My powerful Maitreya Buddha experiences really began when I saw this statue up close in Los Angeles in Person in 1977 in Los Angeles

 I was a student at Summit University which at that time was a religious seminary college in Pasadena, California. They had rented the College of the Nazarene in Pasadena then for their Campus as of 1977 when I was there. Our class did an outing to see this Statue and others and it was amazing the energy around this statue because it went back to the 3rd Century in Pakistan.

Before this, even though my parents raised me in a more universal religion though based upon Christianity that today might be considered New Age because of it's universal nature, so I had been introduced to Maitreya Buddha as a child already. But, the Buddha aspect of Maitreya wasn't the focus then and rather seeing Maitreya as one of the Ascended Masters sort of like Jesus was seen through a more Theosophical (Madame Blavatsky) point of view of Ascended Masters out of the 1800s.

So, Maitreya was for me then an Ascended Master I recognized from my childhood and I think my parents religion even has a song that they sing to him.

However, Maitreya became very profound to me starting in 1977 when I witnessed this statue in person with my Archangel Gabriel and Hope's quarter of Summit University when we visited this statue in one of the L.A. Art Museums then from the Pasadena Campus of Summit University then in 1977. Later, Elizabeth Clare Prophet did a Conference at the Scottish Rights Masonic Temple in San Francisco which had amazing effects on my life and many others as well. At this point I was introduced to the Tibetan Buddhist Mantras invoking Padmasambhava, Avaloketeshvara (Dalai Lama) and Tara and others in Sanskrit.

Later in the 1980s I was actually initiated into the Tibetan Language Mantras which as somewhat different than the Sanskrit original versions by Tibetan Lamas trained in Tibet, India and Nepal. Later my wife and I went to India and Nepal in 1985 and 1986 and stayed from December 1985 until April 1986 and brought back a Tibetan Lama and his translator to the Northern California coast where we lived. I still live now in this same general area on the coast of Northern California.