Abstract
Notably informed by the Theosophical tradition, the Scottish esotericist Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) emphatically places Maitreya at the centre of his millenarian project. In the first half of the chapter, Creme’s bio-/hagiography is introduced and the Buddhist origins of the Maitreya narrative delineated. Next, the Theosophical appropriations of Maitreya most influential for Creme’s millenarianism are outlined, touching on the likes of Helena P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Charles W. Leadbeater, Helena Roerich, and Alice A. Bailey. The second half of the chapter elaborates Creme’s notion of both the World Teacher Maitreya and the soon-to-unfold millennium or Age of the Group this Christ of the Aquarian Age is held to usher in through the Day of Declaration. The chapter concludes with theoretical reflections on Creme’s millenarian thought.
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Notes
- 1.
Borrowing notably from Bailey and her Triangles (Meditation) started in 1937, Transmission Meditation is a practice introduced by Creme with the aim to downscale cosmic energies given by the Space Brothers and released to Earth by the Hierarchy in order to facilitate humankind’s spiritual evolution. Transmission Meditation groups represent the only platform for real-life member interaction.
- 2.
Assigning initiatory levels and—drawing on Bailey’s A Treatise on the Seven Rays (1936)—“ray structure” (i.e., energetic) compositions to historical (and mythical) personalities, has been a trademark of Creme. In Theosophical soteriology, initiation refers to “the process of undergoing an expansion of consciousness” (Bailey 1977 [1922]: 12) in a multi-stage scheme. The higher one’s spiritual progress (or level of self-realisation of one’s own divinity) geared towards reaching oneness with the Supreme Logos of the Cosmos, the higher one’s initiatory score. According to Creme, the average level of present-day humankind is 0.3-degrees of initiation, allowing ordinary people to employ some twelve per cent of his/her brain capacity. In contrast, a third-degree initiate could already utilise some sixty to seventy per cent (Creme 2010: 134). Mastership is attained with the fifth initiation. Accomplishing the first initiation may take several hundreds of thousands of reincarnations. It speeds up thereafter. Currently, around 2300–2400 people in incarnation are supposed to have taken the third initiation, and circa 450 the fourth one (Creme 2006: 32–33).
- 3.
Among the Theosopically minded figures other than Blavatsky and Roerich, Creme only considers Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986; 4.0) to be ahead in spiritual terms. Yet, he rather views Krishnamurti as a “spiritual teacher” entrenched in the (neo-)Hindu context, which Creme took as a hotbed for spiritual grandeur as expressed through the extraordinary spiritual stats given to various of its exponents. The list of spiritually exceptional Hindu masters peaks in the person of Sathya Sai Baba, Earth’s Spiritual Regent deputising for Sanat Kumara, the reflection of the Planetary Logos.
- 4.
In the later tradition, “Ajita” became an epithet of Maitreya.
- 5.
Traditionally, the place where the designated next Buddha awaits his last transmigration.
- 6.
Blavatsky divided human evolution alongside seven “root races,” each of which consists of seven “sub-races.” Humankind has arrived at the fifth sub-race (the “European”) of the fifth root race (the “Aryan”), which has been around for one million years. The sixth sub-race will come forth in a few hundred years, branching from the Americans. The seventh sub-race will slowly start to develop in some 25,000 years from now (cf. Santucci 2008; Lubelsky 2013).
- 7.
In Isis Unveiled (1877), the Maitree’s [sic] emergence qua saviour (Blavatsky 1877: 286) involves a catastrophic millenarian scenario: “When Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed; and a new and better one will replace it” (ibid.: 275). This original apocalyptic-messianic vision was upheld for several years among some Theosophists. For example, in 1885, Navroji Dorabji Khandalavala still stated that “the fifth Buddha (Maitree) will appear at his last advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world” (Khandalavala 1885: 91).
- 8.
Its sister department is that of Ruling, overseen by another greatly evolved being (hailing from Blavatskian teachings), the Manu. As Besant has it: “[T]he Ruling Department, which guides all natural evolution, changes the face of the surface of our globe, builds and destroys continents, raises fresh races which grow mightier and pass away, controls the destinies of nations, shapes the fate of civilisations, balances up from time to time the great accounts between the races and the nations, and rules the outer destinies of men” (Besant 1912: 94–95).
