[3] Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1922, Benjamin Creme’s life and work followed two distinct interests – art and esotericism – which eventually merged as a single path.

[6] Over the years, Creme befriended and collaborated with many fixtures of the time in British art, music, and literature, developing into a painter in the Modernist style.

[7][8] In direct parallel to his artistic exploration, Creme said he became interested in the occult at the age of fourteen, when he read With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel.

[9] Over the years, Creme studied the works of Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, as well as those of Charles Webster Leadbeater, Paul Brunton, George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky and Maurice Nicoll; along with Patanjali, Vivekananda, Sivananda, Yogananda, Krishnamurti, and Ramana Maharshi, all of whom described the existence of a kingdom beyond that of the Human.

[15][16] His central message announced the emergence of this group of enlightened spiritual teachers who would guide humanity forward into a new epoch, the Aquarian Age of peace and brotherhood, based on the principles of love and sharing.

"[20] After 1982, Creme made a number of additional predictions and announcements about the advent of Maitreya, based on his claims of receiving telepathic messages from a Master of Wisdom.

[20][22] Nonetheless, Creme wrote, "On 26 February 1987 Maitreya gave an interview to the major American television company, Cable News Network (CNN).

Soon afterwards, several people in the United States working from Creme's predictions concluded that the British-American economist and author Raj Patel was Maitreya.

[28] In speaking about his work, Creme said: "My job has been to make the initial approach to the public, to help create a climate of hope and expectancy.

[31] From 1957 to 1959 Creme was the vice-president of the Aetherius Society, an organization that maintained that UFOs existed and that the other planets in our solar system were inhabited and supported life, although Humanity had yet to develop etheric sight to ascertain this.

The organization's beliefs were based largely on Theosophy, which integrates the study of religion, philosophy, and science, branching not merely into the Occult but also cosmology.

In addition, Creme believed that the most highly evolved beings of Mars and Venus (that are visible only on the etheric level) have long played a role in not merely uplifting early animal-man, but also in protecting Humanity from its own self by sending UFOs to heal the Earth’s negativity and pollution.

"[42] Between 1989 and 1991, Creme's magazine Share International published a series of purported excerpts of talks given by Maitreya in the London area, recorded by a close associate, and then transmitted to two journalists, Patricha Pitchon and Brian James.

[43] Covering modern problems such as addiction, crime, and corruption, Maitreya's dialogues proposed the technique of "honesty of mind, sincerity of spirit and detachment" as the cure, leading to growing awareness.

[48][49][50] Some fundamentalist Evangelical Christian sources and other detractors accused Creme of being part of a satanic conspiracy and placed him among a number of "antichrist potentials".

[52] Creme stated,  "I have never presented Maitreya as a messiah figure who comes to make all things bright and beautiful for a supine humanity.