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Benjamin Creme announces the start of Maitreya's open work on video. The Master's article for
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Cropcircle - Milk Hill - 01.07.2000 photo © Steve Alexander |
The Space Brothers are already involved in replicating on the dense-physical plane the magnetic envelope of our planet. In our future science, called by Maitreya the science of light, all our energy needs will be met by energy obtained directly from the sun. This energy, related to the Earth’s magnetic energy now being laid down on the physical plane by the Space Brothers, is the basis of the new science.
The Space Brothers know that certain shapes have certain energetic qualities. In the cities of the future there will be energy storehouses of different shapes for our various needs. These energies can all be stepped down and regulated according to their function.
Eventually we ourselves will conquer space. It is only a matter of time before we will build by thought spacecraft, which will go out and explore the galaxy.
Q. Apart from Adamski, are there any other teachings that come from the Space Brothers?
A. This is like every aspect of New Age thinking. It is a minefield and you have to pick your way very carefully through it all. There is authentic teaching such as that of Adamski but there is also a tremendous amount of glamour and illusion.
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Yotsukaido, Japan, 27 April 2009 |
Q. What is the purpose of the Space Brothers’ underground bases on this planet? What are they doing there?
A. We have despoiled everything on this planet. All land, air, rivers, sea and oceans are polluted. The spaceships go down into the depths of the oceans and neutralize the pollution as far as they are allowed. We have stored nuclear energy waste in the Atlantic and Pacific, and the Space Brothers do their best to nullify the effects of these terrible sources of toxic waste, so they have a lot to do. It is an ongoing process. They have devices which can neutralize the worst elements of pollution, particularly that of high-level nuclear radiation. But they are limited by the Law of Karma in how much they are allowed to help us.
Q. Are the Space Brothers involved in healing work? Will they have any role in Transmission Meditation or are they somehow connected with Transmission Meditation?
A. Do they have a healing role? No, not per se. Are they
involved in Transmission Meditation? No, they are not directly
involved in Transmission Meditation, but they are transmitters of cosmic
and planetary energies to our Hierarchy, who distribute them through Transmission
Meditation groups.
They do not interfere in our life. They come to help. It
is a rescue mission in which they are involved to save
Planet Earth, and to save humanity from the terrible havoc that we have
caused through nuclear radiation and all the ravages of the Earth, the
forests and so on. It is a planetary mission rather than interfering in
our modus operandi.
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Light patterns on a building in Vrsac, Serbia, created by Maitreya and the Space Brothers. Photograph sent by Z. V. |
Q. Will there be an increased closeness and co-operation with the Space Brothers after the Day of Declaration?
A. Yes.
Q. Will the Space Brothers help to teach us about the art of living?
A. Indirectly, yes. They have a lot to say about the art of living, particularly the God-like emissaries from Venus. Venus is the alter ego of planet Earth and is in its last round. The beings of Venus are extraordinarily evolved. Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World here on Earth, comes from Venus.
They have much to teach humanity, but then so have our own Spiritual Hierarchy – Maitreya and the Masters. I do not think it is a question of choosing between this body of teaching and that body of teaching. You will find it is all very similar. It is just difficult to do — or seems difficult to us.
Q. Will the Space Brothers eventually have a public role in relation to humanity like the Masters do?
A. The answer to that has to be no, but it is a qualified no. They do not want to take the place of our own Hierarchy. Anything they do in the future in relation to helping Earth will be done from behind the scenes, showing what can be done. If necessary, they will be active agents of the new technology that they have and are helping to make real on Earth. This will happen when the time is right, when we have accepted certain principles, in particular the total abolition of war.
They have a role, but they will not take the place of our Hierarchy. They are too polite, too aware of the occult axioms, and too aware of how to live in relation to other people, to infringe our free will by taking over. They will have an advisory status on Planet Earth. They have come to help; that is it.
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Beijing, China, 25 February 2009, 7.41 pm |
Q. Why are the Space Brothers helping us here instead of focusing on their own planet?
A. They are conscious members of the alliance that is the confederation of planets of our own system. They work not just for their planet or for any other planet, but for the growth and perfectionment of the system as a whole. That system is the body of expression of the Solar Logos. If their work entails helping Earth, so be it. That is what they do. If it were another planet, they would do the same.
Q. What is our relationship to Mars that brings them here to help us?
A. It is a neighbouring planet at about the same level of evolution as Earth, although technologically far more advanced, so they can be of help. They want to help. They like to help fellow planets who are lagging behind, who are in trouble, who are misusing nuclear energy and causing the planet and themselves to suffer. They have a great heart and wish to help humanity. They do it out of love.
Q. Have the Space Brothers gone through the human evolution in their process? Have they taken group initiation?
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Cropcircle - Milk Hill, Wiltshire, England on Sunday August 12, 2001 - 409 circles of varying sizes, 787 feet (240m) in diameter. © Lucy Pringle |
A. Some have and some have not. It depends on who you are talking about. They are not just one type called a Space Brother. Each planet is at a different point of evolution — some very different, others minimally different. There are people who have, in common, gone through various levels of initiation and others in which it does not arise. They are perfected. The process of initiation as we have it on our planet is really an artificial means of speeding up evolution. It is not found everywhere.
Q. How many Space Brothers live among us at this time? How do they manifest? Are they born into a family as a baby or come as an adult?
A. My information is that they number around 2,000. They
are all over the world in very many countries. Some visit
this planet on a temporary basis and come for a few hours, a few days
or a week or two. Others take up long-term residence and come in different
ways. They might come as a fully-grown adult. They might take incarnation
through a family and grow up as a child.
Adamski was a grown man before he realized that he was
not ordinary. There is an interesting book by Desmond Leslie
called The Amazing Mr Lutterworth*.
It is out of print,
but I think it is possible to get hold of second-hand copies.
The book is really about Adamski. Lutterworth is a Venusian,
but he is in an Earth body. At age four something strange
happens to him. He is taken from his family for a very
short time, and then brought back, and is never the same again. This actually
happened to Adamski.
Desmond Leslie, who knew Adamski very well, revealed that Adamski had, instead of a navel, a half-inch deep star, actually a circle with brilliant lights radiating from it like a star — Venus. This, of course, you could not tell until he raised his shirt, but he did show it to Leslie.
Adamski was born in Poland, and came to America as a child. His parents were Polish immigrants. He grew up in the USA, lived a long time on Mount Palomar in California, and eventually died in the USA.
The book makes very interesting reading. It tells the story of someone who has a growing awareness of what most people are not aware of — other people’s thoughts, for instance. He is invaded by all the thoughts of those around him. Sitting on a bus, he could tell what the people around him were feeling and thinking, and he is appalled by it. It is terrifying, but gradually he gets it all under control. The book is fiction but based on what Adamski told Desmond Leslie of his own personal experience.
(*Note: See book review, article, and questions and answers regarding Adamski in Share International, October 2008.)
Q. What is the reason for people from other planets to incarnate on this planet?
A. Because they can do their work more cogently and intelligently over a period of time by taking a physical Earth body than they could just by temporarily lowering the vibration of their own body. For that period of time they become part of Earth.
