(71) Thu 1 May 97 12:10 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult A ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:fe12 22a16140 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 796830f5 Leader Believed in Space Aliens and Apocalypse 03/28/97 The New York Times Before he began his ultimately suicidal mission as an extraterrestrial shepherd to lead the chosen aboard a spaceship into eternity, Marshall Herff Applewhite lived an apparently unremarkable life in Houston as a music professor who nurtured the choir at his Episcopal church. That was in the early 1970's, and people who knew him then said they saw no omens of the zealot Mr. Applewhite would become. But for reasons that were unclear, and with a suddenness that was equally mystifying, he was seemingly transformed into someone else from 1972 to 1975, a budding cult leader with beliefs in aliens and Armageddon. Mr. Applewhite and a female companion, refashioning themselves first as Bo and Peep, and later as Do and Ti, set off on a nomadic adventure through the Midwest and West, preaching their unorthodox gospel and beckoning people to prepare with them for an ascent into the stars. It was that journey that apparently led to what happened inside a million-dollar house in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., where the bodies of 39 cult members, who had committed suicide, were found on Wednesday. Late yesterday, the authorities determined that the body of Mr. Applewhite, 65 years old, was among those recovered from the house. There seems to be little question that the people in the house were disciples of Mr. Applewhite's preachings, which were accessible on the Internet and were being actively spread in public lectures by his followers as recently as last year, according to one writer who has done extensive research on Mr. Applewhite and his cult. "He went underground for a long time, but then in the last two years, posters for his group began appearing in cities where New Age stuff was prominent," said the writer, Peter Klebnikov, who is researching a book on doomsday cults. Mr. Klebnikov said the posters, which summoned people to special lectures, articulated a spiritual philosophy and apocalyptic outcome identical to those espoused through the years by Mr. Applewhite, and warned that the end was near. According to various newspaper and magazine articles about Mr. Applewhite, his father was a Presbyterian minister, and Mr. Applewhite studied to become a minister but then switched his focus to music. He received a master's degree in music from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1969, published reports said. While there, he played starring roles in two musicals, "Oklahoma!" and "South Pacific." At some point, he married and had two children, Mr. Klebnikov said. Mr. Applewhite also went to Alabama and taught music at the University of Alabama, published reports said. By 1971, he had apparently divorced, left his family and moved to Texas, which may have been born. Tom Crow, an organist at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Houston, where Mr. Applewhite worked from 1971 to 1972, said yesterday that he believed Mr. Applewhite had been raised near Corpus Christi. In Houston, Mr. Applewhite worked for several years as a music professor at St. Thomas University and sang 15 roles with the Houston Grand Opera, said a New York Times Magazine profile of him and his group in February 1976. He also directed the choir at St. Mark's. "He was a superb musician, a superb singer and a super choir director," Mr. Crow said, adding that Mr. Applewhite was an "extraordinarily gentle fellow" whose patience seemed ideal for teaching. Mr. Crow said that Mr. Applewhite had occasionally displayed a curiosity in meditation and Eastern mysticism but that it was nothing out of the ordinary. "I wouldn't have seen any preview of any of the cult business that finally happened," Mr. Crow said. Its genesis seems to have come in 1972, when Mr. Applewhite, then about 40, met a nurse named Bonnie Lu Nettles, then 44, and the two discove discovered a mutual interest in astrology and reincarnation and came to believe that they were the earthly incarnations of aliens. Materials put on the Internet by the Heaven's Gate cult group, which the authorities have named in connection with the mass suicide, give this version of the meeting of Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles: "In the early 1970's, two members of the Kingdom of Heaven (or what some might call two aliens from space) incarnated into two unsuspecting humans in Houston. The registered nurse was happily married with four children, worked in the nursery of a local hospital, and enjoyed a small astrology practice. The music professor, who had lived with a male friend for some years, was contentedly involved in cultural and academic activities." The Internet text continues, "They consciously recognized that they were sent from space to do a task that had something to do with the Bible." The couple opened a short-lived book store in Houston called the Christian Arts Center, which sold information on astrology, metaphysics and Theosophy. Then, according to the group's own writings, published reports and experts familiar with the cult started by Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles, they began to take retreats during which they formulated their beliefs. Mr. Klebnikov said they had set up a spiritual retreat of sorts in a house in Houston that they called Knowplace. Calling themselves Bo and Peep, they also traveled outside Texas to share their philosophy with others. In August 1974, they were arrested in Harlingen, Tex., on charges of stealing credit cards and a car, according to the magazine profile of Mr. Applewhite published. Both that article and the cult's own Internet materials said the credit cards belonged to the husband of a woman who had left home to join Bo and Peep. The Internet materials said Mr. Applewhite was extradited to St. Louis, from which the car had been taken, but the authorities there could not provide details about the disposition of the case yesterday. It did not put an end to either Mr. Applewhite's travels or his proselytizing. In 1975, he and Ms. Nettles were preaching in Oregon, and they attracted national attention after persuading a group of about 20 people from the tiny coastal town of Waldport to sever all ties to the lives they were leading and make a pilgrimage to the prairie of eastern Colorado, where they would supposedly rendezvous with a space ship. The notoriety that the incident brought them, and growing scrutiny by Federal authorities and cult watchers, scared them underground for a long time after that, said Mr. Klebnikov. Mr. Crow, the organist in Houston, said that while people in Houston heard from Mr. Applewhite occasionally until 1975, they lost track of him at that point. The group's Internet materials, which refer to Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles as Do and Ti and as "The Two," said they and their followers went into deliberate seclusion for 17 years, until 1992. Ms. Nettles apparently died of cancer in 1985. In those years of relative silence, Mr. Klebnikov said, they moved many times, usually throughout the West. Sometimes they lived in motels, sometimes in rented houses, sometimes in wilderness camps. Jerome Clark, author of "The U.F.O. Encyclopedia," said that wherever they were, Bo and Peep kept careful track of their sheep, monitoring their followers' movements and their adherence to an ascetic life style, dressing them in odd uniforms and giving them "psychic training." "Sometimes they were told to sit and stare at a single object for hours," Mr. Clark said. The group showed up in places as disparate as Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, N. M. and Laramie, Wyo. Dr. Leo Sprinkle, an emeritus professor of counseling service at the University of Wyoming and a researcher of U.F.O. experiences, recalled meeting Bo and Peep in Laramie when they spoke to his group, the Institute for U.F.O. Contactees Studies. "They thought those of us that were doing U.F.O research did not have the full story that they had," Dr. Sprinkle said. "They were attempting to attract people who would go with them." To survive, the members of the group did odd jobs or used the money that rich recruits brought with them. Mr. Clark said that the group bought houses in the Denver area and the Dallas area and called these houses "crafts," as in space crafts. In 1993, according to the group's Internet materials, "we took a much more overt step toward the conclusion of our task." The group said it published an advertisement in USA Today that year that was titled "U.F.O. Cult Resurfaces with Final Offer," along with advertisements in other publications that proclaimed, "Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human.". "Again, the ball was rolling," the group said. "We were definitely in the public eye." In 1994 and 1995, newspaper reports from various cities cite controversial public lectures by the group, then identifying itself as Total Overcomers, in which its followers talked about the coming end of the world and the need for people to renounce worldly belongings and desires. But what is unclear from those reports, and what cult experts seemed uncertain about, was whether Mr. Applewhite made any of these appearances or emerged in public himself. The question of whether he was still tending to his flock, however, was resolved by the presence of his body among the dozens of other corpses in Rancho Santa Fe. --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (72) Thu 1 May 97 12:11 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult B ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:5237 22a16160 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 796832a3 VIDEOTAPES LEFT BY 39 WHO DIED DESCRIBED CULT'S SUICIDE GOAL 03/28/97 The New York Times RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif., March 27 -- The 39 men and women found dead in a mass suicide at an estate here were members of an obscure computer-related cult who left behind detailed videotapes describing their intentions, and they appeared to believe that the Hale-Bopp comet now streaking across the sky was their ticket to heaven. The members of the group, identified by the authorities as Heaven's Gate, referred to themselves as angels, dressed alike in androgynous black clothes and buzz haircuts, and ran a business, Higher Source, that designed commercial home pages for the Internet. The co-founder of the cult, Marshall Herff Applewhite, 65, was among the dead, the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office said. On Wednesday, a former cult member, alerted by two videotaped messages mailed to him in Los Angeles County, drove with his employer to a rented house in this hillside suburb just north of San Diego to find the dead scattered on their backs. All but two had purple cloths folded in triangles over their heads and shoulders like shrouds. Neighbors and other acquaintances said the group kept quiet and clannish in the seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house, filled with Spartan bunk beds, plastic chairs, cheap office furniture, bulk food and perhaps 