The History of Share International

Bronwyn Rideout - 6 January 2025

Share International is an interesting offshoot of Theosophy, putting a space-age twist on the works of Alice Bailey and Helena Roerich. Established by Scottish painter Benjamin Creme in 1974, Share has many of the same goals as Bailey’s Lucis Trust and associated organisations: pooling spiritual energy to help humanity, and receiving guidance from the Ascended Masters. What makes Share International unique amongst its neo-theosophical kin is its heavy focus on the emergence of a specific Ascended Master called Maitreya, who will supposedly resolve the world’s various ills. The Ascended Masters are not alone in their work, as UFOs and crop circles are signs that various space brothers are assisting them in their rescue of Earth. Creme has made numerous statements and predictions on Maitreya’s behalf, many about his full public emergence, and almost none of which came true. However, that has not stopped Share International from claiming that all and sundry weather phenomena and tricks of the light are evidence of his continued presence. I’ll try to give a brief profile and history of Share International, one of the more spiritual UFO groups that exist today.

Benjamin Creme

Benjamin Creme was born on December 5th, 1922, to an Irish mother and a Russian-Jewish father. He initially wanted to become a composer, before turning his attention to painting. His parents were unsupportive of his painting, but he became positively regarded for his abstract and surrealist works, and had his work exhibited in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Creme has artwork in Scotland’s National Galleries archive, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and even after his death his paintings continued to grab attention. In 2019 a bundle of 1,300 of Creme’s signed lithographs, valued at £600,000, was recovered from the storage locker of a deceased art collector. The bundle, along with an additional 1,000 unframed prints that remain missing, was reported stolen in 2012.

Creme was interested in spiritual matters from his teen years, and through the 1950s he read the works of Blavatsky, Bailey, Charles Leadbeater, George Gurdjieff and more, as well as many neo-Hindu writers that were also popular with new-age practitioners of the era. His interest in UFOs grew simultaneously upon reading the works of George Adamski and Desmond Leslie, which convinced him that flying saucers were not experimental military aircraft. In his first book, The Reappearance of The Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, Creme vaguely refers to working with a society involved with the UFO phenomenon from 1957 to 1958. It is well-known that the group in question is George King’s Aetherius Society, another theosophy-inspired new age group in which he served as their vice president. During his time with the Aetherius Society, Creme would learn about the space people (or brothers as they are often referred to) and how to establish telepathic contact with them. The reasons for his departure from the Aetherius society are unclear, aside from a supposed disagreement with King. Still, he had begun acting as a channeler between the space brothers and UFO contactees, and was alleged to have a working relationship with Adamski.

Creme’s connection with the Ascended Masters began in 1959, when he claims to have received telepathic messages from an entity he would only refer to as Master. Creme never disclosed who this particular Ascended Master was, as the entity did not want their identity to be revealed; all Creme would say was that this Master was well known amongst esotericists. All of these transmissions were tape-recorded, but Creme allegedly did nothing with these recordings for the next 17 years, and communications with the Master also ceased until 1972. At that time, Creme’s Master decided that his training would commence. Training for what? Announcing the arrival of the Master’s own Master, Maitreya, as the World Teacher.

Who is the World Teacher?

In Theosophy, the World Teacher describes an entity that is known by different names in different religions. What we may know of as Christ, Bodhisattva, or Imam Mahdi are all a specific Ascended Master called Maitreya. Maitreya’s role was to transmit the knowledge of the Masters to humankind as part of their continual spiritual evolution. Maitreya could manifest into a physical body on Earth, and early 20th-century theosophists were sure that Maitreya’s appearance on Earth was imminent. In my series on channelers, I briefly wrote about one Indian boy who was thought to be this World Teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, until he parted ways with theosophy as a young man after the death of his brother. Alice Bailey, being a bit more clever, connected Maitreya’s reappearance on earth with the great conclave that the spiritual hierarchy will have in 2025 - if the Ascended Masters think we are ready, then humanity will advance; otherwise, we have to continue working towards unity and peace.

Maitreya doesn’t need to create a new body to manifest on earth. Instead, he can overshadow or telepathically control an existing person. Besant, Leadbeater, and Creme claimed that Maitreya was manifesting or overshadowing Jesus during the final years of his ministry. Creme explained the circumstances as:

From the baptism when the Christ consciousness descended on Jesus…who was a disciple then, a fourth degree initiate, and is now a very advanced Master, a 6th degree initiate- for three years to the crucifixion when Jesus died on the cross, he overshadowed him. So when people saw Jesus they saw the body of Jesus but usually, not all the time, heard and responded to the teaching and influence of the mind of Maitreya.

