The online edition of Share International magazine presents a selection of items from the printed edition. Each online edition includes a complete article by Benjamin Creme's Master. Most other articles reproduced here, covering a wide range of topics, are excerpts. The online edition usually also includes a selection of Questions and Answers, Readers' letters, and photographs of Signs of Maitreya's presence.
See the full table of contents of the printed edition at the foot of the page.
From the inception of Share International magazine, Benjamin Creme’s Master provided an article every month for nearly 35 years. These were intended to be published not only at the time they were written, but also whenever appropriate according to world circumstances.
Towards the end of an Age and the beginning of a new Cosmic cycle, everything begins to fall apart. The old and tried ways of living no longer work or meet the needs of an advancing humanity. Certainty gives way to uncertainty, the known has lost its power to convince, and men feel bewildered, lost and filled with fear. Thus is it today as we stand, baffled, in this transitional phase between the old Age of Pisces and the new Aquarian dispensation.
The Aquarian Age will last approximately 2,350 years and will bring much benefit to men as its energies mount in potency over the centuries. However, at present, the old ways of Pisces, outworn but not as yet outgrown, still hold sway and determine the thoughts and actions of the majority of men. This being so, countless millions are held in thrall by the actions of those leaders whose nations are powerful and dominant at the present time. Thus is this a time of upheaval and stress, disharmony and strife.
That this troubled time will not last much longer you may be assured. Already, the signs of change are evident to Us, your Elder Brothers. We see clearly the outlines of conditions altogether different from those that now prevail. We see a world at peace, a world where justice reigns, where freedom adorns the lives of men and women everywhere. We know that the present ills are transient and passing, that the time is not far off for the light of the New Dawn to illumine men’s lives and challenge them to action. We know also that men in their hearts are ready and longing for change, and will rise to the challenge with eagerness and will; they await only inspiration and guidance.
That inspiration and guidance Maitreya is eager to bestow, in full measure and more, as He awaits the appointed hour which, by karmic law, allows Him to proceed.
Then will the Great Lord enter, openly, the domain of men. Then will He challenge the assumptions of the men of power and wealth. Maitreya will speak for the millions without a voice; for the destitute and hungry who live in anguish from day to day; for those who languish in the prisons of the world for daring to challenge the edicts of their ‘betters’. He will speak for all men who love justice and liberty and will raise His voice aloud in their cause. He will temper the wrath of those who govern by war; He will seal for ever the door through which war enters and defiles the realm of man. All this, through men, He will accomplish, and so restore sanity and peace to Earth.
Calmly, and with purpose, He prepares the golden future, the inheritance of men, and gathers together the ‘shining lights’, the men and women who will fashion that future.
(Share International, December 2007)
These articles are by a senior member of the Hierarchy of Masters of Wisdom. His name, well-known in esoteric circles, is not yet being revealed. Benjamin Creme, a principal spokesman about the emergence of Maitreya, was in constant telepathic contact with this Master who dictated his articles to him.
At every lecture he gave around the world, and virtually every day of his life, Benjamin Creme was asked numerous questions covering a vast range of topics. We draw on this large recorded resource and present here a selection of previously unpublished answers provided over the years by Mr Creme and his Master.
Share International has a reserve of unpublished letters which were confirmed by Benjamin Creme and his Master to be genuine encounters with Masters, or with a ‘spokesperson’.
In February 2004, my family and I were on a flight to Hawaii, sponsored by the Make A Wish Foundation which offers to fulfil the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. Our eleven-year old son, Sebastian, was suffering from aplastic anemia, and it was his wish to see Hawaii.
I was seated next to an elderly couple and my children and husband were seated in the row behind me. My eight-year old daughter was miserable because she wanted to sit with me. So the woman next to me offered to switch seats with her. Thus, a conversation between our family and this couple ensued.
The woman was exceedingly sociable and candid about her life experiences, and some of these seemed uncannily parallel to my own life. As she sat next to my husband, she literally snatched the science fiction book he was reading and asked him about it. She said she hadn’t heard of science fiction, and he explained the value of reading such books to envision new societies and ideas for the future. She told him that he certainly could write books like this. Then she playfully snatched the baseball hat off my son’s head and handed it to a passing stewardess, telling her to have the pilot autograph it. She took a great deal of interest in my son, and asked him lots of questions about his life. She had such a merry expression and a playful twinkle in her eye.