20 computers. The authorities said that the degree of decomposition in their bodies suggested they had died at various times over three or more days and that there were indications that at least some swallowed a mix of phenobarbital and alcohol and then put plastic bags over their heads. Toxicology tests could take a week or more, they said. At first the police said all the victims appeared to be young men, but today officials described that mistake as a result of dim lighting, the condition of the bodies and the fact that all wore closely cropped hair. Today, more than 30 detectives and lab technicians combed through evidence and examined the bodies as journalists swarmed around the house in an enclave that is home to the likes of the diet diva Jenny Craig, the sportscaster Dick Enberg and the actor Victor Mature. The authorities said that the victims all had drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates and other identification on their bodies but that release of their names was being delayed pending notification of their families. "We may never really know the question that is on anyone's mind: Why did they do this?" the San Diego County Sheriff, Bill Kolender, said at a news conference here this afternoon, visibly shaken by what may have been the worst mass suicide in United States history. But Nick Matzorkis, the head of Interact, a Beverly Hills, Calif., company that designs home pages for the Internet and who had contracted out work to Higher Source, said tapes sent on Tuesday to the former cult member who discovered the bodies and who now works for him contained a message from the cult leader, identified as Do, (pronounced DOE). It said the members would be "shedding their containers" and "leaving this planet," and was accompanied by another tape in which members, in pairs, made farewells. A site on the World Wide Web, called Heaven's Gate, and apparently created by the cult, makes repeated references to a Do and his deputy, Ti. In effusive language, the page celebrates the presence of the Hale-Bopp comet as "the 'marker' we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to 'Their World' -- in the literal heavens." The site says that those who read it may come to "understand our joy" and adds: "You may even find your 'boarding pass' to leave with us during this brief 'window.' " In a videotape broadcast by the CBS network and its affiliates, an unidentified white-haired man believed to be Mr. Applewhite said, "You can follow us but you cannot stay here," and he urged viewers to "follow quickly." Reporters at a Toledo, Ohio, station had obtained the tape from a minister in Adrian, Mich., who also received a note containing a lengthy statement. "By the time you read this," the statement read, "we'll be gone -- several dozen of us. We came from the Level of Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came -- task completed." Brian Blackbourne, the San Diego County Medical Examiner, said at the news conference that there were no indications of foul play but that in the trash behind the house investigators found plastic bags with elastic bands around them and tattered recipes suggesting that members mix bites of pudding or applesauce with drugs, then swallow a vodka mixture and lie back to die. He said it appeared that the members killed themselves in stages -- first 15, then another 15, then 9 -- with later victims helping to clean up after those who came before them. "It was very planned," Mr. Blackbourne said, "very sort of immaculately carried out." At the news conference, officials showed a videotape made Wednesday night by investigators, depicting the bodies, in matching black athletic pants and black running shoes, lying on beds and cushions with hands at their sides. Officials said there were 21 women and 18 men, ranging in age from their 20's to a 72-year-old man. But the medical examiner distributed a list showing there were 20 women and 19 men, and there was no explanation given for the discrepancy. Many were in their 40's, officials said. Officials said most of the dead were white, with two blacks and one or two of Hispanic origin. Cmdr. Alan Fulmer of the Sheriff's Department said all but one of the victims appeared on the farewell videotape, and appeared to have no qualms about their impending fate. One man, in particular, was "very upbeat, very outgoing," and "did not appear to be upset about what they were doing," by "making their final exit, if you will." Mr. Matzorkis said he and his employee -- whom he would identify only by the pseudonym Rio -- had driven here on Wednesday afternoon to follow up on the videotapes and an accompanying letter sent by Federal Express. He said Rio entered the house, found the bodies and emerged "white as a sheet" to place a call to 911 summoning the police. For all the group's odd ways, neighbors and former clients described them as professional and efficient workers and expressed astonishment at their fate. The police had no record of any previous contact with the group or calls of complaints or suspicious behavior at the house. "They definitely seemed odd," said Tom Goodspeed, director of the local polo club, for whom the group designed a home page. "But living in California, odd is nothing strange for us. They seemed to me to be well within the norms of being able to handle society." Cory VanKleeck, manager of the Postal Annex, a private postal company in nearby Del Mar, said a mailbox had been rented there last October on behalf of Higher Source by a person who identified himself as Alan Schaff. There was no listing for such a person in local telephone directories, and it was not clear whether he was among the victims. Milton J. Silverman, a lawyer for the house's owner, Sam Koutchesfahani, who rented it to the group last October, said they had referred to themselves as Christian-based angels sent to earth who met in the Midwest some years ago. He described the leader as a man named Father John, about 70 years old, and said the group had told him there were chapters in Arizona and New Mexico. Mr. Silverman said Mr. Koutchesfahani had been trying to sell the house for at least $1.2 million, but failing. When a real estate agent offered the owner a group of clean-cut people to rent the house, he agreed. The group had references from a doctor they had rented from in the nearby community of Fairbanks Ranch, he said, stating that they had left the house in better condition than when they moved in. The group paid $7,000 in cash each month, Mr. Silverman said, and the owner only ever knew their leaders by the names of Father John and Brother Logan. They told him that they came from the Midwest and that they did not believe the Government should have any authority over them. They claimed to have no Social Security numbers and did not use bank accounts, Mr. Silverman said. Mr. Silverman said his client last saw the tenants on Sunday, when they offered him the gift of a computer for one of Mr. Koutchesfahani's children. The authorities said today that the victims carried drivers licenses from New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, California and Arizona, for the most part, and that one had a Canadian birth certificate. President Clinton, speaking to reporters at the White House, called the suicides "heartbreaking, sickening" and added "it's important that we get as many facts as we can about this and to try to determine what, in fact, motivated those people and what all of us can do to make sure there aren't other people thinking the same way out there." Mr. Matzorkis described the cult members as all looking the same, with buzz haircuts, and said they referred to themselves as monks living in a monastery. He said he was initially skeptical when his employee told him the group was planning a suicide and offered to drive the worker here himself. "Rio emerged from the house to say, 'They did it,' " Mr. Matzorkis recalled at a news conference outside his office in Beverly Hills. When he asked, "Did what?" Rio replied, "They left their containers, they committed suicide," he said. Deputy Sheriff Robert Brunk, one of the first two deputies on the scene, said that even before he got into the house, the air-conditioner was running and he could smell a noxious odor from inside. He and a partner found 37 people lying with 3-foot by 3-foot triangles of cloth over their faces, and cups with a liquid substance were found. Officials said that two of the dead had no shrouds, but plastic bags over their heads, and they speculated that these two were the last to die. "It was just the most bizarre thing," Deputy Brunk said in an interview. --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (73) Thu 1 May 97 12:11 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult C, 1/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:81b2 22a16160 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 796833b8 On the Furthest Fringes of Millennialism 03/28/97 The New York Times The mass suicide in a wealthy Southern California enclave casts a brutal light on a millennialist sect that earned notoriety on the West Coast 22 years ago, before disappearing into isolation to teach its members that the Earth was corrupt, that civilization was doomed and that only the disciplined few could be saved, rescued by a U.F.O. The police in San Diego said the 39 people dead in the suicide were members of a group called Heaven's Gate, which maintained an elaborate Internet site under that name. Documents on that site indicate that this group was the same as a U.F.O.-obsessed organization founded in 1975 by a couple from Houston: Marshall Herff Applewhite, who was among the dead found on Wednesday, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, whose charismatic preachings were described in an article in The New York Times Magazine in February 1976. In a group whose members shed their birth names, Mr. Applewhite was identified on the Internet site simply as Do, as in the musical tone, while Ms. Nettles, who apparently died more than a decade ago, was Ti. The group's most recent posting on its Internet site declared that the approach this week of the Hale-Bopp comet provided "the 'marker' we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to 'Their World' -- in the literal Heavens." (Excerpts from the group's writings, page A20.) In its documents, the group described a worldview on the furthest fringes of millennialism, with disconnected elements of Christianity interpreted through a thick lens of science fiction. In essence, its teachings boiled down to a belief in exalted purpose for a few, combined with an exceptionally grim view of life on an Earth where evil was in control -- a heady mixture of profound hope amid utter isolation. Heaven's Gate left no shortage of clues as to its negative thinking about the value of this-worldly life. The group subscribed to a gnostic religious view of the soul as a separate and superior being, temporarily inhabiting a physical form. Bodies, wrote Do in 1995, were merely "the temporary container for the soul." A soul, he added, could evolve to a higher level of being, at which point it would receive a new physical form to house it. "The final act of metamorphosis or separation from the human kingdom," he wrote, "is the 