ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes Benjamin Creme’s life and his role as herald of the Maitreya. It examines Wouter Hanegraaff’s notion of the ‘Theosophical imagination’ in relation both to Blavatsky and later Theosophists, and argues that Creme’s overshadowed messages from Maitreya and his Master were received in an altered state of consciousness, in which the products of Creme’s imagination were experienced as real. Maitreya’s coming had been foreshadowed in 1975 by the appearance of five Masters or members of the spiritual hierarchy in New York, London, Geneva, Darjeeling and Tokyo. The reappearance of the Christ would not only signal the start of the Aquarian Age, it would also set in motion the ‘externalisation’ of some forty other Masters of the hierarchy. For Creme, the Maitreya reappeared, albeit incognito, in 1977, when New Age spiritual seekers were promoting the love, peace and brotherhood Bailey had considered a prerequisite for the reappearance of the Christ.