- 9.
Apart from his direct innovative interventions, a World Teacher would also commission his disciples to spread new contextualised articulations of the same one truth—chief examples being Confucius, “Lao-tse,” Plato, and Pythagoras. The latter is considered to be no one else than Master K. H. (Koot Hoomi; Kuthumi), deemed the real co-founder, alongside Master M. (Morya), of the Theosophical Society, whose creation is meant to pioneer the new great religion of future humanity. Besant claimed that M. (the designated Manu of the sixth root race) was also her Master (likewise, Blavatsky and Olcott were his disciples), whereas Leadbeater was the disciple of K. H., Maitreya’s deputy and successor-in-waiting.
- 10.
Atlantis is thought to resurface in 800–900 years, at a time when large parts of America and Europe will sink beneath the oceans.
- 11.
Hierarchical meetings normally take place every century. Adjustments, however, may also be made by Maitreya singlehandedly at any given time. Such occurred, for example, with respect to the Krishnamurti episode, who was indeed (alongside a few others) prepared as a vessel for Maitreya. Yet, ultimately, Maitreya decided to create his own body.
- 12.
Its complementary principle is the Energy of Wisdom, personified in its exclusivity through the Buddha.
- 13.
Creme does not mention who the first was.
- 14.
Since 1989, the Master Jesus resides in Rome influencing the Vatican. Notably, he also had a formative influence on Islam by overshadowing Muhammad over four years.
- 15.
It is projected that the Forces of Evil will be completely obliterated in the Age of Capricorn (SI 6:3 [1987a April]: 19).
- 16.
Surprisingly, upon Maitreya’s request to end World War II, Sanat Kumara approved to give the Allied scientists access to the nuclear bomb technology.
- 17.
For the next few hundred years, all members of the Hierarchy deliberately take male form due to “energetic reasons.” That is to say, up until this time they need to entrench themselves within the positive aspect of the energy that makes up the Earth. Reflections, however, may be female.
- 18.
Whereas the fourfold Maitreya Star is truly spacecraft from Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, Creme disclosed that Maitreya also operates his own UFO, the “Light-Ship.” Occasionally, Maitreya takes people in there to show them a temporal panorama where past and future coalesce. This would be how Masters experience reality detached from a linear flow of time. Creme, too, was taken on board when he was requested to work on behalf of the Hierarchy (Creme 2010: 102–103).
- 19.
Similarly, regularly reciting The Great Invocation , a mantra given by Maitreya to Bailey in 1945 and uttered by practitioners at the beginning of Transmission Meditation gatherings, would speed up the materialisation of the Day of Declaration. Its other key function is to set up a telepathic link to the Hierarchy, notifying the Masters about the start of the meditation (Creme 2001b).
- 20.
Creme adds an ontological dimension to the initiation process, which he deems a “gradual spiritualization of matter by the soul. Each initiation records and stabilizes a higher vibration and confers a growing proportion of light to the vehicles” (Creme 1996: 187). In fact, humans would consist of light only (Creme 2010: 44), so initiation may rather be seen as an uncloaking of one’s real ontic and epistemic nature.
- 21.
The trajectory set towards unity will likewise bring together humankind and the Mineral and Animal Kingdoms, which, too, greatly progress. Ubiquitous vegetarianism will be one implication.
- 22.
More often than not, avertive millenarianism (i.e., preventing the catastrophic scenario by adhering to the rule of sharing and the wider Share International doctrine for the sake of a progressive transformation) is an explicitly negated possibility. The argument is commonly as follows: Humankind stands at a millenarian crossroad facing a choice, which will indubitably be made it in the right way, that is, by “accepting” Maitreya and adopting his proposed course of action. Free will and Karmic Law might of course relativise this certainty but only to some extent because Sanat Kumara, the Hierarchy, and the Space Brothers would not tolerate humankind’s nuclear self-extinction (being the greatest threat in Creme’s view) or otherwise cosmically caused annihilation. Some sort of self-inflicted larger-scale decimation other than due to another World War, however, remains if only a vastly implicit possibility.
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Pokorny, L. (2021). The Theosophical Maitreya: On Benjamin Creme’s Millenarianism. In: Pokorny, L., Winter, F. (eds) The Occult Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_10
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