'disconnect' or separation from the human physical container or body in order to be released from the human environment." In another document posted on its Internet site, Heaven's Gate declared itself "against suicide" -- but with such nuance as to leave ample opening for it. Yes, the group said, its members expected to exit Earth in their "physical vehicles (bodies)" when a spaceship arrived to take them to the "Next Level." But should the forces of the world turn violently against them, it added, the group would be "mentally prepared" for whatever came its way. The document asked readers to consider the example of the Jews at Masada who killed themselves rather than submit to Roman legions in A.D. 73. Furthermore, the group said its understanding of suicide was not at all conventional: "The true meaning of 'suicide' is to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered." In the group's thinking, a spaceship, thought to be following in Hale-Bopp's wake, would be offering just such an opportunity. BRIEF TASTE OF NOTORIETY, THEN A LONG SILENCE The group came together 22 years ago under the charismatic preaching of Mr. Applewhite and his companion, Ms. Nettles, a former nurse. It enjoyed a short-lived burst of notoriety, before the couple took it underground in 1976. After existing in deep seclusion in various Southwestern cities, the group surfaced again briefly three years ago, when members sought out recruits with a series of public lectures. In the group's documents, Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles are described as representatives of an extraterrestrial plane called the Kingdom of Heaven, come to Earth "to offer the way leading to membership" there for those who could "overcome" their attachment to money, sex and family life. Such total separation, the group preached, was necessary because Earth's human structures -- governmental, economic and, especially, religious -- were under the control of demonic forces: "Luciferians" and evil "space aliens," in the group's parlance. The urgent belief in a coming end to a hopelessly corrupt world has long been a recurring part of American religious culture. In one of its best-known episodes, followers of the Bible student William Miller, expecting Christ's return in 1843, gathered on hillsides, anticipating transport to Heaven. But as the 20th century wanes, the millennialist impulse has taken an increasingly dark cast among some smaller and socially isolated groups. More than 75 Branch Davidians, anticipating a coming end of the world, died in a fire during a siege of their compound near Waco, Tex., by Federal agents in 1993. And in the last three years, more than 70 members of a sect called the Order of the Solar Temple have committed group suicides in Canada and Europe in the belief they could transcend a corrupt world and reach a higher state. Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles told an interviewer from The Times Magazine in 1976 that they had come to believe they were beings from outer space, incarnate in human bodies, with a mission to teach others about the possibility of reaching a new stage of existence. In time, they began calling themselves "the Two," a reference to the "two witnesses" of Christ foretold in the Bible's Book of Revelation, whose dense allegory has long attracted all manner of religious believers seeking prophetic knowledge of the future. (It was Revelation that David Koresh, the Davidians' leader, insisted he was in the process of decoding as Federal agents besieged that group's compound.) According to the Bible, the two witnesses are prophets who will be slain by a beast from the bottomless pit, then be resurrected and ascend to Heaven. In 1975, Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles, who then used the names Bo and Peep, toured the West Coast, holding forth on college campuses and in private homes, declaring that a spacecraft would arrive to take away a select few. Who was ready, they asked, to "walk out the door" of their lives, to join the movement and reach the Evolutionary Level Above Human? In the coastal village of Waldport, Ore., 20 people who heard them lecture pulled up stakes and left town with them. Elsewhere, people abandoned spouses, children and businesses to follow. The message that Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles preached was well suited to a nation traumatized by the loss of the war in Vietnam, the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and years of social upheaval and violence. They were both anti-establishment and puritanical, calling for total separation from society, simple living with shared resources and adherence to a moral code that eschewed drink, drugs and sex. At one point, it was estimated that the couple had attracted between 200 and 1,000 followers, who roamed the country in free-spirited pairs and small groups, spreading the word. But in 1976, as numerous followers became disillusioned and drifted away, the couple took the remnants of their group underground. Those who went with them severed contact with loved ones, creating a mystery that lingered in the hurt suffered by the families they left behind. Sociologists who originally tracked the group estimated that it had shrunk considerably by this time, with far fewer than 100 members. cont... --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (74) Thu 1 May 97 12:12 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult C, 2/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:8142 22a16180 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683483 cont... GROUP PUBLISHED BOOK TO TELL ITS HISTORY The years that followed are known mainly through the group's documents. In a 200-page book that the members of Heaven's Gate self-published last year, one of them wrote that they had spent 17 years undergoing a type of re- education, "a 'metaphoric' classroom experience of changing over their consciousness and behavior," evolving to reach a stage in which they could enter the higher realm that Mr. Applewhite and Ms. Nettles preached. In this and other documents, the group elaborated on its theology, filling out a skeletal Christian framework with the flesh of a wholly new set of beliefs. The beliefs were these: Two thousand years ago, the beings of the Kingdom Level Above Human appointed an "Older Member" to send to Earth a "Representative" (Jesus) to teach people how to enter the "true" Kingdom of God. But humans inspired by demonic forces killed this individual, also called "the Captain," and transformed his teachings into "watered-down Country Club religion." Then, according to the documents, a new chance was offered to humanity in the 1970's, when the Kingdom Level dispatched a second team of two Older Members to take up human bodies (or "vehicles") and resume the teachings. The documents also make clear that the group's members took peculiar new names, another sign of their total break with the outside world. The book, for example, contains an overview written by "Jwnody -- a student." Much of the essential beliefs of Heaven's Gate are spelled out in a lengthy, first-person statement published on the group's Web site and updated two months ago. Apparently written in 1995 by Mr. Applewhite (under the title "An E.T. Presently Incarnate"), it reveals that Ms. Nettles died in 1985 (or, as he wrote, "separated from her borrowed human container and returned to the Next Level"). The document also says the group's followers arrived on Earth in "staged" spacecraft crashes and were temporarily disembodied before taking human form in bodies especially designated for that purpose by "other crews from the Level Above Human." The document is full of foreboding about the state of the world, warning that the Government, the wealthy and "moral" leaders are controlled by evil space aliens, who have also used all religions to deceive humans about God. It warns, too, of a coming apocalypse that will destroy civilization; gang wars and ethnic cleansing are offered as proof that the process has begun. Later there will be a "restoration period" in which another civilization will be born. The document reveals too the group's rigidly authoritarian code. "The only way an individual can grow in the Next Level is to learn to be dependent on his Older Member as that source of unlimited growth and knowledge," it says. "So, any younger member in good standing forever remains totally dependent upon (and looks to) his Older Member for all things." Five years ago, Heaven's Gate put aside its seclusion and took its message public. In its book, the group said it undertook a series of "satellite television broadcasts" in 1992. Then, the next year, it took out an advertisement in USA Today, with a brief description of its philosophy. The ad's title: " 'U.F.O. Cult' Resurfaces With Final Offer." The ad was also reprinted, the group said in its book, in "alternative newspapers" and in publications overseas, allowing Heaven's Gate to enter into correspondence with a far-flung audience. In 1994, the book said, the group "sold all our worldly possessions except for a few cars and changes of clothing, and set out cross-country holding free public meetings" in various cities. Press reports from that time suggest that this met with mixed results. Five members who gave a lecture on the group's philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago in July 1994 drew only 40 people, some of whom left when a videotape of Mr. Applewhite was shown, according to The Chicago Tribune. The newspaper reported that members of the group referred to their bodies as "vessels" that contained souls from a super-human level. MEMBERSHIP DRIVE ADDS 'CREW MEMBERS' But the group's outreach accomplished two ends: membership was "nearly doubled" (the group's book did not give numbers), and the group concluded that those who joined were not part of the "public in general" but rather lost "crew members," beings from the higher level. "It was quite evident to them and to us that we were of the same family, of the same mind," the book states. As happy as this experience might sound, it was also the last positive interaction that Heaven's Gate would experience in trying to function publicly. The group, its book said, spent the next year in seclusion, undergoing new training, "an accelerated version of the 'metamorphic classroom.' " In September and October 1995, the group published major statements on its Internet site. One was titled, "Undercover 'Jesus' Surfaces Before Departure"; the second was Mr. Applewhite's "E.T." statement. The documents drew a mixed response, but the prevailing reaction struck the group as "ridicule, hostility or both." Ominously, given what was to take place near San Diego this week, Heaven's Gate read this response as final, an indication that its mission was over, that the "weeds" of humanity had taken over Earth's "garden," and that civilization was finished. "This was the signal," the group wrote in its book, "for us to begin our preparations to return 'home.' " --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (75) Thu 1 May 97 12:13 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:50b7 22a161a0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683797 A 70's Burst Onto the Stage 03/28/97 The New