Benjamin Creme, British author and editor of Share International magazine discusses UFOs, crop circles, crosses of light, and other miraculous phenomena.

ML: The question “Do you believe in miracles?” was the title of a recent cover story in Life magazine which acknowledged the thousands of unexplained or miraculous phenomena that have been occurring world-wide. Other sources, such as Time magazine and the Washington Post, have also reported on such phenomena as, of course, has Share International. To list a few of these unexplained events: we have had reports of visions or personal experiences of the Christ; visions of the Virgin Mary; weeping and bleeding statues of the Virgin Mary; crosses of light suddenly appearing in people’s windows; healing water discovered in Mexico and elsewhere; reports of a mysterious hitchhiker who appears in people’s cars and says the Christ is in the world and then disappears; an increase in UFO sightings; crop circle formations appearing in farm fields around the world; and so on. Speaking generally, should people be taking such reports seriously, or can most of them be written off as the product of people’s imagination, as hoaxes, or as events which could be explained scientifically?

BC: I have no doubt that there are some hoaxes of crop circles, certainly in England. But the vast majority of the various phenomena you have described should be taken very seriously indeed. These events are occurring on a world-wide scale, and are part of the signs which people expect and look for in connection with the reappearance of the Christ today.

ML: You see these as signs of the reappearance of the Christ?

BC: Yes, indeed. They are signs that we have come to the end of one era and the beginning of a new one, and that the Christ has returned to the world to inaugurate this new cycle. These signs are given to uphold people’s faith and hope in the future and in a spiritual basis to life, to keep them aware that we are in a world which is constantly changing, and that the days of miracles are not over. The miracles of the Bible, for example, and also of earlier times, are being repeated now daily, almost hourly, across the world. These events add up to very definite evidence to humanity that the time is nigh for the appearance of the Christ openly in the world.

ML: How can you speak with such conviction on these matters?

BC: I was contacted by one of the disciples of the Christ in January 1959, and soon afterwards was given, by Maitreya Himself, the task of preparing the way for Him. I have been doing this for nearly 20 years now. My role is to create a climate of hope and expectancy for the return of the Christ, so that He can enter our lives without infringing our free will.

ML: You were contacted initially by a disciple of the Christ, and then by Maitreya Himself?

BC: One of the Masters of Wisdom, who lives in the Himalayas, contacted me, first through another disciple and then directly. He has trained and prepared me for the work I have been doing to prepare the way for His Master, the Master of all the Masters, the one we in the West know as the Christ.

ML: I would like to ask you specifically about some of the various phenomena that have been reported. There have been reports that people have had visions or personal experiences of the Christ. In fact, a counsellor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, named G. Scott Sparrow, has written a book called Witness to His Return in which he interviewed a number of people who said that they have had personal encounters with the Christ. Can you comment on such reports?

BC: Certainly I would accept this. These experiences are part of the manifestations surrounding His return. Maitreya appears to people in three ways. Many people recount having had a vivid and powerful dream, usually associated with some great spiritual, uplifting experience, in which they feel they have seen the Christ. That is the most common way in which He makes Himself known to humanity. Another, less common, way is to give people visions. These experiences are waking visions, not solid physical presences. People see or experience the Christ as light or a kind of transparent form. Their accounts vary as to how He appears. That is the second mode of Maitreya’s contact with people.

There are also direct physical appearances in which He appears to people individually, and in groups, all over the world. I know of many people who have experienced Maitreya in this way.

Share International has published several photographs of the Christ, the Lord Maitreya, as He appeared suddenly ‘out of the blue’ in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 11 June 1988 before 6,000 people. The crowd instantly recognized him as the Christ and called Him by that name. He talked to them in their own language, Swahili, for 10 or 15 minutes, and then disappeared as amazingly as He had come, leaving in the vicinity of where He had stood some 30 or 40 people completely cured of all their ailments. Photographs show Him dressed in what looks like Arab costume, pure white with a blue headband and carrying a fly whisk in one hand. Standing beside Him is the woman who normally runs these regular healing gatherings, Mary Akatsa. These photographs appeared on CNN, the BBC, and went out over the wire services throughout the world.