There are several ways this happens. They can become Earth-like and ‘fall’, as it is called, make a spiritual fall from a higher state to a lower state. They might fall from Venus or Mars or some other planet to Earth and take up residence on the Earth as an ordinary person.
Many people have done this, usually very advanced people like Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach and Beethoven. Maria Callas was a modern example. Various people at that sort of level have incarnated on Earth, ‘fallen’ to Earth, and become Earth-like, and they then go through the evolutionary process.
Q. How would you recognize a Space Brother if you saw or met one?
A. You would not necessarily recognize him at all unless
he wanted to make himself known to you or he wanted you
to recognize him. If he were an undisclosed worker for the Space Brothers,
he would just appear as an ordinary man to you. You could not tell him
apart as being or not being from another planet.
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UFO in Australia |
Q. Do the Space Brothers appear in a kind of mayavirupa? Do they create it themselves?
A. No. They take a body on this planet and are born as an ordinary person. That is, if it is long-term. If it is very short-term, they lower the vibrational rate of their body until they are vibrating more or less at the same level as we are. They seem to be just ordinary beings. But that is temporary. If it is long term, they will incarnate into the world and work sotto voce – quietly – in that way. That was how Adamski worked, for example.
Q. If Space Brothers live on the etheric plane how do they manifest on the physical plane so that we can see them?
A. It is a temporary thing. When a Space Person comes to Earth and wants to be seen he has to lower the vibration of his etheric body to come within our range of sight. The same applies to the spacecraft. These vehicles are made of etheric physical matter and if you do not have etheric vision they are invisible. But they are seen by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world when the occupants lower the rate of vibration of the vehicle.
Leading figures and the Space Brothers
Q. Was President Kennedy aware that the person advising him was from Venus? Was Adamski involved?
A. President Kennedy was not aware of the Space Brothers per se, nor was he aware of the source of information. But he was aware of certain individuals in the diplomatic corps of America who were agents of the Space Brothers. He thought highly of their advice and information, and acted on it. It was always given through that agency in the diplomatic service. Adamski himself was not actively involved.
Likewise, President George W.Bush, when he was in office, was informed by such an agent in the diplomatic service that there would be an attack on America – the White House, the Pentagon and major buildings – which came to pass on 9/11. The government was warned three months in advance of this event and did nothing about it. That is the extraordinary thing, the difference between Presidents Kennedy and Bush. Bush was advised not to react to the events of 9/11. Of course, the first thing he did was to react immediately in the wrong way. He discoloured his eight years of office by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and he turned America from a reasonably open democratic society to a near fascist state.
Q. Are the Space Brothers still in touch with various leaders around the world, and do the leaders of the world know about the Space Brothers openly and quite explicitly?
A. There are leaders around the world who believe in this phenomenon, and do not know why the leading countries like America, Russia and the European nations do not ‘come clean’. They do not want to do it themselves because they do not want to be out of step. But they think it is perfectly believable that the UFOs are from some place, not necessarily Mars or Venus, but some place outside our solar system. None of the UFOs in fact come from outside our solar system. They come from the planets of our own system. These leaders may not know that, but they do believe in the existence of UFOs and in some cases would like to make it known. The South American countries, especially Brazil, have suggested that the truth should be made known, but nothing has come of it.
Q. Are there any Space Brothers working in the United Nations or in any governments?
A. In the United Nations, certainly, yes. In any governments?
Yes, in some governments – not as many as you might think. Not in
positions of power, but usually in advisory positions, in the diplomatic
corps of various countries, for example.
Negative propaganda against UFOs
Q. If we speak to people about the ‘star’ and the spaceships, they often say that people are abducted and are left with scars and implanted chips. How do we refute this? What can we say to make it clear to others about what you are saying?
A. It is just not true. It simply does not happen. There
are many people who go to science fiction films and see
presentations about extra-terrestrials as evil, scheming monsters seeking
ways and means of taking over Earth. If this were the intention of the
Space Brothers, they could have taken over every city of the world long
ago. These disturbed people have vivid astral imaginations which are as
ephemeral as dreams are, which they relate to their frightening experience
of those science fiction films. These astral imaginings become widely
accepted due to the general denigration of the Space Brothers and their
vehicles by governments and other agencies for over 60 years.
This kind of imagined assault on people simply cannot happen.
The spacecraft are made of subtle etheric matter. You cannot
be abducted onto an etheric physical craft in a solid physical body.
There is an agency in the United States whose sole purpose is to distort the reality of the UFOs. The United States government, like all other governments, knows that UFOs exist. They know from experience that they are harmless. They probably know that they have important work to do. The governments of the world would love to have all the technological secrets from the Space Brothers, and at the same time they want to keep from their people the evidence that proves the Space Brothers to be harmless, beneficent, helpful and so superior to the governments under which people live here on Earth.
If the Space Brothers are so advanced, and their technology
tends to show that they must be, then we, the public, would
say: “Who
wants the government of America, Britain, France, Germany or any other
known government in the world? Let the Space People come, land and tell
us the secrets of their success. Then we can maybe go the same way.”
The governments know that this is what people would do.
They would lose the power over the people that they have
at the present time. They are also afraid of panic, because
they have sown so many seeds of hatred, violence and mysterious
occult practices in the minds of the public about the Space Brothers.
Orson Welles made a radio adaptation of H.G.Wells’ book War of the Worlds in 1938. When Welles announced on that programme that planet Earth was being invaded from Mars, for days people were absolutely terrified. They believed that they were being invaded from space, that the Martians were already zooming down and about to drop their lethal bombs. The programme was only a joke, a very irresponsible joke, but that was Orson Welles. Governments have sown the seeds and carry on with the process of increasing the fear that they have already started in the minds of people of Earth, in their own countries and abroad.
Q. Who are doing the cattle mutilations that are said to be done by UFOs?
A. As I have said, there are agencies, particularly in
the USA, whose job for many years has been to denigrate
the Space Brothers. They are government agencies but not necessarily known
to the officials of the administration.
I would doubt that recent Presidents of the USA know anything
about this agency and its work against flying saucers.
They would find it hard to believe. Those people mutilate cattle, scatter
them around the pastures and the deserts, and then blame it on those ‘horrible’ Space
People. They are up to every nasty trick to keep this dark. Some of them
do it, I think, for fun. They vie with each other in thinking up things
to do to denigrate the Space Brothers.
They are experts in their particular line of work, which is to do with corrupting human minds into disbelieving something that is so obvious and true to hundreds of thousands of intelligent people. They are now coming to the end of their ability to keep this reality a secret.
Q. How much does the desire for power and control figure into the reason that the governments have been keeping UFO information from the public?
A. It is paramount. It is ignorance and fear that drives the governments to act as they do. They understand that if humanity knew that the Space Brothers really existed, and these spacecraft with such a command of space and time really existed, we could ask them to help, because our governments obviously do not know what to do. They could advise and teach humanity. Who needs governments like we have today when we have these beneficent, harmless beings waiting to help us?
