Background

Ethnicity: Benjamin Creme was the son of an Irish mother and a Russian Jewish father.

Benjamin Creme was born on December 5, 1922, in Glasgow. He was the second of three children.

Education

Benjamin Creme left school at 16 to paint. Too young to get into Glasgow School of Art, he attended life classes there. At 17, he no longer wished to go to art school as he felt he had already become a "modern painter" and found the School of Art too academic.

Career

Benjamin Creme's involvement with art became all-consuming. At the age of sixteen, he decided to leave school to devote all of his energies to painting. He attended life classes, joined a painting club, and, as he said, "painted day and night." Although initially drawn to abstract expression, he used this time to hone his drawing skills. So, in 1940, to his mounting his first exhibition, with his good friend Douglas Campbell at a Trade Union Club in Glasgow.

The 1940s witnessed something of a hotbed in Glasgow and London for developing young artists. In 1942, Benjamin Creme and Robert Frame, another young Glasgow painter, illustrated a book of poetry, Cage Without Grievance, by William Sydney Graham. In 1950, Creme visited the south of France for the first time and, perhaps not entirely unlike northern European painters before him, was moved and inspired by "the light, the color, and the abstract shapes which came out of that landscape." The new surroundings prompted a significant modification to his palette.

In 1952 an exhibition devoted entirely to Benjamin Creme's work was staged at the Gallery Apollinaire in London. He was invited to show at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. During this time, Benjamin Creme continued his work in landscape, his art increasingly featuring more stylized and abstract figures, establishing a trend that would continue throughout the decade. In 1963, he created the designs for a film production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Douglas Campbell and John Barnes. It was also at this time that a stylistic development began to take shape in his painting, a progress that would determine the direction his art took from that point on.

In 1975 he held a personal exhibition at the New Dartington Gallery, Devon, and in 1979 showed paintings at The Art of the Invisible exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts gallery in London. In 1985, several earlier works were purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, and later by the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.

Benjamin Creme became attracted to theosophical literature, especially the writings of Alice Bailey. In the 1950s, he also joined the Aetherius Society, an occult-oriented flying saucer contact group founded by George King, in which he learned a form of meditation called "transmission" meditation. In 1974 Creme began to lecture extensively on the subject throughout Europe and North America. Also, in 1974 Creme formed Share International Foundation, a group to prepare for the coming of the Christ, and according to Creme, messages, and contacts, with the Christ took place soon afterward.

Benjamin Creme predicted the appearance of Christ in 1982. He offered many hints to the press as to where he could be found. Some journalists searched the Indian community in London for him, but the person did not appear. Creme subsequently claimed that "materialistic forces, seen and unseen, planetary and cosmic" had opposed the appearance, and a decision was made to postpone the appearance. Afterward, he was dismissed by many people, and through the remainder of the 1980s, he redirected the program of the Share International Foundation and made few public appearances. In the 1990s, he again made announcements of the presence of Maitreya. Creme has even published photographs of his appearances to different groups around the world.

Benjamin Creme has published several books about the reappearance of the Christ. In 1979 he published his first book, The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, and went on to write fifteen more related titles. Also, he was an editor of Share International magazine. In his remaining decades, Creme continued to divide his time between his artwork and the demands of international lecturing on spiritual matters, editing, and publishing.

Achievements

• Benjamin Creme was widely known as an artist, writer, and esotericist. Working under the tutelage of one of the Masters of Wisdom, he dedicated the last forty years of his life to working for the Emergence of Maitreya the World Teacher and the Masters of Wisdom. Creme inspired hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Also, he was a founder of the Share International Foundation in 1974. As a writer, Creme authored more than a decade of books, which have translated into many languages. Additionally, Benjamin Creme's works appeared in places such as the Gallery Apollinaire and Contemporary Arts gallery in London, New Dartington Gallery in Devon, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, and the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Maitreya's Teachings

    (A unique and diverse collection of insights from Maitreya...)

    2005
  • The Great Approach

    (This prophetic book addresses the problems of our chaotic...)

    2001
  • The Art of Co-Operation

    (The Art of Co-operation deals with the most pressing prob...)

    2002
  • Messages from Maitreya the Christ

    (Maitreya's Messages of sharing, co-operation, and unity i...)