ML: Has He appeared since then?

BC: He has appeared physically, to my knowledge, to very large groups in Mexico, Russia and the former Soviet Union, throughout Europe, in the US, the Middle East, North Africa, India and Pakistan. At many of these places He has left behind miracle healing waters — either transforming existing springs or wells, or creating new ones. The best-known of these, so far, is in Tlacote, Mexico, about two hours drive out of Mexico City. The water there is curing thousands of people of all types of ailments, including AIDS and cancer. Another source has been discovered near Düsseldorf, Germany, one of the towns where Maitreya appeared, and outside New Delhi, India.

ML: Have the media reported on any of these appearances?

BC: There were some media present at some of these gatherings, but the appearances were all before fundamentalist groups of one kind or another: Catholic in Mexico; Lutheran or Protestant in Germany; in Switzerland, Calvinistic; in Russia and the Eastern European countries, the Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox Christian communities; and fundamentalist Moslem, Hindu, and Jewish groups in the Middle East, North Africa, India, and Pakistan.

These are groups from whom He would expect the greatest opposition when He declares Himself openly to the world. Fundamentalist groups are locked into their own beliefs about the appearance of the Christ, the Messiah, Krishna, the Imam Mahdi or Maitreya Buddha, and have set ideas which His presence would find difficult to disturb. These are people whom He has, in my words, been ‘softening up’ in these appearances. Maitreya is giving them a tremendous blessing appearing to them miraculously, talking to them in their own language, and then disappearing. This has given them a new experience of the return of their long awaited Teacher. I think Maitreya hopes to broaden their minds and make them more open to the fact of His return now, and not at the end of the world.

ML: At some point will somebody come forward and say that they have experienced this? Is that what He hopes will occur?

BC: That is part of it. The main goal is ‘softening up’ the fundamentalists. But as these visitations to different groups continue — and there have been a great many of them now: well over 10,000 people, not counting the 6,000 in Nairobi in 1988, have experienced the Christ — this extraordinary experience cannot but change their whole view of things, and when they do talk about it, the media will eventually take note. The discovery of the healing waters which He has created in connection with most of these appearances will reinforce the fact of His presence there, and bring media to investigate this subject.

(My recent information is that there have been newspaper reports of some of these appearances: two of Christian, five of Muslim, three of Hindu and four of Sikh communities)

ML: We have also had reports of visions of the Virgin Mary and weeping statues as well. Are these reports to be believed?

BC: Most of them, yes. They are occurring world-wide and in enormous numbers. The visions of the Virgin Mary are created as thought-forms by the Master who was the Madonna, the mother of Jesus, 2,000 years ago. She is a disciple of Maitreya, and now a very advanced Master indeed. This Master creates these visions of the Madonna which are always seen by more than one person.

There are also visions created by the fervent aspiration and desire of people, perhaps afraid of world events, who are looking for some reassurance and security. They create for themselves visions of the Madonna which are purely astral and have nothing to do with that Master at all. These are seen only by the individual concerned, the one who has created them. These I discount, but even they are part of the process by which the thought-form of the return of the Christ is given expression. The very fact that so many are occurring in this way is a sign that the time is now ripe for the presence of the Christ. But the visions seen by more than one person, the weeping statues, the moving statues, the statues which bleed real blood, and so on, are created by the Master who was the mother of Jesus.

ML: And they are a sign of the Christ’s return?

BC: They are a sign not only of the Christ’s return, but also of the group of which the Christ is the head, which includes Jesus Himself. The Master Jesus, as He is known in the Hierarchy of Masters, has been living in the outskirts of Rome since 1989. He is one of the first group of Masters to come into the world with the Christ.

The Christ and Jesus are not the same individual. The Lord Maitreya embodies, in His own Being, what we call the Christ Principle, the Christ Consciousness, the second aspect of the Christian trinity, the energy of love. He overshadowed and worked through His disciple Jesus for three years, from the baptism to the crucifixion. For these three years, the disciple Jesus became Jesus the Christ or Messiah. Nearly 600 years earlier, the Buddha overshadowed His disciple, the Prince Gautama, who, at age 29, became Gautama Buddha. This is the age-old way for the appearance of the Teacher in the world, which is a cyclic event. What we are witnessing today is the return, according to cyclic law, of the Teacher, this time in His own full physical presence, not overshadowing a disciple as has been the case up until now.