York Times In fall 1975, the departure of 20 people from a small town in Oregon, apparently hoping to join a U.F.O. voyage to another world, fascinated the nation. Newsweek, CBS television and newspapers nationwide covered the event. "Rocket ships from outer space: Buck Rogers fantasy -- or is it?" Terry Drinkwater, a CBS reporter, asked in a commentary. "Today there is a group of earthlings who believe they're on their way to a rendezvous with such a ship for a trip to the unknown." On Feb. 29, 1976, the cover article in The New York Times Magazine was "Looking for the Next World," about Bo and Peep, a man and woman from Texas who were the recruiters for the space voyage. Bo was identified as Marshall Herff Applewhite, who was among the 39 found dead on Wednesday in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Peep was identified as Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles. After weeks of searching, the author of the article, James S. Phelan, a West Coast freelance writer, had found Bo and Peep in Little Rock, Ark. In a tape-recorded interview, which lasted hours, Bo and Peep discussed their hope of leaving Earth and their difficulties of leading such a voyage, including defections from their movement. They told of recruiting converts to engage in "the Process," wandering in pairs to spread the message of a space trip to a new life. --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (76) Thu 1 May 97 12:13 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult E ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:9076 22a161a0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 7968388c Statements That Heaven's Gate Released Over the Years 03/28/97 The New York Times Following is an excerpt from a note included with a videotape received Tuesday by the Reverend Rick Strawcutter, a Michigan minister and anti- government radio commentator. He turned the note and tape over to a CBS affiliate in Toledo, which broadcast them. By the time you read this, we suspect that the human bodies we were wearing have been found, and that a flurry of fragmented reports have begun to hit the wire services. For those who want to know the facts, the following statement has been issued. . . . By the time you receive this, we'll be gone -- several dozen of us. We came from the Level Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came -- task completed. The distance space we refer to is what you literature would call the Kingdom of Heaven, or Kingdom of God." From a statement on the videotape by the leader of the group, identified as "Do" and presumed to be Marshall Herff Applewhite: My older member can be your senior shepherd. You can follow us but you cannot stay here. From "Overview of Present Mission by Jwnody -- a student, April 1996, in a book published on the group's Web site: On September 25-26, 1995, from a secluded location, we issued a statement that went out -- 'on line' -- around the globe . . . on October 11, 1995, we posted a higher, more generic translation, entitled '95 Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate." The response was extremely animated and somewhat mixed. However, the loudest voices were those expressing ridicule, hostility, or both --so quick to judge that which they could not comprehend. This was the signal to use to begin our preparations to return 'home.' The weeds have taken over the garden and truly disturbed its usefulness beyond repair -- it is time for the civilization to be recycled -- 'spaded under.' From "95 Statement by an E.T. Presently Incarnate," posted on the World Wide Web on Oct. 11, 1995, updated January 1997 in the book: We suspect that many of us arrived in staged spacecraft (UFO) crashes and many of our discarded bodies (genderless, not belonging to the human species), were retrieved by human authorities (government and military). . . . Deposits containing souls (theseed orchip with a program of metamorphic possibilities) are placed in many human plants. This deposit is potentially the gift of life into the physical and real Evolutionary Level Above Human. These deposits are given or made only when members of the Level Above Human are assigned to directly relate to (be incarnate in) the civilization. Only these Representatives can nurture those deposited souls with Next Level thinking, behavior, and all the information required to effectively fluff offall human/mammalian characteristics of the old creature. . . . Humans with deposits containing souls can likely be identified at this time as some of those who are rapidly losing respect for this world or its system. They are, from the establishment's point of view, being irresponsible or anti-social -- and will be seen by the world as duped, crazy, a cult member, a drifter, a loner, a drop-out, a separatist, etc. . . . Since this is the close of the Age, the battle in the Heavens with their servants on Earth will be the means of that closing and the spading under of the plants (including the humans) of this civilization. Weedsare now getting rid of weeds -- from gang wars to nations involved in ethnic cleansing. This is simply a part of the natural recycling process which precedes a restoration period of the planet in preparation for another civilization's beginning. From " '88 Update -- The UFO Two and Their Crew, a Brief Synopsis," Oct. 18. 1988, in the book: In the early 1970's, two members of the Kingdom of Heaven (or what some might call two aliens from space) incarnated into two unsuspecting humans in Houston, a registered nurse and a college music professor who were in their forties. The nurse and the professor hadn't previously known each other and had completely separate lives. The registered nurse was happily married with four children, worked inthe nursery of a local hospital, and enjoyed a small astrology practice. The music professor, a divorcee who had lived with a male friend for some years, was contentedly involved in cultural and academic activities. . . . About nine months after they first met, they left Houston because their lives, which were crumbling around them, made it impossible to concentrate on what was actually happening to them. Most of their friends and associates thought the two of them had lost their minds or were being duped into a relationship by the other. . . . Having left everything behind in Houston, giving it all away, they struck out in their last possession, a little sports car convertible. . . . Their real or more in-depth awakening occurred over several months while camping on the Rogue River near Gold Beach, Oregon. While there they came to believe that they were the Two Witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelations. . . . Their Heavenly Father, or Older Member . . . helped them realize also that so-called flying saucers, or misappropriately labeled U.F.O.'s, were means of transportation and laboratories of the Kingdom of Heaven (clouds of light, wheels of fire), and that the occupants of these spacecrafts were for the most part members of the true Heavenly Kingdom. . . . They now believe that in reality they were in the Kingdom of Heaven before entering these human bodies. But because of the present awareness of their Next Level consciousness, they know that they are in that Kingdom now, though occupying human vehicles in order to do a task. In spite of their repeated effort to refute this explanation, all things continue to lead them to believe the following (Hold onto your hats!): They were briefed as a crew aboard a spacecraft about how they would incarnate into human vehicles in order to do a task. They left their Kingdom world and came into this world beginning in the late 1940's. They feel that some left their Next Level bodies via so-called U.F.O. crashes. However, they believe that the crashes were not accidental, as they appeared to be to the humans who witnessed the remains and recovered some of the bodies. These are now in the possession of governments (one of our Government's scientists coined the term EBE-- extraterrestrial biological entities -- to identify these beings, also frequently referred to as greys). Some left their bodies behind in cold storage, or the Next Level's wardrobe, for the duration of this task. Others were in spirit, having not yet earned Next Level bodies since having left the human kingdom. If this hypothesis is true, then the class members were not humans recruited by Ti and Do into some cult, but rather were members of the Next Level before ever meeting them. They knew prior to coming to Earth that two Older Members would take them through a lengthy (according to human time) observation-study time in this world in preparation for choosing and taking a human vehicle before actually entering it. That is to say, they were all in spirit from the late 1940's and possibly early 1950's until the mid-1970's before actually entering and taking charge of the human vehicles -- or the human bodies -- they are now in. The vehicles they chose generally ranged in age from early 20's to late 50's, some having more difficult geneticpackages or programming in order to give more growth opportunity. . . . From "Undercover 'Jesus' Surfaces Before Departure," posted on the World Wide Web on Sept. 25-26, 1995; updated in the book: Since the Evolutionary Level Above Human has no mammalian or human members, they had to become 'new creatures' who bonded in mind, spirit, and behavior - - void of human sexuality, human binds, and addictions of their world and this civilization. Some in the class have chosen on their own to have their vehicles neutered in order to sustain a more genderless and objective consciousness. . . . As true today as it was 2000 years ago, no one (of this civilization) gets to my Father or enters the Kingdom of Heaven except through Me. There is no other Son of His, or Representative from His Kingdom, incarnate. Connecting with that Kingdom occurs only while a Member is incarnate, as I am today. From "Exit Statement 1995-1996," in the book: If we try to correct the vision of the Christians and talk their language, we're seen as a religious cult on an ego trip -- if we try to state our information in language more relevant to our actual situation, the masses see us as attempting to make the 'Trekkie' vernacular into a religion From "A Farewell Message to Those Who Remain Behind," By Drrody published on the group's Web site: We have just about completed our task here. We feel that the time we have remaining is short. I cannot express how pleased I am to be returning home soon. It seems as if we have been here for a long time. Yet I know that from the Next Level perspective it's been about a half hour. I only hope that my performance and effort on this mission will be found pleasing to my Older Members and their Older Members. . . . If you know you're ready to act upon this information, then I hope you will choose wisely and ask frequently for help from the Next Level on how to best proceed. As long as we're here, we will try to assist you in whatever capacity we're shown is appropriate. Once we leave, then base your decisions using the criteria of the information we've left behind for you. You will be carefully watched after and nurtured in response to your asking and desire. . . . I wish you the best and hope to see you back home someday. April 8, 1996. World Wide Web pages from the group Heaven's Gate give clues to its view of the world, and a next one. At left, the group's home page joyfully announces that Comet Hale-Bopp is "the 'marker' we've been wating for": the arrival of a spacecraft that will carry members to a "Level Above Human." Another image from the site, above, shows "How a member of the Kingdom of Heaven might appear." --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (77) Thu 1 May 97 12:14 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult F ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:9136 22a161c0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 7968399e `UFO CULT' MAKES ANOTHER LANDING Byline: Michael Hirsley, Religion writer. 