…
The ‘stars’ heralding Maitreya’s emergence
Q. Do the four ‘stars’ serve other functions besides heralding Maitreya’s emergence?
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New York, USA, 24 September 2009 (YouTube: ProphetEzikel) |
A. Yes, they will also represent the fact of the Space Brothers – that is, when it becomes known that they are not actually ‘stars’, because stars are millions of miles away and these ‘star-like luminaries’ are in our atmosphere. So what are they? They are really spacecraft, and have come from different planets to take on the job of being a Herald for Maitreya’s emergence – just as one did 2,000 years ago at the birth of Jesus, when a spacecraft was sent to guide three Masters to Bethlehem. This is a repetition of that event, only now it is not just three wise men – the whole of humanity has to know about this.
The fact that we were able to forecast the appearance of the ‘stars’ (12 December 2008) is proof that this information is correct. They began to be seen soon after Christmas 2008 and are now seen by people all over the world. They heralded Maitreya’s first appearance on television, though not at first known as Maitreya.
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Taken by A. K. from a cruise ship at Alexandria, Egypt, on 2 February 2009. |
When enough people are responding to Maitreya’s teaching they will call on Him to speak to the whole world through the linked television networks. Only then will He reveal His true status.
Maitreya will be on worldwide television so that for the first time all eyes can see him. That is why it says in the Bible: “And all eyes will see Him.” It takes television to make that possible.
The coming of the ‘star’ is a herald. It is a symbolic enactment of that happening 2,000 years ago to convince those who are ready to be convinced, those who are open-minded enough to see it as symbolic, to prepare them for what is going to happen, the coming out into the world of the Christ, the World Teacher, but this time known worldwide.
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Zaltbommel, the Netherlands, 2 March 2009 |
When the Christ came last time, He was not really known as the Christ. He came to the Jews through Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. They were looking for the Messiah. When Jesus came he was not recognized even as the Messiah except by a very small group of people. Around him were only 12 disciples, a wider group of about 75 not-so-close disciples and about 500 people who were interested outsiders. That was the sum total. It hardly seemed like the coming of the Christ to the world, which in fact it was.
The last three years of Jesus’ life, which he spent being the vehicle for the Christ, overshadowed by Maitreya, changed the face of the world. We have now come to the end of that phase. We are entering a new phase in which the Christ comes Himself openly into the world for all humanity.
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Brooklyn | Colorado | Moscow |
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Queensland | Xinjiang (1) | Xinjiang (2) |
Eleventh hour
Dear Editor,
On Saturday 16 January 2010 I was with a friend eating
in Burger King in The Hague Central Station and a homeless man came
to our table. He kept pointing to his wrist (the time). He could barely
speak it seemed, and he had no teeth. I told him the time. And then,
carefully he held out his hand and I gave him some money. He walked
to the entrance and I told my female friend that that man could be our
uncle: we don’t realise the world we live in, and we don’t
really see the people we meet. I was emotional because of the encounter.
Later he returned and pointed to his wrist again. I told him the time
and asked him why. He said something like that at eleven o’clock
the place would close. But he wasn’t very clear, except for the
eleven o’clock-thing. Later that evening I read my e-mail, and
read the newsletter from Share Nederland that Maitreya gave his interview.
I phoned my mother, and when I told her about the homeless man, I cried.
A special man he must have been!
J.dV., Alkmaar, the Netherlands.
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the homeless man was Maitreya.)
Clear vision
Dear Editor,
My name is Denis and I am 13 years old. On Wednesday 13
January 2010 in the morning I suddenly saw an older man. He was wearing
a beautiful grey suit and a hat. I felt in my heart that I should greet
him. When we passed each other I said “Hello” loudly but
he did not greet me in return. I think this man could be Maitreya or
one of the Masters. I was wondering if you could confirm if this old
man was Maitreya?
D.K., Slovenia.
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the man was the Master Jesus, in disguise, of course.)
Now is the time
Dear Editor,
New Year 2009-2010 I was in France in the artists’ quarter when
a dark haired man with a beard and about 6 ft tall came towards me. As
he came near to me he said: “I am ready now, to come back with you.” He
continued walking and I lost sight of him. Was this a message for my spiritual
teacher or myself, from Maitreya?
R.M.N., Sunbury, England, UK.
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the man was Maitreya.)
Dear Editor,
Thank you so much for your e-mail with the wonderful news
of Maitreya. The news we have all been waiting for has finally arrived,
and we have so much more to look forward to. You have been so consistent
with your information for so many years we love and thank you for it.
God Bless you.
V.H., Sussex, UK.
(Editor replies: Thank you for your kind words.)
Gift bearer
Dear Editor,
I feel that I should share a meeting that happened to me
six years ago before I left London to come and live in Andalusia, Spain.
My wonderful father lost everything in life that he thought was valuable to him (my mother to another man, his money, self-respect and faith in God) and he could no longer see any beauty in the world. In spite of my ‘coaching’ he decided to end his own life. There were some very painful incompletions for me and all I can say is that this event plagued me for many years.
Anyhow, six or so years later with the knowledge that I was going to live in Spain my mother became very depressed and seemed to lose the will to live and died ‘suddenly’ of heart failure just before I left.
Feeling very strained, I decided to leave my home and busied myself with funeral arrangements and a complex legal matter. A few days later, my partner called me from the house to tell me that a man had come to my house asking for me. He assumed that I must know him as he asked for me by name and was insistent that he urgently needed to talk to me and that he had something which he had been asked to give to me. I was very puzzled as by the description of this man he was not familiar to me and my interest heightened. My partner informed the visitor that I would be returning in a week. I returned to the house and waited feeling that this was something out of the ordinary.
On the day of my return, very late in the early hours, there was a knock at the door and I opened the door to one of the most amazing faces I think I have ever seen. ‘He’ was completely entrancing. At first glance one might think that he was a tramp as his appearance was rather ‘wild’. He had no shoes, a big overcoat, long golden brown hair which had turned into ‘dreadlocks’ and initially was speaking in a sort of metallic voice. He was a large man with large brown eyes. I think you could say he was imposing and could be misconstrued as ‘scary’ and other-worldly.
On seeing his face (it was like sunlight), I welcomed him into my home without hesitation, I felt in awe. He walked into my drawing room and up to the fireplace where there was a picture of my father, and pointing to it, he explained that Jack (my father’s name) had asked him to come and see me and he was to tell me that Rosemary (my mother’s name) was walking towards him where he was welcoming her with his beloved dog beside him. As he spoke, a sort of telepathic vision came into my mind of this scene or event that was taking place at this time. I invited him to sit down and we talked for some time, it was a really a beautiful experience.
Having got to know him a bit better and us all being a little more relaxed, he explained that he had walked a long way to come and find me. He said that he was a message-carrier. I raised the courage to ask him what his name was and he said Mark. I had been observing his clothes and noticed that in spite of him being shoe-less, there was absolutely no trace of dirt about him and his brown golden hair was gleaming clean and so were his feet! He didn’t seem to live anywhere in particular and I wondered if he slept at all. At one point, I got up to get some water and went to sit back down in a slightly different part of the floor and he made me stop. He lifted the cushion I was about to sit on and a spider crept out. Somehow he knew the spider was there.