ML: People in southern California and elsewhere around the world have reported crosses of light appearing in their windows. How is that explained?

BC: They first appeared in El Monte, California, a part of Los Angeles, in May 1988. In April of that year, my Master said that very soon Maitreya would create so many crosses of light around the world that people would not be able to ignore them. No one would know where they come from, or how they came about. There are now 20 or 30 such crosses in the El Monte area. They have also appeared in various parts of the world. I received a letter recently from a woman in New Jersey who had a cross appear miraculously in her apartment window.

The crosses appear suddenly; they were not there previously. They are ‘activated by Maitreya, and have a great effect on the people around them. They draw thousands of people to see them and some people have extraordinary healing and spiritual experiences. The whole society in El Monte has been transformed, both individually and as a community, since the first appearance of a cross of light in the bathroom window of a Hispanic family there.

The padre of the local church suggested that, because there were so many people coming to see the cross, it would be better if they took the glass out of the bathroom and put it in the church. The nice people in the house agreed. The glass was removed from their bathroom window and put in the church; the cross promptly disappeared. Nothing they tried could bring the cross back. Reluctantly, the padre allowed the glass to be put back in the house of the poor Hispanic people. The cross immediately reappeared on the glass.

ML: It is interesting that the crosses appeared in a low-income community in southern California. Is there any significance to that?

BC: The Christ has said: “Look for Me in the dark places where hunger and strife abound”. “Know Me as the brother of the poor, the rejected of the world.” (From Message No 128). It is as a spokesperson for the poor and dispossessed that He comes. There are some 1,200 million people living in conditions of official, absolute poverty, which means they have an income of less than US$100 per year. Half of these have nothing at all, and a large proportion of them, many millions, are literally starving to death — in a world with a huge surplus of food per capita. It is because Maitreya can no longer stand aside and watch what He calls “this blasphemy”, “this slaughter”, “this crime” of starvation in the midst of plenty that He has now returned to the world.

ML: Could you comment on increased UFO sightings and the appearance of crop circles that have been reported?

BC: Aside from the few hoaxes, the crop circle patterns are certainly real, but not directly connected with Maitreya. They are created by our brothers of the nearest planets, Mars and Venus. The crop circles have appeared all over the world. We have had hundreds of them in England, and they have appeared in Canada, the US, across Europe, Japan and elsewhere. The crop circle patterns are created by the space vehicles that we call UFOs. They are part of a process of energization of the Earth, and are duplicating on the physical plane many of the vortices of the network of magnetic energy which surrounds the Earth. These formations will become ‘batteries of energy’ for humanity in connection with a new energy source, part of the science of light which lies just ahead for humanity.

ML: In short, the crop formations are a positive phenomenon?

BC: Absolutely positive. They could not be of greater benefit to the world.

ML: Where do you see all these phenomena leading?

BC: These events will culminate in the open declaration before the world by the Christ that He is in the world, and that He is the World Teacher for all groups, religious and non-religious alike. This is not simply a religious manifestation. It is a spiritual manifestation. Maitreya is an educator in the broadest sense of the word. He has come to galvanize and inspire humanity to change direction, to create a world in which we can live together in peace. To do that, He says, is simple: it requires us to see ourselves as brothers and sisters of one humanity, sharing the world’s resources together. He says that we either share or die. We must see the resources of the world as belonging to everybody, and redistribute them according to need. In this way, we will create justice in the world for the first time, because without sharing, there will be no justice, without justice, there will be no peace. Today, without peace, there would be no world; we would destroy the world. Maitreya has come to inspire and guide us to create the conditions in which humanity will not only survive, but go on to create a brilliant civilization based on a spiritual way of life. We will create a new civilization, as He would say, worthy of the gods that we are.

From the July/August 1993 issue of Share International