Knocking at Heaven's Gate
10th anniversary of mass suicide raising question about Internet, belief
in extraterrestrials
2007-03-26 20:08 KST
The belief that a UFO would take them away to a better life led 39 members
of the Heaven's Gate cult to commit mass suicide on Wednesday, March 26,
1997. The 18 women and 21 men, ranging in age from 26 to 72, killed
themselves along with their charismatic leader Marshall Herff Applewhite.
Calling themselves the "Away Team," they believed that they would return
to the Kingdom of Heaven, which they called the Next Level. Applewhite
revealed that he took on his human form in the 1970s to become "a
Representative -- a Shepherd" who "offers a graduation class, offers life,
out of this evolutionary level into that Next Evolutionary Level, and we
are at the end of one of those times."
Certainly, 66-year-old Applewhite had been involved with running UFO
salvation cults since the 1970s. Under the name "Bo," he had worked with
Bonnie Lu Truesdale Nettles, a.k.a. "Peep," to collect supporters. Bo and
Peep were also known as "Guinea and Pig," "The Two" or "Ti" and "Do."
Bonnie died in 1985 of liver cancer leaving Applewhite to carry on their
mission.
Although they had used several aliases, their ideology remained basically
the same. Jacques Vallee in his book Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts
and Cults (And/Or Press, 1979) notes that in 1975 they ran the Human
Individual Metamorphosis (H.I.M.) group. In announcements for a series of
meetings, they said they would "physically leave the planet within
months." It was also claimed that their bodies had undergone a physical
metamorphosis that had changed them "physically, chemically,
biologically." They also said that they would demonstrate in public the
overcoming of death after a period of three days.
These predicted events never happened, but 22 years later the arrival of
comet Hale-Bopp indicated to them that a spaceship was finally coming from
the Kingdom of Heaven. Applewhite, along with his followers were now
prepared to go to what they literally regarded as heaven.
Living in their rented mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego County,
California, the cult had survived by providing Web site development
services. They denied themselves material goods and sexual activity;
indeed six male members of the cult were even castrated to maintain their
celibacy.
Their cult activities borrowed heavily from Christian religion, and
Applewhite was often regarded as a Jesus figure. Other inspirations were
the contactees of the 1950s, the counter-culture of the 1960s and
Theosophy. A more obscure source of inspiration was a story by Mark Twain
entitled, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. In this,
Captain Stormfield tells of his death and riding a comet to Heaven and is
told about three great poets, Saa, Bo and Soof.
In her essay Heaven's Gate: The End? Wendy Gale Robinson noted that cyber
culture was held to blame for the suicides, because, "there is something
inherently dangerous about cyborgs, bodily liberation, and multiple online
identities for some people who lack a secure sense of self. Perhaps the
Heaven's Gate cult members would've been better off if they hadn't been
exposed to the Net and those of us on the Net would've been better off if
we hadn't been exposed to their memes." However, she leans towards the
notion that the combination of the arrival of the comet, the forthcoming
millennium, their UFO beliefs and popular culture offer a better
explanation for their behavior.
In recent years, the belief that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet
has become a cornerstone of the growing exopolitics movement. The term was
coined by Alfred Webre, in his e-book Exopolitics: Towards a Decade of
Contact. I asked Stephen Bassett, the Executive Director of the Paradigm
Research Group, which supports exopolitical research, if such beliefs
could create another Heaven's Gate suicide. He said:
"One doesn't 'believe' in exopolitics, one studies exopolitics. It is a
broad field. One accepts or does not except the extraterrestrial presence
as fact based upon their interpretation of the evidence. I will say the
impact of Disclosure may generate the creation of some new religions and
likely some new cults. All major historical transformations have this
effect.
"Every two years or so, one of the hundreds of cults worldwide goes
critical and self-destructs. Without question, the Internet makes it
easier to recruit members to such groups. So we may see an increase in
cult activity in the future. That said, the Internet also makes it easier
to expose cults and disseminate information about their activities. So
perhaps the net effect will be positive.
"Heaven's Gate had almost nothing to do with the scientific and
exopolitical efforts to resolve the ET issue. The 'UFO' aspect was
incidental. It didn't help, but it is of little long term consequence."
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=352073&rel_no=1
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