Not surprisingly, Creme and the theosophists draw considerable criticism from evangelical Christians for their heresy.

Who are the Ascended Masters and their initiates?

You can read about the Ascended Masters on Wikipedia, and I touched on the initiate system in my channelling series.

Creme’s Ascended Masters align with Blavatsky and Bailey, but he went further in assigning ranks to various living and dead individuals. Initiates are humans or ascended humans who work with the Masters, gradually achieving self-realisation about their own divinity. Everyone on earth, according to Creme, was an initiate of some level. The average human being was 0.3, using about 12% of their brain capacity. Level 1 initiates had overcome their physical impulses, but were still controlled by their feelings; Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth the First, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Cecil Rhodes were in this category. Creme labelled himself a level 3.46 initiate, meaning that the soul had more control of his mind. This placed him below Helena Blavatsky (a 4.0 initiate), but comparable to the prophet Muhammad (3.4) and Francis of Assisi (3.5), and above other theosophical notables like Alice Bailey (3.2), Charles Leadbeater (2.4), and Annie Besant (2.15).

Share International also explains why there are no female Masters - a touchy subject, in light of modern sensibilities. Masters take a male body in their last incarnation for energetic reasons, and female Masters are not expected to appear for another 500 years, as the energy of the world is currently under transformation. However, the souls of the Masters themselves are neither male nor female, and the equilibrium of their energy is more important to the world.

1972-1977

Maitreya began to engraft himself onto Creme’s consciousness, in the process called overshadowing - where a divine presence can overtake the personality and body of an individual. While Creme would still have primary control over his body, Maitreya could watch everything Creme did and saw, while also taking control of Creme’s body to speak to followers. In 1974, Creme began teaching transmission meditation to a small group of 12-14 followers. Like the Triangle groups from Bailey’s Arcane school, transmission meditation promises that the Ascended Masters can direct energy from the higher planes and through the chakras. And, acting as power transformers, practitioners would transmit the converted energy to the rest of the world.

In 1977, Creme received further communication from Maitreya, announcing that he had finally manifested a physical body in the Himalayas. Despite having the power to teleport, Maitreya would use a standard aeroplane to his new domicile. By mid-July, Maitreya was ensconced with the Pakistani community in Brick Lane, and worked as a porter in a local hospital. At the same time, Creme began expanding transmission meditation outside his initial devotees.

1982 and beyond

1982 would be a watershed year for Creme, bringing him fame and making him a subject of ridicule. This was the year he founded the Share International Foundation and released its organisation’s magazine.

The most important date, however, was May 14th. At a press conference in Los Angeles with almost 100 journalists in attendance, Creme announced that Maitreya was alive and living in an Indian-Pakistani immigrant community. Then Creme stated that before June 21st 1982, Maitreya would reveal himself to all mankind worldwide on television and radio. Creme had already spent $340,000 NZD to advertise Maitreya’s arrival in newspapers worldwide; the funds for this endeavour had been provided by followers in the US, Britain, and the Netherlands. Despite the initial curiosity, Maitreya never made his primetime debut. Allegedly, Maitreya postponed his reveal due to the forces of evil and lack of media interest, much to the disappointment of journalists who had bothered to search for him.

But that didn’t stop Creme, as he spent the decades leading up to his death in 2016 making similar claims about the arrival of Maitreya and pointing out evidence of the Master’s influence on world politics. The hit rate of Maitreya’s prophecies was mixed; he predicted the release of Nelson Mandela and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher months before they occurred, while also asserting that Prince Charles would be crowned as King during the 1980s. In 1988, the mysterious appearance of a tall, white-robed gentleman in the middle of an open-air prayer meeting in Nairobi caused a stir. While locals referred to the man as Jesus, Creme quickly took the event as a manifestation of Maitreya, citing the reports of light emanating from the stranger’s head and feet as part of his flimsy evidence.

The Day of Declaration, and a very naughty boy

It’s challenging to put together a timeline of Creme’s evolving thoughts around the Day of Declaration. He published 14 books from the late 1970s to the 2000s, but each book had new claims about what Maitreya said and when. In his 2001 book, Creme claimed that between June 1988 and 1991, Maitreya had made several prophecies about the stock market crash and had a significant criterion humanity had to meet before he reappeared: A global stock market collapse, starting in Japan, before spreading worldwide. However, Black Monday occurred in October 1987, and Creme was likely tapping into global economic anxieties with these claims.

From 1980 onwards, Creme explained the timeline and events leading up to the day that Maitreya would declare himself to the world. Each time there was a new detail, but by the 2000s the day of declaration was as follows: About a week before Maitreya’s emergence, a large and bright star will shine day and night. Then, he will be interviewed on a major US network, not as a World Teacher but as a simple man. Throughout that week, he will be interviewed by multiple networks and attract more attention from the public. Then, on Declaration Day, he will overshadow all humans, fully revealing himself, the hierarchy, and his plan for humanity.

