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Uskokoon, ken tahtoo...

This week has come encouraging news for anyone with an interest in signs and wonders, or desperate for a chink of light in the prevailing gloom, which probably means most of us: a saviour is at hand.
 

By Mick Brown
Last Updated: 8:18PM GMT 19 Dec 2008

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According to the Share International News Service, in a press release captioned Christmas Miracle, a "large bright star" will be appearing in the sky sometime over the next few days, or weeks, heralding the appearance on "a major US television programme" of the new World Teacher, Maitreya, who will be ushering in a new age of peace, wisdom and understanding. And not before time, I hear you say.

Share International is the organisation founded by Benjamin Creme, the Scottish painter and clairvoyant, and Britain's most redoubtable millenarian, who has been prophesying the coming of Maitreya for the past 26 years.

He is an erstwhile Theosophist and student of Alice Bailey, whose writings in the 1920s talked of the coming of "the Cosmic Christ". In 1982, Mr Creme took out full page advertisements in newspapers around the world to announce that Maitreya had arrived in London on a flight from Pakistan, having descended from the Himalayan redoubt where he had been living with a community of ascended Masters, who are watching over Mankind with a concerned eye, and was living among the Asian community.

Mr Creme was told this by one of the Masters, with whom he has been in telepathic communication since 1959 when the Master contacted Mr Creme while he was sitting in the bath.

The announcement of Maitreya's arrival in London occasioned some excitement among newspapers. But when he failed to materialise, they promptly forgot all about Mr Creme. He is, however, one of the world's great and indefatigable optimists. Undeterred, at the age of 86 he continues to travel the world, lecturing about the coming of the Maitreya, and publishing his not-for-profit magazine Share International.

I have known Mr Creme for a number of years, and like him enormously. He lives in a modest semi-detached house in Tuffnell Park, north London, with his wife Phyllis, a lecturer. He has a built a shed at the bottom of the garden where a group assembles twice a week for "transmission meditation". I remember asking him if I might speak to his Master. "Ask away," he said. I posed a question. Mr Creme was silent for a moment, cocking his head to his Master's voice, then gave a chuckle. "The Masters," he explained, "have a wonderful sense of humour." He then gave me my reply. It was an odd moment.

Maitreya has proved remarkably reluctant to reveal himself. In 1988 he reportedly made a fleeting appearance at a prayer meeting in Nairobi. Since then he has preferred to travel incognito. When I contacted Mr Creme this week (by nothing more miraculous than telephone) to inquire about the imminent appearance, he told me that his Master was able to confirm that the star would be appearing shortly, would be seen by everybody throughout the world and that "around a week" after that Maitreya would be making his appearance on American television. Did he know on what programme? "I do. But I'm not allowed to say."

When I put it to Mr Creme that the timing of the bright star's appearance seemed to have a particularly seasonal resonance, he replied: "That's why we're calling it a Christmas Miracle."

I'm not sure what to make of all this. But in the interests of balance, I consulted "The Rapture Index" - "The prophetic speedometer of end-time activity" - which is run by a fundamentalist Christian named Todd Strandberg, a former US air force supply sergeant who lives in Nebraska.

While Mr Creme sees the new age of enlightenment arriving relatively painlessly, The Rapture Index takes an apocalyptic view of the future, regularly totting up all the factors necessary for the final, cataclysmic judgment – war, famine, financial meltdown, "Beast Government" and "false Christs" among them. At this moment, true believers will ascend to heaven in "the Rapture", leaving the rest of us to... well, you really don't want to know.

The current reading of the Rapture Index is 156 points. This constitutes "Heavy prophetic activity" – not good, but still a few reassuring notches below the threshold of 160, when you are advised to "Fasten your seat belts".

None the less, I shall be watching the skies closely over the next few weeks.