HEAVEN'S GATE

HEAVEN'S GATE , a small American UFO cult, achieved worldwide notoriety in March 1997 when the leader and his thirty-eight followers committed mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The bodies, dressed in black uniforms and covered with purple shrouds, were found lying on bunk beds and mattresses throughout the group's seven-bedroom mansion. The suicides had been carefully planned, and law enforcement investigators found no evidence of violence or coercion. After ingesting barbiturates and alcohol to induce drowsiness, the members had pulled plastic bags over their heads and suffocated as they fell asleep. Once free of their human "containers," they expected their souls to be lifted up to a spacecraft that would take them to a physical heaven, the Level above Human. There they would be given new androgynous bodies and assume the task of guiding the evolution of life on other planets throughout the universe.

Origins

The leader of Heaven's Gate, a sixty-six-year-old man named Do, claimed to be God's sole representative on the planet. Originally he had shared leadership with a woman, Ti, but she died of liver cancer in 1985. Ti and Do met in Houston, Texas, in 1972. Ti, whose given name was Bonnie Lu Nettles (b. 1924), was a registered nurse and a student of metaphysics, including Theosophy. Do, then Marshall Herff Applewhite (b. 1931), was a former music professor and lapsed Presbyterian.

Applewhite had lost two university teaching positions because of problems stemming from confusion over his sexual identity. In 1965 he was dismissed from the University of Alabama and divorced by his wife following a homosexual affair with a student, and in 1970 he was fired from Saint Thomas University in Houston after his fiancée, a female student, attempted suicide when he broke off their engagement. Applewhite lamented his inability to form a lasting relationship, and though yearning for a soulmate to help him achieve his potential, he contemplated renouncing sexuality altogether.

Shortly after the Saint Thomas incident, Applewhite began having visions, including one in which he was told that he had been chosen for a Christlike messianic role. It was during this period that Applewhite met Nettles. Still active in theater circles, Applewhite offered her an exciting escape from an unhappy marriage, and she gave him the confidence and metaphysical knowledge he needed to begin making sense of his experiences. Believing they had known each other in a previous lifetime, they immediately formed an intense, though platonic, relationship, which led to the breakup of Nettles's marriage.

Early in 1973, Applewhite and Nettles left Houston, hoping to free themselves from worldly commitments in order to discover why God had brought them together. The answer came in a revelation six months later: They were the "two witnesses" in Revelation 11 who, after being martyred, would resurrect and ascend to heaven in a cloud. Like Jesus, they had come from the Kingdom of Heaven to show humans how to achieve eternal life, and like Jesus they would return in a spacecraft. Jesus had failed in his mission, so Applewhite had been sent to try again, this time with a helper because of the negativity on the planet, which was controlled by Satan.

To become eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to follow the same path Applewhite and Nettles had taken by shedding their attachments to the human level, including their sexuality. The overcoming process would initiate a biological transformation of their bodies that would be completed upon reaching the Next Level, where they would become immortal, androgynous beings. Paradoxically, in light of the mass suicide to come, Applewhite and Nettles claimed that seekers had to board the spacecraft in living, physical bodies. Death would ensure another incarnation as a human.

In April 1975, after much fruitless proselytizing, Applewhite and Nettles recruited twenty-four followers in Hollywood, California. Now with a flock, they called themselves Bo and Peep. Their new group came to be known as Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM), referring to the transformation of the body brought about by the overcoming process.

Bo and Peep began presenting their message in public meetings, and by the end of 1975, they had over two hundred followers. Most were young, single spiritual seekers with weak attachments to conventional institutions, although some had left families, homes, and careers. Typically they vanished abruptly within days of hearing the message, disappearing so completely that even private detectives were unable to find them. The disappearances made national headlines, and syndicated news stories about HIM appeared sporadically for several months.

From HIM to Total Overcomers Anonymous

The group reached its maximum size in the fall of 1975, but membership declined rapidly because the defection rate was high and fewer people were joining. Early in 1976, with about one hundred members remaining, Bo and Peep stopped recruiting, and the media lost interest in HIM. Bo and Peep inaugurated a new phase called the Classroom, which they compared to astronaut training. Less committed "students" were encouraged to leave, and late in 1976 nineteen were expelled. Bo and Peep changed their names again, this time to Do and Ti, with Ti's name spoken first, indicating her superior position in the "chain of mind" connecting the students with the Next Level.

The Classroom coupled extreme isolation with demanding discipline. Moving every six months, the Class initially lived in remote campgrounds, and later in expensive suburban neighborhoods. Isolation from humans was virtually complete during the camping phase because the Class was supported by a student's trust fund, but members remained insulated even after moving into houses. In 1978, forty-eight members moved into a single house, or "craft," without their neighbors' knowledge. Only certain students were allowed outside and "intercepts" were designated to greet visitors. After the trust fund ran out, some students got jobs waiting tables and doing computer work, but they maintained their distance from other people by identifying themselves as members of a celibate religious order. Not until 1982 were students allowed to call home. Some eventually visited their families, but they divulged few details about their activities and never revealed the group's location.

Everyday life was governed by strict schedules and procedures. The most demanding routine required students to check in throughout the day at a central location in staggered eleven-minute intervals. Arriving two at a time, they would stand prayerfully for one minute, then go back to their business, returning eleven minutes later, and so on until bedtime. This discipline was practiced, with occasional breaks, for months at a time. Procedure manuals prescribed the most mundane activities, from shaving to buttering bread, and each student was assigned a "check partner" to make sure the rules were followed. To help eliminate their humanness, sex and private property were forbidden, and except when sleeping or engaged in "out-of-craft tasks," students wore hooded uniforms that concealed their faces. Lingering human traits were addressed in slippage meetings, a form of mutual criticism. During free periods students studied astrology, worked puzzles, and watched television game shows to exercise their minds. Every night students took shifts scanning the heavens for UFOs.

