Benjamin Creme and Maitreya the Christ - Linda W. Duddy

On 14 May 1982, Benjamin Creme--esoteric teacher, London artist, and way-clearer for The Universal Christ/World Teacher--made his spectacular pronouncement: Maitreya the Christ has been living on Brick Lane in the Pakistani-Indian community of London’s East End since 19 July 1977. This “Christ for the New Aquarian Age has a totally indestructible body.” He will gain recognition “not by claiming to be ‘the Christ’ or ‘World Teacher,’ but as a spokesman for justice and sharing.” Maitreya lives in the world today together with five Masters of Wisdom who are in the five major centers of the world--New York, London, Geneva, Darjeeling, and Tokyo. Those Masters are training people “in the precise legislation which will change our present chaotic political, economic and social structures along more rational (and more spiritual) lines.”

Who is Maitreya? For the Jews, he is the Messiah. For Muslims, the Iman Mahdi. For Hindus, he is Bodhisattva, or the new incarnation of Krishna. For Buddhists, the Fifth, or Maitreya, Buddha--the Kindly One. “In Palestine, 2000 years ago, He manifested through His Disciple Jesus (Who is now the Master Jesus) by a process of overshadowing. This time He comes Himself, as World Teacher for the Aquarian Age.”

Creme’s pronouncement came as no surprise to UPDATE’s editorial board member Caryl Williams, who has lived a number of years in London. “It is not uncommon for Indian gurus (in south London) to teach what Creme has been saying. A dozen gurus may all agree they are the Christ, and their followers will believe it.” Creme’s appearance in Los Angeles followed an active advertising campaign during April in which approximately $250,000 were spent on full-page ads in 17 major world newspapers. That step was the culmination of another campaign that began for Creme years ago. In January 1959 he was “mentally overshadowed” by and established a “telepathic rapport” with “one of the Masters of Wisdom,” and since 6 September 1977, he has had direct communication with Maitreya. The first 100 of Maitreya’s messages, transmitted through Creme, have been published by Tara Press under the title Messages from Maitreya the Christ. Over 30,000 copies of Creme’s second book, The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, have been sold in the United States alone, and the translations into six other languages have been distributed by Tara Centers in Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

According to Creme, the Masters of Wisdom are perfect men who need no further experience on this planet. They have lived for a millennium with their predecessors in the remote areas of the world--the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades, the Urals, the Gobi and various other deserts. From these retreats--they have overseen our evolution for countless thousands of years.

Creme‘s followers believe that 18-1/2 million years ago a “group Beings from other planetary schemes, in particular Venus, were brought to Earth, to assist in arousing the mind principle and learning to the individualization of animal-man.” Those Beings were known as “the white brotherhood or the Hierarchy of Masters of Wisdom” whose headquarters were “established on etheric levels...referred to by esotericists as ‘Shamballa.’”

Creme was prepared for his role as Maitreya’s mouthpiece through a series of stages. He first studied Wilhelm Reich’s work on the reality of the etheric planes of matter (that is, matter which is finer in substance than gas and is usually invisible). From there he studied New Thought as expounded by Madame Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and her disciple Alice Bailey. Creme believes the 1949 prediction of Bailey’s Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, that the Christ had “decided to return physically to the outer world.” He would become known through awakening the Christ consciousness in everyone, overshadowing Christ’s disciples worldwide, and finally through direct appearance. According to Creme, all has gone according to plan. In the ‘50s, Creme’s involvement with the UFO movement served as the final step in preparing him for his receivership of the Masters’ transmissions.

Creme has been assisted in recent years by a network of Transmission Groups in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America. With the aid of a yard-high transparent plastic pyramid--the “transmitter-transformer instrument”--those groups “receive energy from the Hierarchy and pass (it) on.” Each individual member is connected by a loop of silver wire to silver and gold discs, a magnet, and a lump of rock crystal inside the transmitter. The energies “are too subtle for the mass of people, and--in a manner of speaking--simply bounce off of them.” A person’s attention level must be kept high during each transmission. If they do not have their own form of meditation to guarantee that high, Creme recommends focusing “attention generally on the Ajna center (chakra) between the eyebrows, and silently repeating the mantra ‘Om.’” By reciting Creme’s Great Invocation at the start of each session, “a dynamic occult meditation will occur under the guidance of the Hierarchy. Transmission is a highly scientific process, and the Masters know by far how best to implement it, and where the transformed energies can best be applied.”