At the end of our flight, we stood in our places waiting to leave the plane. My son commented to the woman that she seemed so young for her apparent age. With some pride she told us how she takes great care to exercise every day. She then unzipped the jacket of the smart athletic suit she was wearing and revealed a very large silver pendant around her neck, hung from a long thick silver chain. All our eyes were drawn to it. She asked us if we could guess what it represented. As I examined the piece, I noticed that it seemed to have religious symbols on it. I pointed this out, noting the Sanskrit sign for OM, a Christian cross, a sickle and star for Islam, and a wheel for Buddhism. She explained that she had bought it in Mexico years ago, and that it was one of her favorite pieces. We then left the plane and went on our way.
Could this woman have been Maitreya in disguise?
We present here phenomena which, to the editors, are “signs of hope” and “signs of the time”, although they are not confirmed by Benjamin Creme’s Master. We strive to be as thorough as possible in our investigation of each ‘miracle’ or ‘sign’, but present them for your consideration only, since we cannot now make use of the confirmation and additional information which in the past was always provided by Mr Creme’s Master. Further details, when available, are given in the captions to the photographs.
We present a selection of quotations on the theme of ‘Meditation and the soul’. The quotations are taken from Maitreya (Maitreya's Teachings — The Laws of Life), Benjamin Creme’s Master (A Master Speaks Volumes One and Two), and Benjamin Creme’s writings.
The soul is the reality, not the man or woman. The physical plane is real from its own angle, but from the angle of the soul it is not real, it is relative. Our problem is that we take it as the whole while it is only a relative part of a much greater whole. The part cannot see the whole but the whole sees the part — and the different parts. From the point of view of the soul, its effort in incarnating again and again is to create a series of bodies which will gradually build this bridge and unify what was fragmented. The involutionary process into matter is reversed and the spiritualizing of matter takes place.
We spiritualize matter through our own bodies. The soul creates a series of bodies, each incarnation at a higher turn of the spiral, a higher vibrational rate (if all goes well) until we have a body through which the soul can express itself without too much limitation, and eventually without any limitation.
Meditation is the process which sets this in motion. That is why, in every religion and training, at the basis of all paths of ascent is meditation of one kind or another. It may not be Transmission Meditation, or the various meditations you have come to know or read about; but some form of meditation, an alignment with the soul and its nature, must take place, because it is the soul who has incarnated. The soul cannot be avoided or bypassed. The soul is the reality. That reality has to be recognized, and the method by which it is recognized is through the creating of the bridge, the path of return. (Benjamin Creme, Maitreya’s Mission Volume Three)
Today, thousands of people are consciously aware of making such a journey; for them life is deepening in meaning, and they search for greater knowledge and experience. Thus, in time, they turn to meditation and through this practice a great discovery is theirs. Step by step, they know for certain that they are Souls, that the Soul is not some distant idea but their very being. Gradually the tempo of their lives changes, and a deeper meaning and purpose consolidates all that they do. Thus do men advance on the journey to perfection, reflecting more and more the divinity and wisdom of the Soul. (Benjamin Creme’s Master, from ‘The Path of Ascent’)
Transmission Meditation is the simplest method I know to accomplish this soul contact. Many meditations require that the individual master a powerful concentrated mental activity, which is more than most people can do. What people call meditation is often not meditation but simply concentration or even just reverie. There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration. (Benjamin Creme, Transmission — A Meditation for the New Age)
In this section Share International focuses on the rising tide of people power which will continue to swell until, under Maitreya’s wise guidance, the people will lead their leaders into the creation of a just society in which the rights and needs of all are recognized and met.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched and rallied in over 50 towns and cities across the UK on a National Day of Action on 1 October 2022, protesting against the cost-of-living crisis in the largest wave of simultaneous protests seen in Britain for many years.
The organizers of the Enough is Enough campaign have outlined five major demands of the UK government, as monthly housing costs for renters have increased by 11 per cent on average since last year, and household energy bills approach £3,500 ($4,000) per year.
Their demands [in summary] are: increase the national minimum wage, slash energy bills, end food poverty, provide decent homes for all; and make the rich pay their fair share by raising taxes on the wealthiest and the profits of big businesses. …
Teaching assistant Farzana Khanom, who took part in the London protest, said she was having to choose between paying rising energy bills and investing in her career. “But if we come together and make our voices heard then perhaps we can make a difference.” … (Source: Common Dreams; The Guardian, UK; wesayenough.co.uk)
Professor Jeffrey Sachs is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst. He is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development and the fight against poverty. Felicity Eliot interviewed him for Share International on 9 October 2022.