He wanted no money or food and only took a glass of water. Towards the end of his visit he buried deep amongst his layered clothing and produced a beautiful, almost clear, very polished, small crystal, which is in the shape of a perfect small egg. I was amazed that he had come to give this to me. I asked what I was to do with it and he showed me how to hold it in the palm of my hand. He told me that I must keep it on my person and to keep it warm and that I would know eventually what I was to do with it! When I hold this crystal for a short while in my hand it becomes very hot and after some time I have to put it back in my handbag or in my bra where I usually keep it! The point in the palm of my hand feels hot and burning! When I am feeling a little low I hold it more intently and it is like my energy begins to rise and I feel much stronger. On two or three occasions much to my horror, I have dropped it. When I have picked it up I notice that it has developed a further crack and some air bubbles but as I hold it they disappear and it literally heals itself. I don’t know what it really means but I feel truly blessed to be the guardian of such a beautiful thing.
Moments after Mark left through the front door my partner
went outside and looked up and down the street and Mark
was nowhere to be seen. It was difficult to imagine that
he could have walked that quickly. I would be very interested
in your thoughts.
With love and best wishes.
E.S., San Pablo de Buceite, Cadiz, Spain.
(Benjamin Creme Master confirms that the visitor was the
Master Jesus.)
Witness
Dear Editor,
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Maitreya and the Master Jesus in the guise of a little girl and an elderly woman. photo: Jose Enrique Trinidad |
Briefly, this is what I saw: in the midst of the chaos, stands out the peaceful attitude of the people, despite the lack of basic services, clean water and food, of governmental, civic, religious or other kind of organizations, as nothing exists presently. Only people, in waves, walking on the streets, coming from nowhere and going to nowhere. But calm, making space at night, to sleep wherever they can.
There are some outbreaks of violence due to the fact that the prisons were also destroyed and all the inmates ran away. But the people have not lost the sense of the sacred and attend Mass.
I was everywhere in Port au Prince, including Carrefour,
which was the earthquake epicentre. At that time there
was a Mass taking place.
I looked around and when I came close to a group of people,
I noticed a woman and what seemed to be her granddaughter.
Her attitude was so outstanding that I took some photos
of both of them. I made some gentle gestures to the little
girl, who remained serious although at the end smiled. I gave them a box
of biscuits and a carton of milk. I am sending photos I took of the woman
and the little girl alongside others from Port au Prince.
Were they special people? In spite of the destruction and
death, this earthquake has aroused a wave of solidarity
and sharing between two peoples, Haitian and Dominican,
with a long history of communication problems between them
and also from Europe, the United States and Latin America, coinciding
with the first public appearance of Maitreya. Is this an example of sharing
between people? Many thanks.
J.E.T., Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the ‘woman’ was the Master Jesus and the ‘little girl’, Maitreya.)
The Self is presence, awareness and light: presence in time, awareness in eternity, and light. “We are all sparks of the Almighty.” (Maitreya, Maitreya’s Teachings – The Laws of Life)
We stand today on the verge of an era of new knowledge, broader concepts, wider horizons and richer experience than aught known before. At precisely such a time has entered the new Teacher. His will be the task to enlarge even further these horizons for man, to show that all is interconnected, that we live within a family, as brothers, and that each contributes to the well-being of the whole. Thus man will come to sense himself as an integral unit in a vast system which stretches to the stars; as a tiny point of conscious, loving life, without which the Universe would be poorer. Thus man will come to see his greatness, and his function in an endless scheme of interrelated points of light and energy and knowledge. (Benjamin Creme’s Master, from ‘The Divine Science’)
Maitreya’s unique stature, His ages-long experience on the evolutionary path, enable Him to present His profound spiritual teachings in the simplest terms, free of all doctrinal ‘clutter’ and theological dogma. There is no imposition; everyone is left, and encouraged to be, freely themselves. Above all Maitreya teaches the art of Self-Realization. Three practices, simple, yet needing discipline to achieve, are at the core of His teaching on Self-Realization: honesty of mind; sincerity of spirit; and detachment. Practise these three, Maitreya says, and come to Self-Realization.” (Benjamin Creme, Share International, July/August 2007)
My happy ones, My glad ones, I see within you now the glow of the Light of Truth, the truth of My Presence among you. That Light shall I fan into a blaze of glory in this coming blessed time. My Masters, too, are among you and will show you the way to manifest your divine gifts, those which lie dormant within your hearts. (Maitreya, from Message Number 62)
Hardly anybody is who they really are. We imitate all the time. We want people to think that we are this rather than that, that we are nice, that we are good, that we are honest, that we are whatever ideals we seek to present to the world. It is rare to find people who sincerely and honestly are who they are. This produces a state of speaking from the heart and, in this way, the spiritual nature of a person can be conveyed to somebody else, and they can respond. It is a ‘heart to heart’ relationship which you seek to establish. Then you are who you are. It is like registering and expressing your own identity, sincerely and totally. Again, this produces detachment.… Maitreya says: “The Self alone matters” (the Self meaning the divine aspect, the Lord). “You are that Self, an immortal Being.” And, He says, our pain, our suffering, our problems, are due to the fact that we identify with everything and anything other than that Self. He says, ask yourself “Who am I?” If you do so, you will find you are identified with this physical body, which lasts only for one life at a time and is renewed successively, so it cannot be the eternal Self.