    1980
  • The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom

    (In this first book, Benjamin Creme made the startling ann...)

    1980
  • A Master Speaks

    (The major purpose of these articles is to draw attention ...)

    1985
  • The World Teacher for All Humanity

    (As Maitreya, the World Teacher stands poised ready to eme...)

    2007
  • Transmission

    (In Transmission - a Meditation for the New Age, Creme exp...)

    1983
  • The Ageless Wisdom Teaching

    (An introduction to that great body of wisdom which substa...)

    1996
  • The Art of Living

    (In The Art of Living, Benjamin Creme considers the experi...)

    2006
  • The Awakening of Humanity

    (Maitreya, the World Teacher, is living among us now, unkn...)

    2008
  • Maitreya's Mission

    (The book describes the emergence and teachings of Maitrey...)

    1986

• painting

  • Beacon

    1969

  • Thangka for the coming Buddha Maitreya

    1965

  • Solar Wind

    1964

  • Sequence

    1969

  • Solar Angel III

    1990

  • Antahkarana I

    1964

  • Solar Fire

    1964

  • Kundalini Rising

    1965

  • Embedded

    1968

  • Alpine Peaks

    1961

  • Snow on Hills

    1961

  • Woman

    1957

  • Still Life

    1956

  • Girl Resting

    1954

  • Western Coast

    1953

  • Prophet

    1942

  • Vision

    1961

  • Woman

    1944

  • Ancient Moral

    1965

  • New World

    1984

  • Lotus

    1974

  • Cosmic Fire

    1964

  • Aspiration

    1968

  • Open Mandala

    1972

  • Flame Coloured Deva

    1977

  • Polarity

    1973

  • Shakti II

    1964

  • The Flaming Diamond

    1974

  • Chalice

    1974

Views

Throughout the 1950s, Benjamin Creme was in direct contact with the Great White Brotherhood, the assembly of beings believed by Theosophists to guide the destiny of humankind. Creme claimed that in 1959 he received a telepathic communication from his own master, a member of the divine hierarchy, who told him that he would have a part to play in the return of Maitreya, the Christ. (In Theosophy, the person who walked the earth as Jesus, and is called the Christ by Christians, is identified as Maitreya, the bodhisattva whom many Buddhists expect to appear soon.) A constant and conscious telepathic link was established with this master, by which Creme received precise and up-to-date information about the reappearance of the Christ, which Bailey had predicted to occur toward the end of the twentieth century.

Quotations: "Life is not about making money. It is about enhancing the quality of life for every single being so that they go from physical satisfaction to astral satisfaction to mental satisfaction to growing spiritual satisfaction, up and up and up, all the way. It's all spiritual."

"There are five stages of meditation, each one leading gradually into the next: concentration, meditation, contemplation, illumination, and inspiration."

"Think of the problem of the world as a cart. It has to have two wheels. If you have one wheel, the cart doesn't go. If you have one wheel called socialism, it doesn't go. If you have only one wheel called capitalism, it doesn't go. It needs two wheels. These two wheels are capitalism and socialism."

"The New Religion will manifest, for instance, through organizations like Masonry. In Freemasonry is embedded the core or the secret heart of the occult mysteries, wrapped up on number, metaphor, and symbol."

"It's an utter, utter necessity to renounce war forever. And nothing new can be built until this is done."

"Each one of us is Divine. We've come from a great Divine source. We are each of us a spark of the Divine. That spark could not demonstrate itself at the dense, physical level, so it reflects itself at the soul level."

"The wars of today, the terrorism of today, are the result of injustice, and that injustice is the Outcome of our greedy, selfish, competitive way of working through commercialization and market forces."

Membership

• 

  Aetherius Society , United Kingdom

Interests

• Writers

  Alice Ann Bailey

• Artists

  Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Leonardo Da Vinci

Connections

Friend:

Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell was known for his long association with and many roles at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario and his starring role in the television series The Great Detective.

colleague:

Robert Aaron Frame

Robert Aaron Frame was an American artist.

colleague:

William Sydney Graham

William Sydney Graham was a Scottish poet who was often associated with Dylan Thomas and the neo-romantic group of poets.

colleague:

John Wadsworth Barnes

John Barnes was best known for producing, directing, and writing for Encyclopedia Britannica Films.

References

• Benjamin Creme Museum