Maitreya’s message is quite simple. “Justice, Sharing and Love are Divine Aspects. To manifest his divinity, man must embrace these three.” Because of his grasp of human problems and breadth of solutions--political, economic, religious, and social--to those problems, “he will show the way into that state of being in which Reality, or God, is an ever-present experience and of which joy and love are the expression.” Our human dilemma is a result of an imbalance of forces.

The forces of evil, esoterically speaking, refer to the forces of materiality or matter--part of the involutionary process of Diety--producing the pairs of opposites: spirit on the one hand and matter on the other. They are not separate from God--everything is God--and their role is to uphold the matter aspect of the planet. It is when this involutionary force overflows onto the evolutionary arc, creating a condition of gross materiality, that it appears as evil and does, in fact, prevent mankind from advancing forward on the evolutionary path.

What Maitreya intends to do is “show humanity how the present chaos, injustice, the threat of war, and separativeness could be totally eradicated by the acceptance of the principle of sharing.” Creme proposes the scheme, in the June 1982 edition of his group’s Share International magazine, that nations simply replace all present economic systems with “a sophisticated form of barter” to effect that principle of sharing. He insists that the blueprints for such a plan have long ago been drafted by “high Initiates” who are world economists, entrepreneurs, industrialists, but we must await “the demand of humanity for their implementation.”

Those high Initiates have been advancing through the five complex stages Creme refers to as the Path of Initiation. The first stage is when a person controls the physical body, especially “the devic or elemental lives which make up our bodies.” In the second stage, control over the astral, emotional body is achieved. That is called the Baptism Initiation. The first “true soul” Initiation comes at stage three, where mastery over the “mental elemental and body brings in Monadic contact and energy for the first time.” It is called the Transfiguration stage. The fourth Initiation involves what Easterners call the Great Renunciation or, as it is known in the West, Crucifixion. The fifth stage is Resurrection. If viewed in that light, “The Gospel Story holds before humanity the promise of Divinity...attainable by all who make the necessary (sic) to expand their consciousness to include the spiritual levels...and achieved, too, by a scientific process of which the Christ and His Masters are the custodians--the process of Initiation.”

As of the Los Angeles press conference in May, Creme’s work appeared to be complete. “It’s not for me to point out the Maitreya, though I know who he is. My work is to prepare the way, the climate, the hope and expectancy. My work is done. Now it’s for the media to search him out.” Rumor had it that 21 June 1982 was the Day of Declaration when Maitreya, who lives in London’s East End, would be revealed. According to resident “Spud” Murphy, however, nothing unusual happened in the neighborhood that day. “I’ve lived here for 40 years and would have noticed any stranger with a halo.”

Creme and the editors of Share International addressed that delay in their July/August issue. Confessing the group’s disappointment that the anticipated events didn’t take place, they insisted that that does not mean that Maitreya cannot carry out his original plan. “The Day of Declaration remains assured.” Citing the media’s lack of interest in minority groups, the magazine’s editors said Maitreya’s message has thus been confined to the Pakistani-Indian immigrant community where he now lives. It is the press’s “responsibility as representatives of the public to search for the Christ.” Says Creme, because of the law of free will, Maitreya cannot name himself. His discovery depends on the willingness of journalists and others to identify him and receive his message. When, “through the Christ consciousness in us and our own spiritual intuition,” that stage is set,

the international radio and television networks will be linked together....We will see his (Maitreya’s) face on the television screen and will hear his appeal telepathically. He will overshadow all humanity simultaneously. Everyone will hear his words in their own language....hundreds of thousands of spontaneous healings will take place....(and) humanity will know that this man and only this man is truly the Christ.

Creme admonishes us not to project a rigid schedule for that Day of Declaration, however. As he says, “It looks as though it’s going to be a cliff-hanger.”

In recent years Creme has fulfilled his role of preparing the way for Maitreya the Christ. In fact, most of Creme’s descriptions about Maitreya could be applied to Creme himself. Either way, Creme cannot lose. By putting the burden of proof on the “unholy” media, his followers can either believe in Creme as Maitreya the Christ, or they can condemn the media and wait with Creme.