07/29/94 Chicago Tribune One night this week, 40 inquiring souls entered a University of Illinois at Chicago classroom; a flier outside the room billed the lecture-discussion as "UFOs, Space Aliens and Their Final Fight for Earth's Spoils." Curiosity brought that audience face-to-face with the remnants of a nomadic community that aroused the media and law enforcement in the 1970s: Dubbed the "UFO Cult," the group blended spacecraft and spirituality under the offbeat charismatic leadership of a man and woman known variously as "The Two" and "Bo and Peep." They said their souls were from a level above human, a kingdom higher than Earth. They said the "Kingdom of God" was a real place in the universe whose inhabitants have traveled by spacecraft as far back as 2,000 years ago, when one of them came to Earth as Jesus. And they said there would soon be more spacecraft arriving to take deserving souls to that higher level. The story made it to the lips of TV's then-top journalist, Walter Cronkite, and thus to the ears and eyes of millions. A flurry of harsh publicity followed-questioning the claims and cultlike regimen of the group and recounting how dozens of spouses or children had forsaken families, jobs and possessions to become sheep of Bo and Peep. The two were identified as former Houston residents Marshall Herff Applewhite, a divorced college music professor, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, a nurse and married mother of four. They had cut all ties to those past lives. As the media glare intensified, the group went underground. But 18 years later, as members appeared at three Chicago-area locations this week, one of their fliers declared: "We're Back." In the college classroom, Evan, June, Matt, Oliver and Sawyer spent more than two hours explaining themselves. They said their male and female bodies are merely "vessels" infused with souls from the level above human. In the classroom's motley mix of attire from suits and dresses to grunge and punk, the speakers and their aides had a distinctive look: Men and women alike wore slacks, and shirts buttoned tightly at the neck but not tucked in at the waist. They said they've abandoned their old names, their families, their possessions and all forms of sexuality, relationships and addictions that had been part of their "human-mammalian" personal lives. Amid lengthy rhetoric on everything from the Earth being a "hothouse garden" experiment created by the Kingdom of God to "Luciferians" who have dropped out of the kingdom but also use spacecraft in an ongoing campaign to tempt and confuse humans about good and evil, June uttered arguably the understatement of the session. Leaving behind all earthly pleasures to follow them "is one of the hardest things you'll ever have to do," she said. But she and the others said it must be done to prepare for a second chance to ascend into the Kingdom of God. While they credit Jesus with affording humans their first such opportunity, their visions of Judgment Day, afterlife and the "Second Coming" bear scant further resemblance to religious teachings. They believe those who are ready for the Kingdom of God will not die, but will be transported there by some form of spacecraft. The rest of the garden of mankind will be plowed under, perhaps to start a new cycle. And they believe that although the "vessel called Peep" has died, her partner, now in his 60s and called "Do," as in the musical tone, is keeping a low profile while gathering souls for the spacecraft. The classroom audience remained silent throughout the five members' lengthy presentations. It was only after they popped in a videotape of "Do," who now looks a little and sounds a lot like TV's Mr. Rogers, that people began leaving. Then, when questions were accepted from the audience, skepticism surfaced. "Why is this all so vague?" one man asked. "I have no better idea of who you are than when I came in." He asked whether the spacecraft to the higher level is a physical craft. The response-"Yes, but maybe we won't recognize it as such"-perpetuated the vagueness. Another person asked what was "the next step" for anyone who decided to leave everything behind to follow this group. The response was that destinations differ for different people, so "we can't tell you exactly." Rob Balch, a University of Montana sociologist, infiltrated the group for two months in 1975 and has continued his research by interviewing former members. He said he and a partner worked odd jobs and begged for money to keep traveling with the group among different camps. However, he said, the group's regimen has become much tighter, including a ritual in which members at camps are supposed to report to supervisors every 12 minutes. "I don't think this is a dangerous cult. It is not in the mold of the Charles Manson family, Jim Jones' People's Temple or David Koresh's Branch Davidians," Balch said. "It does not have a violent history. "But it can be dangerous from parents' perspective. Anybody who joins this group is going to drop out of sight." --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (78) Thu 1 May 97 12:14 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult G ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:51f7 22a161c0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683a48 Overcomers bring message of spirituality 06/25/94 The Spokesman Review They're known as Total Overcomers, which is as much a comment on what they believe as it is a name. And they've come to Spokane with a message. The way to salvation is at hand. Theirs is a message of spirituality, a blend of new-age consciousness, Christian and Buddhist principles, UFO folklore, Darwinism, cataclysmic foretelling and "Star Trek" sensibilities. They believe in reincarnation, in space travel and "Luciferian" extraterrestrials. They're convinced that the way to the Kingdom of Heaven is paved by the denial of all "mammalian" desires and impulses. And they're absolutely serious about all of this. They will share their message with whoever is interested at 1:15 p.m. today at the North Argonne Library, N4322 Argonne Road. Admission is free. The Total Overcomers, who only go by first names that they have adopted, try to make a few simple points. The first, according to June (who guesses that "her vehicle," or body, is 41), is that humans are just one more step in the overall food chain. "We believe very firmly that the human kingdom is not the top of the evolutionary ladder," she says. "You've got an animal kingdom, you've got a human kingdom and you've really, literally, got an evolutionary level above humans." And that level, June says, "is synonymous with the kingdom of God." Adds Oliver, 44, "Perhaps the main point that we're trying to present at this meeting is that this is the period of time right now where there is a brief window of opportunity for individuals to graduate from the human kingdom into the evolutionary level above humans." According to both, such a window has opened before. It happened 2,000 years ago when Jesus began his preaching and, Oliver says, was crucified for the "blasphemy" of trying to pass on the Total Overcomers' message. The window opened again in 1975, allowing, say Oliver and June, the arrival of two other individuals from the "next level." Named, at first, "Bo" and "Peep," the two eventually took the names "Te" and "Do" (after the notes on the musical scale). "Do (a male) is still here with us," says June, "and Te (a female) has since returned to that next level to resume her position there. That was almost 10 years ago now." In short, Oliver and June explained, Te and Do attracted some 90 individuals from all walks of life _ business owners, students, nurses and the like _ with their message. That group then began a 19-year "sort of monastic circumstance" in which they isolated themselves from mainstream culture. Some two dozen emerged from the experience, in which they traveled from spot to spot, graduating from national forest campgrounds to actual houses as financial need forced various members to take jobs. Now, because Earth civilization is about to be recycled, or "spaded under, " they are out in the culture attempting to spread the word. They are looking for those vehicles ready to rise with them to another level of existence. But they understand that not everyone is capable of hearing their message. "We're not trying to recruit anybody or persuade anybody that this is what they should do," Oliver says. "Because for everyone who does do this, it has to be an individual choice. No one can be coerced into doing it." They aren't afraid of being laughed at, either. "When that individual came through 2,000 years ago, he wasn't exactly popular," Oliver says, "nor were his disciples." What the Total Overcomers are, most of all, is thankful for the chance to spread what they believe. "This is not a doomsday trip," says Oliver. "This is the most joyous thing in the world," adds June. Live long and prosper. --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (79) Thu 1 May 97 12:14 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult H, 1/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:fab3 22a161c0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683ba1 Group Awaited Spacecraft Behind Comet; Members Designed Web Sites, Saw Hale-Bopp as `Marker' to Trip `Home' 03/28/97 The Washington Post It was a doomsday cult with computers, and through the Internet it told the world exactly what it believed and what it would do. The only thing left was to wait for the comet -- and the hidden spaceship -- to arrive. "Hale-Bopp's approach is the `marker' we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to `Their World,' " warned a "Red Alert" message on what is apparently the cult's World Wide Web home page. The 39 people found dead of suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., were Internet Web site designers who called their company Higher Source. They were also members of a cult that mixed end-of-the-world Christian-style eschatology with a space-alien obsession several steps beyond that on television's "The X-Files." Like many marginal cult groups, this one had two faces: a public face, capable of functioning in the real world, renting houses and cars, and running a computer business advertised on a professional-looking Web site; and a private face, one that brazenly promotes a bizarre ideology, speaks a private vernacular and denigrates outsiders as evil or misguided. The cult also had a messianic