Or you identify with your emotions, your feelings, your energy sensations, which are transient – one day you feel one thing, another day you feel another. They are not the Self. Or you identify with the constructions of the mind, with your beliefs, ideology, whether you are Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever, and with all the traditions that go with that. It does not matter to the Self for one instant whether you are a Christian or a Buddhist or a Moslem or a Hindu, or of no religion at all; what matters is that you register yourself as the Self, that you identify with the Self, which is the same as God. Self-Realization is God-Realization. If you practise right identification and detachment, you come inevitably to Self-awareness, which leads to Self-Realization. It is not a belief, not a religion, not an ideology, but something which benefits all people and is, in fact, the goal of all life. (Benjamin Creme, The Ageless Wisdom Teaching)
Everyone needs ‘inner space’ where there is no one directing you, telling you where to go and what to do. It is only here that you can be detached from this energy. No one can lead you. You are born to be aware of yourself, to know the Master in yourself. Your inner space is sacred. It is where all things, all problems, dissolve. It is where you go when you tell others you are tired and frightened and ‘fed up’, when you want to be left alone to find your own space. “You have been given that space so that the confusion and chaos around you will dissolve. You must never surrender that space to anyone, except your true Self. Meditation is really a journey back to that space to find peace and happiness.” (Maitreya, Maitreya’s Teachings – The Laws of Life)
Although in reality God is everywhere, individuals are becoming aware that it is possible to experience the Lord in the heart. “God is not in the sky,” Maitreya teaches, “God is in the heart.” When the mind is quiet, free from dogmatic views, it will absorb the truth. “Self-Realization is God-Realization.” The teaching of the Master inspires you to look within. This has nothing to do with religion, politics or any form of ideology. (Maitreya, Maitreya’s Mission Volume Two)
Being is eternal, Becoming is the unfolding in time and space. The Self experiences both. When mankind realizes the true nature of its constitution – as a soul reflecting itself through mental, emotional and twofold physical (etheric and dense) bodies, the first step in the conquering of disease will be taken. Until now, man’s attention has been focused on the dense-physical plane while the causes of disease are to be found in the misappropriation of the energies flowing through the subtler bodies. Man is on the verge of a great discovery: that disease is the result of imbalance; that correct balance is maintained by correct thought and action and that such correct thought and action involves his brothers and sisters everywhere. If man would end disease he must first end separation. (Benjamin Creme’s Master, from ‘Health and healing, Part 1’)
When you are detached in mind, spirit and body, then whatever happens around you and within you does not touch you. You are immune. This is salvation. As long as you are attached you will experience struggle, the ups and downs in life. Knowledge and wisdom create the strongest bonds of attachment. This is why Maitreya says: “Be what you are. You are not knowledge. You are not wisdom. You (the Self) and I (the Self) are One.” “Whoever, whatever, wherever you are, tread the divine water of cleanliness which is detachment. I have not come to teach you anything new. Be honest to yourself, sincere to yourself, and be detached. This method is so simple, so sweet, it is free from religions, ideologies, politics. It makes one experience who one is. Fulfil your role, yet be free.” (Maitreya, Maitreya’s Teachings – The Laws of Life)
Man has far to go, for man stems from the highest Source. Within all men sits a God. That God is your true Self. My task will be to release in you that Divine Being, and so complete a Divine Plan. There is nothing more simple than God, for behind all things rests that divine principle. When man sees this he will come into his true greatness, and from him then will flow a creative stream. (Maitreya, from Message No. 54)
Self-Realization comes near as we gradually pass from
one initiation to the next. Each initiation brings a higher
frequency to bear on the devic lives making up the atomic
structure of the physical, astral and mental bodies. The
atomic structure is gradually changed, and changes the
activity of these devic lives. They are no longer in charge
of the process. They feed our bodies with their impulses,
but the energy from the soul begins to take charge. The
personality becomes more in control of the physical body,
which begins to respond to instruction from the mental
plane. The astral body, too, begins to ‘cool down’ and
become calm. Essentially, the astral body should be, and
in an evolutionary sense will become, like a still lake,
no longer sweeping the individual with its emotions. It
then acts like a mirror for the buddhic level of consciousness.
The buddhic is the second level of the Spiritual Triad,
which brings in the will, the love/wisdom and the intelligence
of the soul. The buddhic consciousness, reflected on that
still lake, we experience as intuition.
The tiny devic lives on the astral plane are more or less
in control until about 1.5 to 1.6 degrees of initiation
when mental polarization begins. After that they gradually
become less imposing on the life of the individual. It
does not mean that we do not have emotions, but we are
not swept or overwhelmed by them so much. We learn to detach
from the impact of their activity on the astral body. The
soul energy is so much higher than that of the material
body, in this case the astral, that we gradually gain control
of the astral plane. That is not complete by any means
until 2.5 to 2.6, at which point spiritual polarization
begins. The devic life from our point of view is the life
of matter. From their point of view, it is a completely
conscious life. It is like the cells of our body which
have their own existence apart from our mental consciousness,
and carry out their actions according to our DNA and the
amount of vitamins, minerals and food extracts we give
them to eat and drink. If we bring enough of the soul energy
to bear, we begin to control them.
As well as karma, it is our capacity to change the quality
of the life of our vehicles that determines when we achieve
Self-Realization. We are in charge, or the devas are in
charge. But the great magnet that we call Life, which is
driving the whole of evolution forward, sooner or later
is too strong for any group or individual to withstand,
and we are driven forward, willy-nilly. We may not make
Self-Realization at this stage, but eventually we will
come to that point. (Benjamin Creme, The Art of Living)
Equilibrium – If you look outside all the time you
will lose sight of your inner self. Life then becomes too
materialistic. If the reverse is the case, and you look
inside yourself much of the time, you lose contact with
external reality. Equilibrium between inner and outer leads
to right relationship developing in mind, spirit and body.
The point of equilibrium must be maintained.
(Maitreya, Maitreya’s Teachings – The Laws
of Life)
Just as the body must be bathed, detachment is the ‘bath’ of mind, and awareness is the ‘bath’ of spirit. When you roam in mind, spirit and body remember that your resting place is in Self-awareness. When you sleep, if you sleep ‘in mind’ you wake up exhausted. If you sleep ‘in spirit’ you may experience extraordinary things. If you sleep in Self-awareness, it is a good sleep. Maitreya says: ‘I never desert you.’ (Maitreya, Maitreya’s Teachings – The Laws of Life)
Man stands now on the threshold of a new perception of himself, his purpose and the world in which he lives. This new awareness will evoke undreamt-of skills and talents which yet await expression, and allow men to enter the abode of gods. When man sees himself truly as he is naught will prevent the manifestation of his divine powers. On all sides this glory will be seen, lighting a path to the farthest stars. Until that blessed time man must learn and train himself in leisure. Without leisure man has little chance to grow. Leisure must be seen as the prerequisite for that creative thought and action which will transform all life for men. (Benjamin Creme’s Master, from ‘Leisure is the Key’)
Miracle survival
Twenty-seven days under the rubble in Haiti and still alive. A 28-year-old man has survived four weeks under rubble after the massive earthquake which hit Haiti on 12 January 2010. Rescue operations had already been halted for some time, and it is estimated that fewer than 140 people were pulled alive from the ruins left by the quake.
The man’s brother said that he had survived because “someone had given him water” during his 27-day entombment.
He is currently being treated at a field hospital at the airport. Dr Dushyantha Jayaweera, of the University of Miami field hospital, described the man’s condition as “reasonable”. “He’s still sick ... but we are very optimistic with the condition of the patient.” (Source: BBC, UK; examiner.com)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that he was saved by the Master Jesus who gave him water.)
Miracle of Damascus
Called “Miracle of Damascus”, the remarkable story of a Syrian woman, Mirna Nazzour, is being widely reported. It began on 22 November 1982 when Mirna and two other women were praying for her sick sister-in-law. Light emitted from Mirna’s hands, which she didn’t notice herself, and then oil began to flow from them. Someone suggested she place her hands on the sick woman and as a result she was instantly cured.
On 27 November 1982 a miniature icon of the Madonna and Child began to pour out healing olive oil, and has continued to do so, along with many other icons in Mirna’s house.
In December 1982 she began to receive visitations and teachings
from the Madonna. Mirna was told to build a simple shrine
outside the house and on 19 December a man suffering from
polio was cured whilst worshipping at the shrine. Many others have been cured since that first case.
On 25 November 1983 Mirna began to bleed from her forehead,
the palms of her hands, feet and from her side, a phenomenon
known as stigmata. She experiences this miraculous occurrence
on Good Friday of every year. The wounds open, bleed and close within
a period of six hours. Physicians have examined her closely during this
process and have concluded that it is ‘supernatural’ and beyond their comprehension.