Early in the 1980s, Ti and Do realized that their students were not, as they had thought, humans who would physically change their bodies into Next Level vehicles. Instead they were members of the Kingdom of Heaven who were temporarily occupying human vehicles for a training mission, which included exemplifying celibacy for humans. This new understanding helped cushion the blow when Ti died of cancer in 1985. Do explained that Ti, having completed her task of getting him started on his mission, had left her vehicle and returned to the Next Level, where she received a new body, like changing clothes. The separation of self and body escalated in 1988 when Do broached the idea of castration as a way for the males to eliminate the sexuality of their vehicles. Eventually eight men, including Do, had themselves castrated.

In 1988 the Class tentatively resumed proselytizing by mailing a statement by Do to UFO experts and New Age centers. Do elaborated on his belief in Satan by describing a "Luciferian" army of evil space aliens pitted against the Next Level. Subsequent videotapes produced by the Class expanded on Lucifer's activities and announced that the end-time was approaching. But not until 1992, in a USA Today advertisement warning that earth's civilization was about to be "spaded under," did the Class stress the urgency of the situation. In 1994 the Class, with only twenty-six students remaining and now calling itself Total Overcomers Anonymous, embarked on a series of sixty-four public lectures to present the message one last time. The group doubled in size, but most of the newcomers dropped out within a few months.

The Suicides

Discouraged, Do grew increasingly concerned about Luciferian interference with his mission. After the 1993 assault on the Branch Davidian residence near Waco, Texas, Do worried that the Class might be under government surveillance, so he moved his students to New Mexico, where they began building a fortified compound. However, the project was never completed, and Do began sending students to other countries in an unsuccessful attempt to find a more compatible location for the Class. Proselytizing continued over the Internet, but the main response was ridicule, and Do admitted to growing weary of his mission.

In this context, the Class began discussing the possibility of "exiting" their vehicles, as Ti had done. The discussion was hypothetical at first, but it turned serious in September 1994 when Do asked the students how they would feel about leaving their bodies if this required nothing more than drinking a pleasant-tasting liquid and falling asleep. A few balked, but only one left the Class. In 1996 the Class began posting messages on its website that strongly implied that suicide was imminent. Erroneously, Do had come to believe that, like Ti, he was dying of cancer, and in November the Class liquidated nearly all its possessions.

By 1997 the number of students had dropped to thirty-eight, all of whom would die by suicide along with Do. The Class, now calling itself Heaven's Gate, had rented a hilltop mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy suburb of San Diego. While several students still worked at out-of-craft tasks, many now worked "in-craft" for the group's web design business, Higher Source. Neighbors were generally unaware that a religious group lived in the house, and the few outsiders who became acquainted with the students described them as friendly, but reclusive.

Finally, in March, a flashing "RED ALERT!" was added to the group's web page announcing that the moment of departure was imminent. Although the medical examiner was unable to determine exactly when the suicides began, they appear to have started on March 23, the day after the Hale-Bopp comet—the brightest of the twentieth century—made its closest approach to earth. Do had concluded that Ti was coming back in a spacecraft concealed behind the comet's tail. Given Do's belief that he had been sent to complete the task assigned to Jesus, it may be significant that Easter, symbolizing Jesus' departure, was just seven days away.

Consistent with the group's meticulous attention to detail, the suicides followed a written plan. While some details remain unclear, it appears that the deaths took place over a three-day period, and that Do was among the last to die. In a videotape made just before the suicides, the students overflowed with gratitude toward Ti and Do, relieved and excited to finally be leaving their human containers for the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Aftermath

As the largest mass suicide on American soil, the deaths triggered sensational headlines around the world. Most ex-members were shocked by the suicides because only a few were aware that their former classmates no longer believed that a physical body was required to enter the Next Level. Subsequently two ex-members took their lives in hopes of joining the Class aboard the spacecraft, bringing the death toll to forty-one. Although a few ex-members continued to believe that Ti and Do had come from the Next Level, none expressed any desire to carry on the Class. Only another Representative from the Next Level could do that. In their minds, Heaven's Gate ceased to exist when Do and his students exited their vehicles.

See Also

Branch Davidians; New Religious Movements, article on New Religious Movements in the United States; Theosophical Society; UFO New Religions.

Bibliography

Balch, Robert W. "Bo and Peep: A Case Study of the Origins of Messianic Leadership." In Millennialism and Charisma, edited by Roy Wallis, pp. 13–72. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1982. Discusses how Applewhite and Nettles came to believe they were the "two witnesses" and develop their original belief system.

Balch, Robert W. "Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in Bo and Peep's UFO Cult." In The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, edited by James R. Lewis, pp. 137–166. Albany, N.Y., 1995. Discusses how Ti and Do changed the original group's beliefs and structure to stem defections and create highly committed followers.

Balch, Robert W., and David Taylor. "Salvation in a UFO." Psychology Today 10 (1976): 58–66, 106. A participant-observer description of the beliefs, membership, and everyday life of Heaven's Gate in 1975.

Balch, Robert W., and David Taylor. "Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult." American Behavioral Scientist 20 (1977): 839–860. Discusses how and why people joined Heaven's Gate.

Balch, Robert W., and David Taylor. "Making Sense of the Heaven's Gate Suicides." In Cults, Religion, and Violence, edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, pp. 209–228. Cambridge, UK, 2002. A short history of Heaven's Gate, beginning with the founders' backgrounds and revelation, and concluding with the suicides and their aftermath.

Wessinger, Catherine. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate. New York, 2000. See pages 229–246 for additional information on circumstances contributing to the suicides.

Robert W. Balch (2005)