leader, who called himself "Do" and "The Representative." Although police have not identified the leader, all signs point to one man: Marshall Herff Applewhite, a former college music professor. His fate was unknown last night. Applewhite and a partner, Bonnie Nettles, launched the space cult in the mid-1970s, but after winning much publicity they suddenly went underground. Their "crew" drifted away. They reemerged a few years ago. Applewhite began calling himself "Do" (pronounced doe) and gave himself the title "The Representative." The cult also had various names, from "Total Overcomers Anonymous" to the "Next Level Crew" to "Heaven's Gate." Nettles apparently died; she was, as one cult member told a reporter in 1994, "recalled to the Next Level." Cynthia Kisser, director of the former Cult Awareness Network, a hot line and support group for families with relatives in cults, says she remembers receiving calls from around the country in the early 1990s about a couple calling themselves "Ti and Do." "They were very secretive and yet high profile. They would give these talks, but left no forwarding address. When you tried to find them later, they had disappeared without a trace," said Kisser. The cult attracted men and women of all ages. They tended to be gentle and nonassertive, according to Nancie Brown, the mother of one member. The cult members were required to give up their personal possessions, cut their ties to their families, and abstain from sex, drugs and alcohol. An advertisement placed in USA Today by the cult three years ago stated that members must shed "all human-mammalian behavior." Like virtually everything else about the mass suicide, the connection between Do and the men and women who were found wearing purple shrouds is considerably less than definitive. But a complex web of circumstantial evidence links Do and his group to the horror of Rancho Santa Fe. Nick Matzorkis, the Beverly Hills computer expert who -- along with his employee, a former member of the group -- discovered the 39 bodies, said he had previously met about 15 members of the Heaven's Gate cult. And Do's writing tracks almost precisely the message in the pre-suicide videotapes that were delivered to Matzorkis's office Tuesday night. The cult actively solicited interest from some of society's most troubled individuals. From June through October of last year, "Rep" -- most likely an abbreviation of "representative," according to Internet experts -- posted copies of a treatise titled "Time to Die for God?" on several Internet newsgroups targeted at lost, even desperate souls. "Rep" sent the essay to discussion groups that focus on suicide (alt.suicide), depression (alt. support.depression), and substance abuse (alt.abuse.recovery andalt.abuse. offender.recovery). The suicidal group appears to have created a Web site at www.heavensgate. com. According to the Web site, the group believed that earthly society is controlled by demonic extraterrestrials, "Luciferians." An apocalypse is nigh. The Earth is about to be "recycled," or "spaded under," so that it could serve as a garden for a future human civilization. For the cult members, however, salvation had come in the form of a spaceship, hidden behind comet Hale-Bopp. They would kill themselves and reappear on board the spaceship. The comet made its closest approach to the Earth last Saturday. Joe Szimhart, a cult specialist and exit counselor based in Pottstown, Pa., said that when he came across the Heaven's Gate Web site months ago, he noted a high level of paranoia. The Web site's text warned against a scenario like those that occurred near Waco, Tex., and at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in which armed agents stormed the compounds of groups on the fringe. "They seemed to be New Age fundamentalists," Szimhart said. "They took the comet as a literal vehicle. And that's what caused their downfall." cont... --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (80) Thu 1 May 97 12:15 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult H, 2/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:fa43 22a161e0 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683c4d cont... Technospeak aside, the cult followed the pattern set by doomsday groups of the past. Like the suicidal members of the People's Temple in Jonestown, the Heaven's Gate cult members followed a single messianic leader. He claimed to have been incarnated on Earth 2,000 years ago under the name of Jesus. He demanded absolute loyalty. In dying, he promised, cultists would merely depart their "container," leaving one's humanness on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. No human can rise to the Next Level without the Representative's presence on Earth. The Heaven's Gate Web site includes one tract stating that students who "endure the `transition classroom' until it ends (adequately bonding or `grafting' to that Representative) will go with that Representative -- literally LEAVE the human kingdom and Earth as HE is about to do." The Heaven's Gate Web site ridicules Christianity repeatedly. And yet, in apparent contradiction, the Web site sermonizing is heavily laden with respectful biblical and Christian references to Armageddon, "the Kingdom of Heaven," John the Baptist, Lucifer and the Antichrist. Whoever wrote it had some Bible literacy, enough to cite several passages from Luke and Mark, and urge readers to "Check these out." The scriptural references all refer to admonitions that marriage and pregnancy are barriers to resurrection. "Those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage," it says in Luke 20:35, one of the passages cited. The group produced a book, "How and When `Heaven's Gate' (The Door to the Physical Kingdom Level Above Human) May Be Entered." At one point the text complains about the difficulty of talking about extraterrestrials from a religious perspective. "One of the greatest struggles we've had from the beginning is the terminology -- if we try to correct the vision of the Christians and talk their language, we're seen as a religious cult on an ego trip -- if we try to state our information in language more relevant to our actual situation, the masses see us as attempting to make the `Trekkie' vernacular into religion." The cult apparently decided that Hale-Bopp provided the "window" for exiting the planet. It had also become discouraged. Its desire to broaden its reach by touring college campuses did not work -- the reaction was mostly ridicule and hostility, according to a history of the group posted on its Web site. The history hints that this widespread rejection inspired the decision to commit suicide. "This was the signal to us to begin our preparations to return `home.' The weeds have taken over the garden and truly disturbed its usefulness beyond repair -- it is time for the civilization to be recycled -- `spaded under.' " On a videotape made by the cult recently, featuring Applewhite inviting people to follow him, a woman who was apparently a member of the group explained her decision to leave the "vehicle" that is her human body. "Maybe they're crazy for all I know," she said. "But I don't have any choice but to go for it, because I've been on this planet for 31 years and there's nothing here for me." The Internet has long been noted for the abundance of UFO-related material. There are literally thousands of UFO Web sites. The Internet helped rapidly spread the belief last fall that comet Hale-Bopp had an enormous artificial object trailing in its wake. But a characteristic of the Internet is that it is not always clear who, precisely, is posting material. The group's occupation, designing Web sites, enabled it to create for itself a particularly attractive site replete with photographs of stars, comets and interstellar dust clouds. There have arisen a number of New Age-type groups, particularly in the western United States, who take a religious attitude toward extraterrestrials, the aliens playing a secular role that once upon a time would have been reserved for angels or messiahs. The Heaven's Gate group took such beliefs to a tragic extreme. "This is part of the imminent millennial fever," warned Michael Persinger, a Laurentian University psychologist who has written about UFO sightings as well as cults. "I think you're going to have these kinds of events happening more frequently." Other New Age/extraterrestrial groups distanced themselves yesterday from the Heaven's Gate cult. "They were dead wrong," said Charles Spiegel, director of the Unarius Educational Foundation, which also is based in suburban San Diego. His group teaches that the extraterrestrials will not come to Earth until 2001. Another group with a presence in California is the Raelians, which teaches the revelations of a Frenchman named Rael. Rael claims that in 1974 he saw a four-foot humanoid emerge from a hovering spaceship, and he learned from the visitor that the extraterrestrials, who live on the planet of Eternal Life, will come to Earth sometime before the year 2035. A member of the group said yesterday he had never heard of Heaven's Gate. "We have nothing to do with groups like that. Groups that commit suicide," said Felix Clairvoyant, who runs the San Francisco chapter of the Raelians. "We're a very balanced group." --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (81) Thu 1 May 97 12:16 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult I ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:9576 22a16200 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79683fd7 Keeper of Heaven's Gate Was an Earthling Named Marshall Applewhite 03/28/97 The Washington Post For more than two decades, they had been known as "The Two." They were soft- spoken and secretive, a nurse and one of her former patients. They called themselves Bo and Peep, or sometimes Tiddly and Wink, or even Winnie and Pooh. Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles had a knack for winning publicity. In 1975, they made it onto Walter Cronkite's newscast, "a group of earthlings who believe they're on their way to a rendezvous" with a rocket ship from outer space. According to academic studies and news accounts, he was a music professor who had sung 15 roles with the Houston Grand Opera and was said to resemble Mister Rogers in manner and voice. She had left medicine to become an astrologer, and left her family to join Applewhite in a spiritual journey. Both were once dedicated Christians. And both came to believe that they were aliens from the "next level," sent to Earth to find converts who would join them in a return to outer space. Nettles died sometime in the last few years. But Applewhite emerged last night as the apparent leader of Heaven's Gate, or Total Overcomers Anonymous Monastery as it was sometimes called, the group whose members committed mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe this week. Whether he died with his followers had not been determined. The man who for many years was seen in videotapes as a white-haired harbinger of celestial salvation made his final pitch in the tape that announced this week's suicides. Now appearing with a shaved head, Applewhite said, "You can follow us, but you cannot stay here and follow us." According to academic studies of Bo and Peep and H.I.M. (Human Individual Metamorphosis), the group they led in the 1970s, Applewhite and his followers have been holding meetings, publishing tracts and recruiting members throughout the Midwest and West for more than two decades. His message throughout has been unchanging: To be saved from Lucifer, human beings must give up all earthly pleasures. And they must be ready to leave this planet on a UFO that would whisk them to a new world, a better life. "We're going to be murdered . . ." Applewhite told a Texas radio reporter in 1974. "And when we are, after 3 1/2 days, we're going to walk out" into life in the next level above human. Twenty years later, Applewhite -- now known variously as Do, the Older Member, and the Present Representative -- would write that he was "in the same position to today's society as was the One that was in Jesus." Bo and Peep's early years preaching the promise of life in outer space won them a certain notoriety. Lapsed members of the group complained in several news accounts in the 1970s that they had been bilked of thousands of dollars that they had paid Applewhite and Nettles for "educational" training. According to a 1976 New York Times Magazine article about the unmarried couple, one defector from the group filed a fraud complaint in Los Angeles and others brought their complaints to news reporters. The Two -- named for the two witnesses of the End Times in the Book of Revelation -- were arrested in 1974; Applewhite plead guilty to a car theft charge and served four months in prison, according to that 1975 CBS "Evening News" report. The charges against Nettles were dropped. Another defector, Paul Groll, told Time magazine in 1979 that Bo and Peep's flock once numbered 200 people who had ditched jobs, families and possessions to join the self-styled extraterrestrial shepherds from Texas. Groll portrayed Applewhite and Nettles as stern disciplinarians who required their followers to report at the command tent at 12-minute intervals throughout the day. That and similar stories from other former members contrasted sharply with a more benign account offered by a University of Montana sociologist who said he infiltrated Bo and Peep's group in 1975 and later interviewed former members. In an interview in the Chicago Tribune in 1994, Robert Balch said Heaven's Gate did not strike him as "a dangerous cult. It is not in the mold of the Charles Manson family, Jim Jones' People's Temple or David Koresh's Branch Davidians," he said then. Wandering groups of spiritual searchers were a commonplace in the turmoil of the early 1970s. According to news accounts of the period, many of the people who joined Bo and Peep had already tried yoga, Zen, Scientology, astrology, among others. Applewhite was apparently disheartened by the ridicule to which he was treated after his bath of publicity in the mid-'70s. According to "Beyond Human," a 1996 book published by Heaven's Gate and written in part by Do, the news media "typically hastily" judged the group, "tagging them the `UFO Cult, ' because of their expectation of leaving aboard a spacecraft at the completion of their task." As quickly as they had entered the limelight, The Two seemed to vanish for 16 years. From 1976 until 1992, the Heaven's Gate book says, "we were very much `lifted out' of this world -- literally." Applewhite emerged from those years of seclusion determined to reach a broader public. In 1992, he produced a series of videos and broadcast them by satellite. But the book says the videos brought into Heaven's Gate "almost entirely our own `lost sheep' -- that is, crew members who had previously dropped away" from the group. Next, Applewhite took out a one-third page ad in USA Today on May 27, 1993, headlined " `UFO Cult' Resurfaces With Final Offer." The long, small-type treatise announced that "Earth's present `civilization' is about to be recycled." Then, in January 1994, Applewhite and his followers "sold all of our worldly possessions except for a few cars and changes of clothing," and, according to the book, set out across the country to hold public meetings and conduct media interviews. News accounts of that national tour describe young followers who dressed exactly alike, who gave up their own names, cut off ties to their families, and renounced all forms of sexuality. Despite the group's newspaper ad, videotaped lectures, and chatty, science fiction-style essays posted all over the Internet, Applewhite and his group have conducted their earthly endeavors with extreme -- and often clever -- stealth. The group used post office boxes and phony addresses in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Minnesota. When Heaven's Gate set up its domain on the Internet, it provided contacts that trace back to a Ramada Inn in Denver and Internet service providers in Fayetteville, Tenn. One of the contacts the group provided, Ben Guiat, turns out to be the name of a type font; Guiat's e-mail address, cleverly enough, is font@cris.com. Another contact provided by the group has a telephone number that connects to a California company that will try to reunite long-lost friends for a $69.95 search fee. Ed Deppy, president of Spacestar Communications, the Minnesota company that provided Internet access to Heaven's Gate for the past year, said he was approached by a woman who called herself Sister Francis Michael. (In a 1972 interview published by the Houston Post, Nettles said her assistant in her astrological work was a Brother Francis who had died in 1818.) But the phone number Sister Michael gave Deppy leads to an unidentified voice mailbox and the address she provided is a grassy field near a Best Buy store in Burnsville, Minn. In 1995, according to the Heaven's Gate book, Do took his message to the Internet, where he again met with "ridicule, hostility or both." This, the book says, "was the signal to us to begin our preparations to return `home.'" In October 1996, Applewhite produced a videotape that he entitled, "Planet About to be Recycled. Your Only Chance to Survive -- Leave With Us." The last change in the Heaven's Gate Web page was made early Monday, Deppy said. It was the addition of a flashing "Red Alert" notice warning that the comet Hale-Bopp "brings closure to Heaven's Gate." --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (82) Thu 1 May 97 12:17 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult J ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:9436 22a16220 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 79684154 39 in Cult Left Recipes of Death Tract Offers Clues About Group's Theology, Motives 03/28/97 Los Angeles Times Following a charismatic leader known as "the Representative" and taking their cue from the heavens--Comet Hale-Bopp--the men and women of the Heaven's Gate cult apparently believed they were leaving this week for a spaceship that would take them to a utopian "Next Kingdom." The complex theology and strident beliefs of 39 cult members, who died in an apparent mass suicide in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, apparently are spelled out in a voluminous tract they left behind. It is titled "Heaven's Gate: The Door to the Physical Kingdom Level Above Human." The religious tract and a series of other computer postings on the World Wide Web offered a ready cache of clues to a bizarre event that might otherwise have taken weeks to uncover. Experts saw in the group's writings a synthesis of ancient and modern religious themes, mixing space-age images with biblical citations in a quest for salvation. The Heaven's Gate manifesto describes its principal leaders as a man named "Do" or "King Do" and a woman named "Ti," who it said were infused by heavenly spirits more than 20 years ago. That mystical event propelled Do, described as a former college music professor, and Ti, a registered nurse from Houston, on a two-decade odyssey, searching for acolytes on their mission to reach "the Next Level," the text said. The descriptions of the two leaders also appeared to closely match those of a duo that has been widely criticized for more than a decade by authorities and in several states. Officials say that the pair ruined many lives by manipulating their followers into abandoning reality and all their worldly possessions. In a haunting videotape that a surviving group member from Michigan released to a television station Thursday, a follower told why she was prepared to leave Earth for King Do. "Maybe they're crazy for all I know, but I don't have any choice but to go for it, because I've been on this planet for 31 years and there's nothing here for me," said the woman, who sported close-cropped hair and sat next to another woman, who remained silent. "I don't feel there was any way that anybody could say that I was influenced by somebody's strong personality," the woman added. "The second time I sat with King Do, I felt absolutely [that] . . . there was no lie in [him], that there was truth and goodness beyond anything I've ever seen." On their Web site, Heaven's Gate followers repeatedly invoked Christian imagery and biblical citations to make their case--construing the appearance of their own "Representative" as a sort of Second Coming. But they rejected mainline Christian and Jewish religions as "counterfeits" that had strayed hopelessly from their original purposes. In their detached, often rambling New Age jargon, they proclaimed that they were forsaking worldly wants and were reaching instead for a "Next Level." Non-believers who are left behind will be "plowed under" in a coming apocalypse, they said. One of the group's Internet postings, titled "Our Position Against Suicide," asserted that outsiders commit the equivalent of suicide by turning "against the Next Level when it is being offered." "That window to Heaven will not open again until another civilization is planted and has reached sufficient maturity (according to the judgment of the Next Level)," the more than 100-page text said. On their infrequent public forays in recent months, members of the group left a distinct and sometimes unsettling impression. They typically dressed in black pants and shoes and wore their hair shorn close to their heads. Many seemed obsessed with the television series "Star Trek," according to Nick Matzorkis, a Beverly Hills businessman who worked with members of the group for about nine months to establish Web sites. The group had disavowed all their possessions and meditated frequently. They swore off alcohol, drugs and sex. Some of the men had even been castrated, one of the female members told Matzorkis last fall, he said. The members of the group had come to view their bodies only as "containers" or "vehicles" that they would shed once they rendezvoused with a spaceship. "I'm surprised how well this 'vehicle' is dealing with it," a former cult member said after he discovered the bodies Wednesday morning, according to Matzorkis, who employs the man in his computer company. Members of the group said they were flourishing in their isolation from tainted mainstream institutions. They said they felt a philosophical bond with a wide array of fringe people and groups--the Branch Davidians of Waco, the Unabomber, the Order of the Solar Temple, Aum Shinri Kyo of Japan and the