To this day Mirna Nazzour’s work continues to bring hope and healing
to the thousands that visit her at her now permanently open house. (Source:
YouTube)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms these to be authentic miracles manifested by the Master Jesus and the Master Who was the Madonna.)
Waterfall rescue
Recently the BBC World service reported an incident which happened on 9 July 1960. Seven-year-old American Roger Woodward, his 17-year-old sister and a family friend took a boat trip near Niagara Falls. They came too close to the waterfall and the boat was swept away by the turbulent water and capsized. Roger, wearing too large a swimming jacket hastily put on, was dragged down over the edge of the waterfall, but survived the fall. Later he said that during the fall he had not panicked at all, but instead felt very peaceful. His sister was a good swimmer and tried to swim ashore, but she was so exhausted that she would not have managed on her own.
Suddenly a black man ran across the bridge in her direction and yelled that she should swim towards him. That voice encouraged her again. She managed to grab hold of his thumb and with the help of another man they pulled her up, only six metres away from the edge of the waterfall. (Source: BBC World Service)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the children were saved by the Master Jesus.)
Apparitions of the Madonna in Burundi
Thousands of people gather on the same day every month to witness a young
woman experience visions of the Madonna on a hilltop in rural Burundi.
Euzebie, a 23-year-old woman from Masinde in the province
of Kayanze, claims to see a vision of the Madonna on the 11th day of every
month on a small rural hill near her village. Thousands of followers come
from all over the country, as well as from neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda,
to join her, staying on the hill for three nights each month, from the
11th to the 13th, to pray, sing and bang on drums.
A regular visitor is Regina Pacis, who travels for about an hour from another province to join Euzebie. Regina says she hears the voice of the Madonna when she talks to Euzebie, who is said to have had visions of the Madonna since she was four years old. However, only a few people who have ‘a special gift’ can also see her.
Provincial governor Edouard Nduwimana says the archbishop of Kayanze, Monsignor Gervais Banshimiyubusa, has advised worshippers to stop seeing Euzebie, pending an investigation of the church into the authenticity of her claims. Worship has been banned on the hilltop and police are to start patrolling the area.
Meanwhile, Mr Mubiligi, a senior magistrate in the capital Bujumbura, claims he once experienced a miracle during the monthly worship, when communal bread fell from the sky into the hand of Euzebie. (Source: BBC News, UK)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms that the experience of Euzebie are authentic from the Master Who was the Madonna.)
Image of Jesus appears on truck window
An image resembling the face of Jesus has appeared almost daily for two
weeks on the window of a truck in Tennessee. Jim Stevens, of Johnson City,
said that the image appears in the condensation on the driver’s
side window of his truck in the morning. When the condensation from the
morning evaporates, the image disappears. However, when the condensation
returns the following morning the image appears again on the window. Stevens
said when he first saw the image, he thought it would evaporate and not
return. But it continues to reappear. Stevens, who says he’s not
a particularly religious man, indicated that he has no plans to wash the
truck’s window anytime soon.
(Source: Associated Press, USA; johnsoncitypress.com)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms this to be a miracle manifested by the Master Jesus.)
Turin Shroud script confirms authenticity
Almost invisible text found on the Shroud of Turin proves the cloth’s
authenticity, according to a Vatican researcher. Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher
at the Vatican archives, used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to
translate faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic imprinted
on it. She says that the words include “(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos”,
translated from the Greek as “(J)esu(s) Nazarene”. This phrase
proves the text could not be of medieval origin because it did not refer
to Jesus as Christ, Frale believes, when no Christian would have referred
to Jesus as a Nazarene without mentioning His divinity, for fear of being
branded a heretic.
The writing, barely visible to the naked eye, was first
seen during an examination of the cloth in 1978. Like the image of the
man seen on the shroud, the letters are in reverse and are legible only
in negative photographs.
Many researchers dismissed the writing seen on the cloth because of radiocarbon test results in 1988 that purportedly showed that the shroud was created in the 13th or 14th century. But Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US said in 2005 that the tested threads came from patches used to repair the shroud after a fire, and concluded that the shroud could date from Jesus’ era.
Frale showed photos of the words to experts, who agreed that the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century. She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, she says.
Frale also concludes that the text partially confirms the Gospels’ account of Jesus’ final moments. A fragment in Greek that can be read as “removed at the ninth hour” may refer to Christ’s time of death as reported in the Bible, she says.
On an enhanced image studied by Frale, at least seven words
can be seen, fragmented and scattered on and around the
face on the shroud, criss-crossing the cloth vertically and horizontally. One short sequence
of Aramaic letters has not been translated. A Latin fragment – “iber” – may
refer to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion.
In her book The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene, Frale reconstructs
from the lettering on the shroud what she believes Jesus’ death
certificate said: “Jesus Nazarene. Found (guilty of inciting the people
to revolt). Put to death in the year 16 of Tiberius. Taken down at the
ninth hour.”
“I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside,” Frale said. “What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place.” (Source: Associated Press; The Times, UK)
(Benjamin Creme’s Master confirms the writing to be authentic, adding confirmation that the Turin Shroud is the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth.)
An excerpt
Share International: What interested you in the UFO phenomenon?
Robert Hastings: My father was career Air Force. In 1967
he was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, a nuclear missile
base in Montana. I was 16 at the time, and a junior in high school.
I also had a job three nights a week as a custodian in the air
traffic control tower at the base. One night in March 1967 I was
present at the Radar Approach Control tower when five unidentified
flying objects were being tracked on radar by the FAA [Federal
Aviation Administration] controllers. When I mentioned this to
my father he made some inquiries at work. He worked in the ‘SAGE
Building’, which housed the world’s most advanced
radar system of that era. After making some inquiries he confirmed,
a few days later, that bona fide UFOs were indeed being tracked,
not only in the vicinity of the base but specifically in the vicinity
of nuclear missile sites. That was the beginning of my interest.
In 1973 I learned that other researchers, including the late Dr
J.Allen Hynek*, were aware of other UFO incidents related to nuclear
weapons and I subsequently began my formal research into this
subject.
SI: How long has the UFO phenomenon shown an interest in nuclear weapons and military bases?
RH: I have documents from the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] confirming that UFO activity was centered around Los Alamos, New Mexico – the birthplace of nuclear weapons – as early as December 1948. The objects were described as disc-shaped, and capable of high velocity as well as hovering. One document indicates that the government – the US Air Force, the FBI, and other unspecified intelligence agencies – consider this matter to be top secret. However, I am also aware, from interviews I have conducted with former or retired military personnel, that sightings at other nuclear sites had occurred as early as 1945 prior to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II. I’ve talked to a retired Navy pilot who witnessed an object hovering over the Hanford Site in the state of Washington, where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced. According to his report, the object had hovered over the site repeatedly and outran any attempt by military interceptors to pursue it. These kinds of incidents have apparently gone on since the inception of the Nuclear Age.
SI: How did you get these documents from the FBI?
RH: That particular document was released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to Dr Bruce Maccabee, a retired physicist for the US Navy, who is also a UFO researcher in his own right. He got about 1,500 pages from the FBI in 1978, including the document I mentioned.
