Maitreya (www.wikipedia.com) and Raj Patel (www.rajpatel.org)
I have it on fairly good authority that Raj Patel is indeed “Maitreya”. My “exhaustive” research lasting an intense five minutes and drawn from such sources as Wikipedia and www.rajpatel.org has thrown up clinching evidence that the followers of Share International are not misguided in thinking that Raj Patel is indeed who the group’s founder Benjamin Crème has prophesized to be.
So far I have only one exhibit to offer you. And that is the visual comparison above.On the left is what Maitreya might have looked like according to Tibetan Buddhist traditions and on the right is what Patel indeed looks like. I must say that resemblance is uncanny.
For those of you who may not know about him Raj Patel is a writer, activist and academic who has gained considerable attention because of his recent books such as “The Value of Nothing”, “Stuffed and Starved”, “Promised Land” and “Food Rebellions.”
Patel finds himself in an extraordinary situation of being hailed, worshipped, feted, and fawned over as “Maitreya”, who is a sort of bodhisattva or the enlightened one according to Buddhist traditions. To his credit Patel has strenuously denied that he is “Maitreya.”
Here is how Patel describes it in The Guardian, “I mention this first because earlier this year a trickle, and then a flood, of email asked whether I was, in fact a prince. Specifically, people asked whether I was Maitreya – The World Teacher – a prince of peace, the leader of a movement that might be able to save the planet from itself. Others wrote to ask whether I was the antichrist, the Prince of Darkness.
As the Guardian reported, the deluge began after a number of coincidences seemed to match me up with the man foretold by followers of a group called Share International, founded by Scottish mystic Benjamin Crème. I'd done little to earn the title of Maitreya, though I admit some parallels between my life and that described in the prophecy.”
I was amused to see how Patel, who is a serious academic and respected scholar on development issues, has obliquely kept the possibility of indeed being “Maitreya” open even while closing it. “I'd done little to earn the title of Maitreya, though I admit some parallels between my life and that described in the prophecy,” he says.
Quite predictably this whole nonsensical story may now be headed for Hollywood.
Here are various links you might like to read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/apr/11/religion-peace-social-justice-messiah
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/apr/09/patel-not-messiah-naughty-boy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/us/09sfmetro.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