At first glance, the Nairobi Jesus incident fits the bill relative to Creme’s comments. After the 1988 event, there were reports that a bright star had been observed in the sky prior, but the appearance of the Nairobi Jesus and the bright star were soon explained. It may have missed Creme’s and Share International’s notice over the years, but the prophetess who had organised the prayer and healing event is now a known fraud. It was later revealed that the man was a Sikh who had converted to Christianity. And the silvery object that was seen? A weather balloon allegedly flew by the area every day at around 1:30pm.

In January 2010, Creme announced that Maitreya had just appeared on American TV without revealing his true identity. Followers quickly zoned in on Raj Patel, a British economist and author who kinda matched the details about Maitreya that Creme had dropped over the years and was on a press junket for his book, The Value of Nothing, which was a critique of Western capitalism. Patel’s appearance on the Colbert Show and his book brought Patel a sudden fandom that he never expected. Both Creme and Patel published articles stating that Patel was certainly not the messiah.

UFOs, the cosmos, and the coming of Maitreya

While Creme’s time with the Aetherius Society was brief, it was an important starting point for Creme. It provided him with his first public speaking opportunities, and introduced him to the concept of space brothers. The space brothers are advanced beings from other planets, mainly Mars and Venus, collaborating on a solar system plan. UFOs, according to Creme, are real and do a considerable service to Earth by mopping up the nuclear energy that has polluted Earth’s etheric planes. The space brothers are also future-proofing Earth’s magnetic energy field ahead of the upgrade it will receive once Maitreya emerges, giving us unlimited energy direct from the sun. Crop circles are interpreted as points on the grid created by the space brothers when they stop in, and the majority of these circles occur in England because Maitreya is in England.

Not by two pranksters named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley or the modern mischief makers they inspired.

The space brothers have other signs to show that they are nearby. First is the 2008 appearance of a bright star-like object in the sky, as mentioned above with the Day of Declaration. However, this is not a star but a group of spaceships from one of four planets, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and another that Creme did not disclose. They may disappear from the sky as they go directly to the sun to recharge their batteries, and their unusual behaviour is intended to attract attention before Maitreya’s emergence. Other popular signs include crosses of light or a series of light patterns that Share International could not attribute to normal light reflection.

Fortunately, science comes to the rescue here. Researchers from two universities in Germany studied the phenomenon. They concluded that the increased use of double-pane windows increased the frequency of these sightings over recent decades. While the panes are parallel during construction, they only remain that way if the outside pressure and the temperature stay consistent with the initial manufacturing conditions. If not, the panes will curve and with a low, shining sun and one side of the street perpendicular to the sunlight, will create the shape seen in the above images.

Is this harmless?

Wytza Hoekstra, writing for The Press in 1982, described the appeal of Creme’s message as something of a balm for the time. The promise of someone or something that could bring peace in a time of anxiety of nuclear war was one lure. But Hoekstra also noted that, unlike other sects at the time, Creme’s play at being the reluctant mouthpiece rather than demanding devotion was a point of difference. Creme wasn’t peddling catastrophes or prophecies of doom - he was offering hope and a bright future instead. Share International’s message of global unity, redistribution of resources, justice, and world peace is appealing, a message that many can get behind, with the bonus of not being required to worship Creme or any human in particular.

There are scant records out there of children who grew up in Share International. An anonymous blogger wrote about being the child of two of Creme’s inner circle members. They felt that Creme truly believed in what he was doing, and was not helping the world out of self-interest. There was no physical violence with Share, but the blogger reported spiritual and mental harm. This harm included the pressure to conform to the group’s ideas, being locked into a static notion of truth, and the belief that the physical experiences they had during meditations meant that the leader was correct about the transmission of energies from the Masters.

Like many groups that are labelled as a New Religion Movement, Share has a stated mission to help the world; a very good goal to have! But, for a group that champions connection with advanced alien races, their knowledge about science and history is surprisingly poor. Even for a UFO group, their credulity is worrisome. As with any group that has lost their guru, the organisation is in a sink or swim phase of their existence - there have been no meaningful updates to the material they have on their website, and no new interpretations or sightings of Maitreya. While there are criticisms and sly remarks made about Share, the group has escaped the kind of outright enmity directed towards Scientology and other UFO groups. Where I’d normally expect complaints from the children and grandchildren, harm against the 2nd and 3rd generation members currently appears to be limited. Still, it would be interesting to hear from more adults who grew up in Share households.