The FOIA, however, has been of limited use to me because most of the incidents I’ve researched involving UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites are considered national security matters. They are classified at such a high level that they are effectively exempt from disclosure through the FOIA. In the early 1980s when I attempted to get additional documents on this subject, I had the door slammed in my face repeatedly. I eventually learned that it was much more effective to access this vital information by approaching retired military people and encouraging them to go on the record. At this point, I have interviewed over 120 former or retired military personnel who were involved in UFO incidents at nuclear missile sites, nuclear bomb storage depots, nuclear test areas and the like.
SI: Could you give an example of a UFO encounter at a military base?
RH: In 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base, at the time my father was stationed there, there were two incidents, one on 16 March and the other on 24 March, where two separate groups of 10 nuclear missiles experienced ‘shutdown’ incidents. The 24 March incident was reported by a former Air Force captain, Robert Salas, who was one of the missile launch officers in the launch-control capsule underground when this occurred. Captain Salas got a call from one of the security guards at ground level saying that a saucer-shaped object had appeared instantly out of nowhere and was hovering over the security fence gate at the Launch Control Facility. Before Salas had a chance to respond, all 10 of the missiles began malfunctioning. It was later determined that the guidance and control systems had been impacted in an unknown manner and in fact all of the hardware had to be replaced. Captain Salas’s report has been confirmed by his missile commander, Fred Meiwald, who is now a retired Air Force colonel. After the incident they were immediately whisked by helicopter back to Malmstrom, debriefed, and told never to mention this incident again. Salas kept his silence until the mid-1990s when he felt that he had to tell the public that this kind of thing is real and going on. I’ve also interviewed another launch officer, Walter Figel, a retired Air Force colonel, who confirmed that a virtually identical event occurred at another launch facility on the earlier date of 16 March. These are just two of a great many Intercontinental Ballistic Missile-related UFO incidents I could mention.
Based on the testimony of a retired missile-targeting specialist
named John Mills, I’m also aware that in December 1978 there
were incidents involving UFOs hovering over the missile silos at
two launch facilities at Ellsworth Air Force Base. An entire flight
of 10 missiles and a partial flight of three other missiles malfunctioned
simultaneously at a time when UFOs were sighted above the sites.
Mills happened to be at one of the missile sites when he witnessed
a diamond-shaped object silently hovering, at low altitude, over
the missile he was working on. The UFO emitted a deafening humming
sound and, when the sound ceased, the missile malfunctioned. When
he was ordered back to base for debriefing, he said that every high-ranking
officer on base was at the missile maintenance hangar. They divided
his team and other teams into groups, separating the officers from
the enlisted men, and debriefed them. They were told never to discuss
this incident again.
An even more dramatic incident was reported to me by David
Schuur, who was a missile launch officer at Minot Air Force
Base. He told me that while on missile alert in the launch
capsule one night in 1965 or 1966, he received a call from his security
guard reporting that a luminous object was moving at high
velocity from missile to missile, hovering briefly over each one.
Schuur told me that during the time when each missile was the focus
of interest of this object, the missile appeared to be manipulated
electronically and the launch activation was actually initiated.
In other words, each of the missiles was in turn preparing
to launch. Schuur told me that he and his missile commander had
to activate what’s
called the ‘Inhibit Switch’, which prevented the launch
of the missiles. Our opinion is that there was no deliberate attempt
to launch these missiles. Rather, the scanning of the missiles by
the UFO had inadvertently activated the launch sequence in each
of them.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was
a window of about four or five years when Western journalists
and researchers were able to interview former or retired
Soviet Army officers regarding several UFO-related incidents
in the Soviet Union – for
example, missiles being activated in Soviet Ukraine in October 1982.
Some outside source, neither Soviet nor American, is monitoring – and
sometimes disrupting or activating – each country’s
nuclear weapons. This development is obviously dramatic and very
important.
My opinion, and the opinion of the majority of the ex-Air
Force personnel I have interviewed, is that those aboard
the UFOs were deliberately demonstrating that they have
the ability to interfere with the functioning of our nuclear
missiles. If indeed that is the case, my opinion is that the technology
employed is quite clearly beyond human capabilities. The ufonauts
are, I suspect, ‘aliens’.
Whoever they are, wherever they are from, whatever their purpose
is here on Earth, one of the things they have done for decades – and
it’s quite well documented at this point – is to monitor
our nuclear weapons. More importantly, they have been interfering
with the weapons’ functionality from time to time. I think
it is a deliberate effort on the part of our visitors to send a
message to Washington and Moscow that they are concerned about us
having these weapons and are trying to tell us that we are playing
with fire. So they are sending these heavy hints to our military
and governmental leaders. The public at large remains unaware that
these incidents are going on, but the Pentagon and the Kremlin are
certainly cognizant of their reality.
SI: You spoke earlier about how some officers and enlisted men who had witnessed a UFO incident were debriefed and essentially told to keep their mouths shut. Is this generally the official military reaction to a UFO? If so, why do you think this is the modus operandi?
RH: There are basically two modes of response at the command level, based on the testimony of the people I’ve interviewed. One is: “Yes. This is national security. Tell us what you know and then forget what you know and never discuss it.” In other cases, the commanders basically say: “Nothing happened, nothing to discuss. Just go home.” There is no formal debriefing or questions asked. So that’s another way of making what has occurred a non-event. You just shut down the conversation immediately and give no indication that you’re interested in it.
The Pentagon and the US government as a whole, at least those persons in the know, are not going to publicly acknowledge that our strategic weapons have been compromised. First of all, the enemy – whoever that is at any given time, largely the Soviets during the Cold War era – would know that our first-strike capability has been impacted. More to the point, if those in the know open Pandora’s Box and begin talking about the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites, admit that it has gone on in the Soviet Union too, and describe the incidents in detail for public scrutiny – the advanced technology involved, the frequency of the incidents, the fact that they’ve gone on decade after decade – they would be admitting that beings from somewhere else are monitoring and even tampering with our nuclear weapons. That’s something the government is never going to admit if they can possibly avoid it.
SI: Does the interest that UFOs seem to exhibit toward nuclear weapons extend to nuclear power plants as well?
RH: It does. My book has an appendix in which I briefly discuss a number of nuclear power plant-related UFO incidents. The most dramatic, without question, involves the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, in the Soviet Ukraine, when a very poorly-designed power plant exploded and deposited radiation over parts of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, as far away as Scandinavia. What has subsequently come to light in stories that have been published in the Russian and Ukrainian media over the past 10 years is that personnel who were at the Chernobyl site within hours of the explosion to monitor radiation levels have publicly reported that a globe, a spherical-shaped object that was brass in color – a sort of orange-brown – was observed hovering over the shattered, exploded reactor for a few seconds. Two crimson beams of light were seen to emanate from this globe down into the reactor itself. The stories that have been published recently in the Russian and Ukrainian media indicate that the ambient radiation level, measured prior to the appearance of the object, was dramatically reduced, by roughly two-thirds, when the subsequent reading was taken after the object had left the vicinity.
SI: Based on what I’ve heard you say, could we conclude that
the beings behind the UFOs have not only shown themselves to be
non-violent but have an outright benevolent concern for humanity’s
welfare?