Freemen of Montana--whom they believed were also fighting a "corrupt world." "This is not to say that the Next Level and this Representative would condone many of [the] choices and actions" of those groups, the manifesto said. "However, these groups seem to have correctly identified the 'enemy,' and feel compelled, at varying degrees, to separate from what they believe is a corrupt world." Experts said Thursday that Heaven's Gate has some parallels in both ancient and modern times. The Representative's theology bears rough comparison to the ideas of Gnostic sectarians some 17 or 18 centuries ago, said Marvin Meyer, a religion professor at Chapman University in Orange. Although the modern computer-generated tract does not cite the ancient groups, it too reflects a sense of alienation from mainstream society and presents an escapist solution. Gnostics, or "knowers," also wrote of being trapped in a corrupt world, within unwanted bodies. They were denounced as heretics by early Christians. The Representative's theology appears to mix neo-Gnostic ideas with New Age, UFO and apocalyptic speculations--"the sort of things you can pick up just by talking with people on the street," Meyer said. Carl Raschke, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver and an authority on cults, said: "They wore uniforms. . . . They see themselves at war with hostile forces. . . . The kind of black world I'm describing is the real context of people who want to live out a fantasy world of Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader. They probably see themselves as Luke Skywalker." The apparent mass suicide seems to have its closest antecedent, in recent times, in the deaths this decade of members of the Solar Temple--in 1994 in Switzerland, in 1995 in the French Alps, and last week in Canada. Members of that group talked about reaching out to a higher plane. Many killed themselves with drug overdoses and left lengthy explanations of their actions with former members. Finally, the timing of the deaths was connected to various celestial events, such as the summer or winter solstice. The coincidence of the Heaven's Gate deaths with recent celestial and religious events was striking to many observers Thursday. The deaths came just a few days after the spring equinox and a partial lunar eclipse and while the Comet Hale-Bopp is appearing in the northern sky. And Easter, Christianity's celebration of Jesus' resurrection, is just a few days away. "There are always cults and cult-like behavior surrounding the millennial end times," said Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society. "People are looking for signs that the end is near, and here we have the comet and a lunar eclipse and the millennium. For these people, there are just too many weird things going on." Computer lines and radio talk shows have been buzzing for weeks with reports that the comet is accompanied by a companion spacecraft. Pictures of the ship have been distributed on the Internet. The Heaven's Gate group acknowledged the significance of the comet's appearance in one of its online messages. "Whether Hale-Bopp has a 'companion' [spacecraft] or not is irrelevant from our perspective," said the posting on the group's Web site (which was at www:/ /heavensgate.com). "However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at 'Heaven's Gate.' The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the 'Kingdom of Heaven') has made it clear to us that Hale- Bopp's approach is the 'marker' we've been waiting for--the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to 'Their World'--in the literal Heavens." Such messages went out not only on the group's Web site, but to scores of other newsgroups where Heaven's Gate proselytized for new members. Among the groups that received the messages in the last six months were some designed for Christians, conspiracy buffs, victims of abuse, astrologers, atheists, libertarians and members of the militia movement. The Internet has logged tens of thousands of hits on each of those sites. The Representative promises in the texts to carry on the work of Christ. "Remember, the one who incarnated in Jesus was sent for one purpose only, to say, 'If you want to go to Heaven, I can take you through that gate--it requires everything of you.' Our mission is exactly the same. I am in the position to today's society as was the One that was in Jesus then." --- msgedsq 2.0.5 * Origin: If it's not the 4th of July, it must be Christmas (1:2430/2112) SEEN-BY: 10/2 12/12 24/888 102/2 106/2000 109/7 112/101 114/262 441 117/100 SEEN-BY: 124/1 125/33 130/1 133/2 140/3 23 143/1 147/34 2021 154/222 SEEN-BY: 157/2 110 167/166 170/400 202/777 1207 213/213 218/2 801 890 SEEN-BY: 218/900 901 907 219/300 230/24 244/1500 260/362 267/200 270/101 SEEN-BY: 275/429 280/1 169 282/1 62 283/120 284/29 300/603 310/666 322/739 SEEN-BY: 323/107 324/278 343/600 346/250 356/18 377/86 380/64 382/92 SEEN-BY: 384/14 388/1 396/1 45 397/1 730/2 2220/10 2401/0 2442/0 2619/211 SEEN-BY: 3413/1000 3603/420 3606/10 3612/41 3615/50 3619/25 3632/21 3646/22 SEEN-BY: 3651/9 3652/1 3654/6 3667/1 3674/1 3828/2 3829/50 @PATH: 2430/1 1423 270/101 396/1 218/907 801 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (83) Thu 1 May 97 12:17 By: David Bloomberg To: All Re: UFO Cult K ---------------------------------------------------------------------- @EID:54f7 22a16220 @MSGID: 1:2430/2112 796841e3 Rise in Cults As Millennium Approaches San Diego deaths sign of trend? 03/28/97 Christian Science Monitor Mass-suicides by cults espousing a "spiritual" vision may come out of the darker skies of the news like an awful, unexpected comet. The 39 suicides in San Diego by what experts are calling a "UFO cult" may be one grisly outcome of a growing subculture of gnostic and millennial cults worldwide. Experts point to several forces driving the trend, including a sense of alienation among many of today's youths, a need for belonging, and a search for meaning. It often all coalesces around one powerful charismatic leader who espouses a "vision." Some of these groups may increasingly "act out" their visions as 2000 approaches. "As we approach the millennium, we are going to see more and more groups whose interpretation of the apocalypse is either confrontational or suicidal," says Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass. The final actions taken by the San Diego group, in fact, may be tied to comet Hale-Bopp - with cult members believing their deaths would transport them to a starship trailing the comet, which has been visible in the night skies since January. The San Diego suicides, as with the recent Solar Temple cult and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, are another public study in the power of suggestion among humans in groups, say experts. These incidents illustrate the lengths to which people will go to sacrifice in the service of an idea they feel is religious or spiritual. "It is a lesson again to all of us in how strongly the power of what we believe can be enforced by those around us," says Allen Stone, an expert on law and psychiatry at Harvard University, who studied the Branch Davidians. "It shows how our ability to separate truth from the beliefs of the group are often fragile." While there are some 5,000 estimated cults in the US, many more than during the 1978 Jonestown mass suicide of 900 people, the San Diego group, whose computer Web page is known as www.Higher Source, is part of a growing New Age cultic strain tied to belief in higher beings that are living and traveling in space and making contact with humans on Earth. Since the 1950s, an increasing number of people have come to believe that UFOs are real and that aliens are in regular contact with humans, even conducting experiments on them, or helping to guide them into more enlightened states of being, says Richard Lucas, editor of Nova Religio, a journal in Deland, Fla., on alternative religious movements. Enormously popular new TV shows such as the "X Files," "Millennium," and "Dark Skies" - many with their own quasi-cultic following - show the power of new narratives in American culture that highlight struggles on Earth between celestial forces of light and dark, and visions of aliens or higher beings among humans. "It's very much something drawn from a generation fed by 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars,' " says David Reed, professor of pastoral theology at the University of Toronto, who has studied the cults. "The people in these cults have had their world view altered. They have reconstructed a spiritual world that draws from popular culture." UFO or celestial cult believers often move in and out of fringe Christian groups or radical political, technological, and militia movements. Some are tied to a strong belief in an apocalyptic "end time." From the time members, who are often intelligent and competent, enter a cult, they achieve a special status as part of a spiritual family which has access to hidden or revealed "wisdom" that is unavailable to other members of the human race. Higher Source, for example, referred to its members as "brothers" and "sisters." Cut off from normal daily contact outside the cult, adherents are heavily influenced by peer pressure. The organizations are often very highly structured. Members "dress the same, talk the same, act the same - do the same things," says the Rev. Robert Watts Thornberg, dean of the chapel at Boston University. In Higher Source, the men and women dressed in black, wore their hair in buzz cuts, and lived in an antiseptic mansion. "Most Americans don't realize how many people there are out there who believe ardently in such visions," adds Dr. Lucas. "The material world is a place of corruption, and it is perfectly rationale to try and leave the body or escape the 'prison of the soul,' as they would call it, to leave the earthly family for the heavenly family." The Solar Temple cult - whose members committed mass suicide in 1994 in Switzerland and Canada, and last week in Montreal - felt they had only a limited mission on Earth, according to Lucas. History shows that a suicide event in a cult is often tied to some force outside the cult - one that is pushing the it ever deeper into a psychological position of defense. The cult leader may begin to lose power, or the calculations of the leader on the basis of reality begin to lessen. To maintain power and control, the leader creates new stories and psychological narratives. The colony of the Rev. Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978 for example, had been investigated by a congressman who flew down to South America, and was then hijacked and killed on the runway by members of the Jones cult as he was leaving Guyana with about a dozen cult members. In the case of the Branch Davidians or the Solar Temple, the leaders had even gathered members from around the world to be on hand. In the Higher Source suicide, trucks with New Mexico license plates were at the mansion. In the 17th century, one of the most famous of these gatherings occurred when the Jewish "false Messiah" Sabbatai Sevi called thousands of European Jews to travel to Palestine to be at the Temple for the end of the world. 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