An Interview with Benjamin Creme: Manifesting the Divine

The World Teacher Will Show Us the Way

By Jason Francis

Scottish born artist, author, futurist and editor of Share International magazine, Benjamin Creme has been lecturing about the emergence of the World Teacher, Maitreya (My-tray-uh), for over 35 years. I had the privilege of interviewing Benjamin Creme by telephone for OM Times during his May 2010 lecture tour of Japan.

Jason Francis Who is Maitreya?

Benjamin Creme Maitreya is the head and leader of a group of (from our point of view) completely perfected Men: Masters of Wisdom, as They’re called. They are Men who have gone ahead of us in evolution and have finished the evolution of this planet. They don’t even have to be on this planet but many of Them remain and oversee the evolution of the rest of us—that’s Their role.

They are a kind of inner government of the planet. They know the Plan of Evolution, which is in the mind of the Logos of this planet: the great Heavenly Man Whose body of expression this planet is. They seek to put that Plan into operation through humanity and the lower kingdoms.

Many different religious groups see Maitreya as the One they are expecting. Christians await the return of the Christ who through Jesus said He would appear again—not when He would appear, but that He would come again. Maitreya embodies what we call the Christ Principle (the energy of love); not just transmits or channels it through Himself but embodies it in His own Being. And so He is the Christ.

Two thousand years ago He worked through Jesus. Jesus in the esoteric tradition is not the Christ but the vehicle for the Christ. The Christ Himself being Maitreya. This is the age-old way for a teacher to come. For example, 600 years before Jesus the Buddha manifested Himself through the Prince Guatama. And Guatama Buddha became known as the Buddha, but He wasn’t the Buddha. He was the vehicle for the Buddha, a body through which the Buddha worked. That’s the way the teachers have come to the Earth right up until this time.

This time it’s different. Maitreya has found a way in which He Himself can come to the world; not through a disciple like Jesus or Krishna or the way the Buddha worked through Guatama, but in His own Being. And so we have the return of the Christ in completeness and not working through a lesser Being.

Muslims await Him as the great Imam: the Imam Mahdi. Hindus await Him as the return of Krishna, or some believe He is Kalki Avatar—the teacher for this coming Age. Buddhists await him under His name, Maitreya Buddha. Before He died the Prince Guatama gave a message from the Buddha, which was that at this time would come into the world a great Teacher by the name Maitreya who, by dint of His tremendous spiritual status, would galvanize and inspire humanity into the creation of a brilliant, golden civilization based, as He put it, on righteousness and truth. So for these last two thousand and a half years the Buddhists have awaited the return of Maitreya Buddha.

But they have no idea of the time. Some imagine it in 2,000 or 3,000 years from now, some in 200,000 years from now. I’m speaking from Japan, as you know, and the Japanese believe that the Buddha will indeed return as Maitreya Buddha, but it will be in 650,000,000 years, or something like that. So there is no hurry from their point of view.

My information is that Maitreya, the head and leader of our Spiritual Hierarchy, is the embodiment of all these expectations. He is the Christ to Christians; the Buddha to Buddhists; Krishna returned or Kalki Avatar to Hindus; the Messiah of the Jews; the Imam Mahdi to Muslims. And many of them believe He is coming very, very soon, within two or three years. In fact, some believe He is already in the world. They are quite right. My experience is that Maitreya has been literally, physically, in the everyday world of our life, in the middle of our life, living in the Asian community of London since July 19, 1977.

JF How did you become involved in the work of telling the world of Maitreya’s Emergence?

Benjamin Creme I was contacted by one of His disciples—a Master of Wisdom—way back in January of 1959. In a few months, March 1959, I was brought into the Hierarchy and had a great experience in which Maitreya said that He Himself was coming sooner than anyone thought possible.

He said it would be in about twenty years. In the event it was eighteen years. He said I would have a role in His coming (He didn’t say what the role was) if I accepted it. I was filled with His energy, the subject of tremendous power and love. It was a transfiguring experience. And so I said I’m your man, whatever it is I have to do I’ll do. So that’s what I’ve been doing since 1975: preparing the way for the return of the Christ (in Christian terms) although He is also seen by all these other groups under these different names.

JF You talked about a group of divine Men known as the Masters of Wisdom, the inner government of the planet. Where do the Masters come from and are They like us?

Benjamin Creme They are exactly like us. They are like ordinary Men living in the world except that They have gone ahead of us in evolution. They haven’t changed Their physical appearance but They have evolved Their consciousness until They are like Gods. They have a God-like consciousness. They are divine in that sense but They see us as divine in exactly the same sense. They see no difference in Their divinity and our divinity. They see life as the sphere in which divinity exists. They see all of us as living in a divine and spiritual universe and They see the nature of all life as spiritual.

Maitreya comes as a great Teacher about the nature of life. He makes no difference between His life and our life. He says: “Don’t worship Me. If you worship Me you are putting Me above you. And I am not above you. I am at exactly the same point. There is only divinity. There is no greater or lesser divinity. There is just one divinity and we all share it.” So He sees us as divine as He is. Only from a mental, or awareness, point-of-view He is far, far older then we are and has evolved to a point where He can demonstrate His divinity. We can’t demonstrate our divinity if we don’t even know we are divine.

JF Speaking of the Masters as having gone ahead of us in evolution, you’ve talked in the past about meditation and service as levers of evolution. Is there a scientific basis to meditation and service if we are spiritually evolving?

Benjamin Creme Meditation and service are prime poles in what we call spiritual advancement. We are all on a spiritual path and that path is known by the Masters because They have all traveled that path and have come, as far as this planet is concerned, to the end of the path. So They can teach us about the nature of the path, the way to the path, how to remain on the path and serve the path. Meditation and service are part of that experience.

When a person is ready to work consciously with his or her evolution, the soul, because each of us is a divine soul, prompts its reflection (that’s the man or woman on the physical plane) into taking up some form of meditation. And meditation brings the person closer and closer to the soul and eventually to complete at-one-ment with that soul. That’s the purpose of meditation: to bring the person into at-one-ment with their soul.

Evolution is really the process by which we become more-and-more identified with and express our soul. The soul is a reflection of the supreme, divine Being Who lies behind all manifestation. So the soul is perfect in every way and we gradually become more-and-more perfect as we become more-and-more like the nature of the soul. That’s what evolution is: the evolution of consciousness.

I’m not talking about the evolution of the physical bodies, which evolve from the animal kingdom. All of the kingdoms evolve from the kingdom below it: the first is the mineral kingdom; from that came the vegetable kingdom; from that grew the animal kingdom; and from the animal kingdom came the human kingdom. We owe our bodies to the animal kingdom. But we are not animals. We are human beings, something different.

That difference is that we are souls—reflections of souls. The soul reflects the divine and reflects itself further as the human being. And so we are really three-fold. We are human beings, men and women on the physical plane. This is a dense physical planet and we are in dense physical bodies but essentially that is the lowest aspects of ourselves. We are really the soul at a higher aspect, and at a higher aspect still we are divinity Itself.

(for the full article and multimedia experience, click here:  OM-Times July 2010 Edition)

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