Share International: The prevailing narrative about the war in Ukraine goes like this: one side is pure evil, the other side is all good. Common sense and history might beg to differ. How do you see this?
Jeffrey Sachs: This is a war between two super-powers with Ukraine in the middle. On the one side the United States wants to push its military alliance, NATO, not only up to the border with Russia but throughout the Black Sea. For 30 years Russia has been saying: ‘Stop moving your military alliance eastward.’ On the other side, Russia, after 1991 with the break-up of the Soviet Union when Ukraine became an independent country, has seen ongoing struggles and border wars. Ukraine is a war with two distinct aspects to it. One is the internal divisions of politics in Ukraine – the Ukrainian-speaking west and the Russian-speaking south east. There have been tensions there since 1991. But then, and to my view disastrously, the United States stuck its nose into this situation in a most provocative way by saying, in 2008, that Ukraine will become part of the US-led military alliance. That was known by European leaders to be reckless and provocative but the US is so powerful that it gets its way and European leaders don’t say in public what they say in private.
This got a lot worse in 2014. The pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych, who was maintaining a sort of delicate stability, said that Ukraine should be neutral. But he was overthrown. The Western narrative was that he was overthrown by mass public protests. The Russian version is that he was pushed out in a US-led coup. … This event completely destabilized Ukraine in both the internal and the international aspects, because the new pro-US Ukrainian government announced that they wanted to join NATO.
SI: How did the US respond?
JS: They obligingly started pouring in billions of dollars of armaments. And the Russians kept saying “Don’t do that!” Russia took Crimea back because that’s where their naval base is, and where there’s a Russian-speaking population. And the US ratcheted things up. In fact we had already entered into a proxy war back in 2014. And since we don’t have sensible people on both sides things just got worse.
In 2021, Putin said: “You’re arming our neighbour; this is incredibly provocative. We need to stop NATO enlargement — this is a core threat to our security.” The US response was: “We don’t have to talk to you.” That was the end of diplomacy. And in February this year Russia invaded. …
SI: Given the tensions and the positions taken who is there who could negotiate? Is Turkey still a possibility and what role could China play?
JS: Yes, Turkey is still an effective mediator and other countries too. China could be a good mediator; China doesn’t want this war but it also believes Russia has legitimate security interests at stake. And that’s true. India, too, could be constructive as well as Indonesia. But the main thing that should happen now is that President Biden should pick up the phone and speak to President Putin because this is utterly destructive for us all, and we need to find a way out of this mess. That is the job of the President of the United States. …
SI: Do you think there’s a role for the peace community? What needs to happen?
JS: The peace community needs to speak to each government to demand they raise their voices for negotiations. It just needs to make the point — ‘Do not destroy this planet!’ The peace community can say to the UN General Assembly: vote a unanimous resolution for negotiations. Let’s see who’s against negotiation. Let’s put it to a vote; let’s really see. What? The United States is going to vote against a resolution?! Really? Let’s see that. This is what should happen right now.
The whole world is party to this. We all have a stake in this situation. We can’t let two or three or 10 men — and it’s usually men — determine the outcome of the planet. We need everyone to raise their voices. We need to say: “No! We are not going to end the world over a debate about Donbas, Crimea and NATO enlargement. We’re going to find a way out that doesn’t blow up the planet.” That seems pretty basic to me, and the peace community can play a huge role and should be out on the streets, and communicating with government leaders, urging them to come to their senses and stop this madness before it gets completely out of hand. …
November 2022
Full contents of the printed edition
- The Master —: Preparing the future
- John Feffer: Humanity’s greatest challenge: Coming together to fight the climate emergency
- Luc Guillory: The hidden history of American oligarchy by Thom Hartmann (review)
- Meditation and the soul — a compilation
- Wise words and a New Vision
- S.O.P. — Save Our Planet: Thousands of young people demand “climate reparations and justice” in global protests
- The voice of the people: ‘Enough is Enough’ — Hundreds of thousands protest cost of living in UK
- Signs of the time: Signs in the skies
- Ana Swierstra Bie: You matter more than you think (book review)
- Felicity Eliot: “A clash of arrogance” — Interview with Professor Jeffrey Sachs
- Wilson Odhiambo: Bringing specialist telemedicine to children of rural Kenya
- Julia Conley: Protests in 40+ US cities demand de-escalation as poll shows surging fear of nuclear war
- Letters to the editor: Playful travelling companion
- Benjamin Creme: Questions and answers