RH: Yes. In my view we have at least one race of beings, maybe several, from other worlds who are monitoring developments here on Earth following the birth of the Nuclear Age. There is no evidence of overt hostility on their part. One plausible scenario is that they are concerned for our welfare now that we have weapons of mass destruction, which could potentially end human civilization and compromise the integrity of the global environment for many, many years to come.
Irene Khan has written a landmark book on the elimination of poverty – an
essential read for anyone interested in significantly reducing the
ever-growing social, economic and political gap between the haves
and have-nots. Her basic idea is that ending poverty must be approached
from a human rights perspective rather than purely an economic one – a
viewpoint strongly influenced by the years spent in her native Bangladesh,
her training as a lawyer, and her wide-ranging experience working
for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2001 she
became the first woman, the first Asian, and the first Muslim to
hold the position of Secretary General of Amnesty International,
bringing an emphasis on the human dimension of policy issues to
the organization.
The thesis of Khan’s book, The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights, is that the poor are routinely denied freedom and justice because of discrimination, state repression, corruption and violence, which are all human rights abuses. The poor experience these abuses as deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voicelessness. Together, they create a vicious circle that both makes and keeps people impoverished. The persistence of any one factor has an impact on efforts to eliminate the others. Economic analysis does not deal with these aspects of poverty, and therefore cannot fully address the problem.
Several chapters of the book are dedicated to real-world examples of the interlinking and reinforcing effects of deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voicelessness on the poor. For instance, there are the stories of young Mexican women who migrate to the city of Ciudad Juárez from the poor rural areas to work in the assembly plants outside of El Paso, Texas. In the past 10 years, hundreds of them have been abducted, raped and murdered on their way to or from work, and until 2005 there were no serious investigations or prosecutions. The mother of one 16-year-old girl who suffered this fate in 2003 said: “No one listens to us. We count for nothing – simply nothing to the government.” Although the women had improved their lot economically and contributed to the global economy as well, living in the shanty towns with poor or corrupt policing exposed them to terrible new dangers. Without a voice, they were discriminated against, unsafe and powerless to change anything.
In Bangladesh, 500,000 gypsies or traveling people (Bede)
are excluded from any governmental health or education
programs, and almost all Bede women are illiterate, in
a country that aspires to gender equality in education.
In India, the Untouchable Dalit communities still experience extreme
social and economic exclusion – even
though it’s now illegal – and literacy rates for Dalits
are below 40 per cent. Significant proportions of poor people worldwide
belong to minority or marginalized communities that are discriminated
against on the basis of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, creed, caste
and disability. Because they’re excluded, they have no access
to essential services, are trapped in poverty, and have no power
to better their situation by holding their governments accountable.
When poor people are female, their troubles are usually multiplied. Violence against women is universal, but research shows that it affects poor women disproportionately. They experience a greater risk of sexual violence, including rape, and also of violence from their partner, and have fewer means to escape, obtain justice, or gain power over their situation. They may live in a slum where gender violence is high and protection nonexistent, or in a country at war where rape is used as a military weapon, or they may be forced by hunger into prostitution. Until the problem of discrimination is acknowledged and addressed, little can be done to remedy poverty.
Another difficulty in addressing poverty is the practice of using aggregate national figures to measure progress. Even though overall levels of income in a country may rise, for example, the poorest of the poor often do not share in the improvement. In fact, indicators of health, education and well-being for the poor, if available, may stay the same or get worse – especially in groups that might include ethnic, racial, religious or linguistic minorities, migrants or women. Aggregate data conceal these distinctions.
The Millennium Development Goals fail to address the issues of discrimination and exclusion for the same reason – progress is measured using aggregate data. Khan insists: “It is not enough to know what proportion of the population suffers from hunger, has access to clean water or dies of malaria. We need to know whether they are male or female, white or black, rural or urban, more prevalent in the north, south, east, or west of the country.” Using proportional data can also mask absolute increases in hunger and malnutrition. For instance, while the proportion may have decreased, the absolute numbers of people suffering from hunger globally have increased steadily since 2000.
Several factors have hampered the development of holistic approaches to ending poverty, which Khan identifies and discusses. One is the separation of rights into civil and political rights versus economic and social rights, which occurred during the Cold War. The UN even adopted two separate human rights treaties, allowing states to ratify one without ratifying the other. For example, the US has signed on to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but not the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The opposite is true for China. This separation has led to the belief that some rights are more important than others, and hinders efforts to confront the problem across all four areas.
Many economists and development experts find addressing the underlying causes of poverty (especially powerlessness) too political or too difficult. Others argue that only certain rights constitute a moral imperative (such as freedom from torture), or that a state cannot be held accountable for protecting rights such as healthcare and education if it does not have the resources. Still others say that needs for health, education, and housing will be met by market forces – and some claim that certain rights should be dealt with before tackling others. Khan demonstrates that none of these arguments hold up to close scrutiny.
Currently there are over 200,000 communities in the world that can be defined as slums, housing more than 1 billion people altogether. Slums are characterized by inadequate housing and sanitation, poor access to water and electricity, overcrowding, exposure to toxic water, soil and air, and high levels of violence. People who live in them are often considered squatters with no legal right to be there, and are therefore subject to arbitrary eviction. In some developing countries, over 50 per cent of the population live in slums, and some individual slums house millions of people. “If poverty is the world’s worst human rights crisis,” says Khan, “then slums are its ‘ground zero’, where the magnitude of the calamity is plain for all to see.”
The problem of poverty is obviously huge and seemingly intractable, but there are approaches to eradicating it that work. Creating laws that protect human rights are a crucial first step, but to be effective, they have to be enforced. However, poor people, especially poor women, often distrust the law and its institutions, because often they do not work in their favor. Corruption and deep-seated prejudices too frequently skew legal outcomes. For that reason, Khan recommends a bottom-up rather than top-down approach to human rights enforcement. She suggests increasing the demand for justice by those who need it most by helping them understand and act on their legal rights – partnering with non-governmental and governmental allies.
Khan believes that to further empower poor people through law and rights, we should make legal empowerment a Millennium Development Goal, increase international support – political and financial – for legal empowerment, and defend poor people’s right to organize. Further, we should recast the global effort to eradicate poverty in terms of human rights and urge governments to launch a global human rights action plan. Such a plan would focus on accountability, address all the human rights issues that keep people poor, set targets that directly confront issues of power, and engage all parts of the global human rights movement in the fight against poverty. She explains: “Respect for human rights is not another strategy – it is rather an essential piece of any strategy.”
“Looking back, I see several key moments in the history of human emancipation,” she
says. “The abolition of slavery, the achievement of universal suffrage
and the emancipation of women, the end of colonialism, the victory over fascism,
the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Each struggle has its own
history and dynamics. But at the very core of each … was the claim that
individuals had rights that could not be denied….
“The struggle to end poverty is no less momentous. It is this generation’s
great struggle. We will win it if we put freedom, justice and equality at its
core.”
Irene Khan: The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights. WW Norton & Co, 2009. Paperback. ISBN: 978 0 393 33700.