Interview with Benjamin Creme by Monte Leach (1992)

ML: We have certainly heard the people’s voice in the last few years, perhaps most dramatically in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But at the same time the people’s voice has been muted, if you will, in many areas — Yugoslavia, Somalia, Liberia and Haiti come to mind — where the social and political order has broken down. How are we to interpret these seemingly contradictory trends in world affairs today?

BC: Everything that we are seeing is the result of our response to great energies, mainly cosmic in source, which are playing upon humanity. These energies call forth various responses; humanity does not respond uniformly. Each one of us responds, conditioned by our own separate interests, ambitions and desires, individual and/or nationalistic. Hence, you have the plethora of nationalistic movements and ethnic demands now coming to the fore.

Looked at from the point of view of Maitreya, and the Spiritual Hierarchy of which He is the head, these movements and demands are legitimate but distorted reactions to the incoming energies. The energies are engendering a desire for freedom which now permeates the world. This desire is applauded when acted upon to overthrow an oppressive political regime as in the Soviet Union, China, Romania, and so on. But it is condemned, and of course rightly so, as the instigator of atrocities, fratricide and war in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. The same energies produce different responses.

ML: Would it be safe to say that, given these new influences, the general political trend in the world is a positive one? Are we headed in the right direction?

BC: In the short term, no; in the longer term, yes. If we had no outside help, humanity would be in dire straits because nearly everything that we are doing — politically, economically, and socially — is headed in the wrong direction. Our actions are leading inevitably to a breakdown of this civilization. All of our structures — political, economic, and social — are increasingly based on commercialization, whose agency is market forces. The major ‘god’ of the present day world is the market, that is, competition, which is based on greed. This approach is bringing humanity and this civilization to the very verge of selfdestruction.

But for the presence in the world of the Lord Maitreya and His group of Masters, I would fear a very bleak future indeed for humanity. I posit a very positive future for us, not because we are so wise, but because the Masters are wise.

ML: It seems that in the very recent past, with the end of the Cold War and so on, the political situation looked so positive. What has happened?

BC: It is not the political pressure; it is the economic pressure. The major divisions in the world today are economic. We are witnessing the end of three great totalitarianisms: political, economic, and eventually, religious. We have seen the beginning of the demise of political totalitarianism with the opening of the former Soviet Union by President Gorbachev’s programmes of glasnost and perestroika (under, I may say, the inspiration and guidance of the Lord Maitreya). This has created an entirely new situation in the world, and has inspired other groups to try to emulate that gesture towards freedom. This is the beginning of the end of political totalitarianism.

Economic totalitarianism still has the world in its grip. The major exponents of this totalitarianism are the G7, industrialized nations with the United States at their head. The developed countries usurp and greedily waste three-quarters of the world’s food and 83 per cent of all other resources. The developing world, the socalled Third World, where almost three-quarters of the world’s population lives, must make do with one quarter of the world’s food and not more than 17 per cent of the rest of the world’s resources. We cannot expect three-quarters of the world’s population to put up with that situation for ever. This economic imbalance is leading the world to the verge of economic destruction.

ML: You say that the economic situation is key, but how does that relate to the political trends we see in the world? For instance, Mr Gorbachev has called for a world government being created under UN auspices. Do you foresee that
occurring?

BC: I certainly see a strengthening of the UN, but I do not foresee a world government under the jurisdiction of the UN. The nations of the world are too separate and individualistic, too governed by their own particular qualities to work together as a world government. But I see the UN more and more as a debating chamber in which the problems which arise out of these differences can be hammered out by argument and debate, and no longer by the sword. I also see the growing strength of the UN in terms of intervention in the various small wars which occur around the world — for example, in the former Yugoslavia.

ML: Do you think the UN should become more involved in the internal affairs of countries like the former Yugoslavia to help halt the bloodshed there, as they did in Somalia?

BC: Very much so. I believe that the UN has a very definite role to play. I am appalled and deeply aggrieved that the UN and Europe stood by and watched the fratricide that has occurred in Croatia and again in Bosnia. The atrocities could have been prevented by a more positive stance by the UN. The UN and the Europeans should have been in there in the very beginning, forcing the Serbs to toe the line and bring about a peaceful solution to what are real problems — independence, minority peoples, and so on. These problems should be talked out in the context of the UN. That is its role. The UN has to grasp that and make it a reality. It has very much missed the bus on this.

