they plainly don’t work. If the world is so divided that you have the possibility of nuclear war at any minute, then they don’t work. It’s obvious that they don’t work, but nobody sees that. Nobody admits that. Maitreya’s path is to show us through these problems with humanity.

GS: So, what do we have to be optimistic about? What are the good signs?

BC: The masters say that only one thing will destroy terrorism and that is when men recognize that they are one and act as a family, and that is to share the resources of the world. When they do that, they will create justice. When they create justice, they will have peace, security, and the beginning of a new life—a glorious, absolutely brilliant golden civilization when we create the principle of sharing.

GS: What signs do you see that we’re moving in that direction?

BC: Well, we’re not really moving into sharing. Sharing is one of the hardest nuts for humanity to crack. It seems that people cannot accept that fact. Now, competition to the masters is an enigma. There should be no competition. There should be cooperation. This is what is so difficult for the world to see. We have to replace our competitive grasp on the market by the cooperation of sharing and justice, and that’s a big thing to get. It takes someone of the stature of Maitreya to talk humanity into beginning to experiment and prove that it is possible, that there is no alternative to sharing.

GS: That takes us back to the question, what is he waiting for if it’s going to take him to make this change happen?

BC: He’s waiting for us to take the first steps. As soon as we take the first steps, he will come out. He’s been ready to come out since 1982, but humanity has not been ready for him. He announced his intention to return in June, 1945, at the end of the war. It was hoped that it would be around 1950 because the experience of the War in which millions died would have been enough to change humanity, but it didn’t. Both powers quickly went back to the old greedy, selfish, competitive, nationalistic ways of the past. Maitreya then said that he is coming whether they are ready or not. So from his actual physical presence in the world his energy would be greater and he could influence world leaders and so on. The diplomatic corps of the world is familiar with what I’m saying. They are familiar with Maitreya. He held a great conference in London in 1990 where about 350 people from all walks of life came by invitation.

GS: Do you have a statement to close on?

BC: The masters say that we look at the world and see nothing but despair, but we see it only one dimensionally. They say that the world isn’t like that. The world is stratified and there are happenings in every stratum in the world. You have to be where the masters are to see a bigger picture. Stretching ahead of humanity is a most wonderful creation. In the whole history of the world, humanity has not seen such a possibility. We are standing on the verge of a complete rejuvenation if we accept the principle of sharing. Everything stems from that. The masters say when you share, you recognize God in your brother. He has given humanity the opportunity to learn and make mistakes and to find the way for ourselves.

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Benjamin Creme will be speaking next in California on Saturday, August 5 at UCLA Freud Playhouse, MacGowan Hall, 245 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles (call 818-785-6300 for information), and on Sunday, August 13 at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, 3301 Lyon Street, San Francisco (call 510-841-3738 for information). More details can be found on the website www.share-international.org under Upcoming Events.

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