ML: It was mentioned in Share International that there is a shift in power occurring throughout the world away from central government and toward more local control of political systems. Do you see that occurring in various parts of the world and, if so, how does that coincide with the globalization of problems and the need for global approaches to solving them?

BC: I would not say that this is occurring, but that it is the ideal toward which we should move. The role of governments is to create conditions in which people can live in peace with enough food, adequate shelter, health care, education, and so on.

It is not the role of governments to impose one ideology on the people. That has been the case up to now, whether that ideology was communism, democracy, capitalism, or fascism. That time is past. We are seeing the end of political indoctrination and totalitarianism. The need of people for freedom, selfadvancement and self-determination should be worked out on a local level through participation in local government. The only way that people can influence the events of their life on a national scale is through influencing local government.

You have to have a level of government in which people actually can be involved. Most people in so-called democratic countries vote for local and national representatives. But if people are really participating on a local level, their needs can be met locally. The national government should not interfere on the local level.

Here the more conservative governments have the answer, in that they do not want
to get involved in the day-to-day managing of local affairs, at least theoretically. In practice, the opposite tends to be the case, for political reasons. In the UK, our present Tory government is the most centralizing we have had, certainly this century; local government is strapped by the central government in almost every aspect of its action. There is almost no local government per se, almost no participation. Without participation, there can be no self-determination. Selfdetermination, self-expression in determining how one’s life will be lived, which is true liberty, does not exist in any real sense anywhere in the world.

ML: Will participation be a key to the future types of political structures?

BC: I think it is essential. Without it, there can be no liberty. Liberty and freedom are dependent on participation. It does not take professionals, alone, to run the country. It does not take professionals to run local affairs. The people themselves know what kind of local government they need for housing, health care, education, and so on. The role of national government is to organize itself in relation to other nations, to oversee defence, transport, and the overall wellbeing of the nation, and so create the conditions in which local government can get on with the job of realizing the potential of people locally.

ML: Do you see different types of political structures evolving in the coming time to meet the growing needs of the people for self-determination, participation, and political freedom?

BC: We have witnessed the end of imposed ‘communism’. I do not believe that true communism was ever tried; in the Soviet Union they had a form of state capitalism. Naturally, people objected to it because they saw the bosses, the élite of the Communist Party, a tiny minority, enjoying a standard of life which nobody else had. People were envious, and only too glad to see the end of it. They were straitened in their circumstances, living drab, colourless lives without variety. You must have colour and variety in life. They did not have it, and they are not going to have it under the regime of Mr Yeltsin. He is imposing a programme based on market forces which has failed in the West.

We are in the middle of a major economic crisis in the West which is going to reflect itself in the former Soviet Union. The Russian people are now feeling the pains of a market forces economy. Like people everywhere, they are seeking the freedom to express their livingness, and this they are not getting. They will not get it through capitalism any more than through communism. It will come through a blending of the best of capitalism and of communism — a social democracy or democratic socialism in which that which pertains to the community as a whole is owned and administered by the community as a whole, and that which pertains to the individual is left to the private enterprise of the individual to develop to the best of his ability. It is not either/or; it is a fusion of these two.

ML: Will we see more non-politicians like Vaclav Havel coming to power? He was the playwright who became President of Czechoslovakia.

BC: I believe we shall. It is precisely from the non-professional politicians that we will find the leaders of the people. The people have enormous untapped resources but have never been given an opportunity to express this potential. If you create the structures on a local level which are sufficiently open to allow all types — artists, writers, housewives, teachers, engineers, playwrights, and so on — to speak for the people as a whole, the needs of the people will be given expression. In parliamentary government, the political and economic laws laid down will allow the people’s needs to be given expression on a national scale. You need two tiers of government, local and national. Both are essential. One should not be seen as more important than the other.

ML: When will we see a break in the storm of current events?

BC: We are coming to a point of crisis. Very soon that crisis will reach its peak, and we will see the denouement. From that tremendous critical manifestation will emerge a new society, a new life for humanity, based on entirely new and more spiritual ideas.

Share International July / August 1993