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June 15, 2024 - Heavens Gate - Marshall Appelwhite
01:02:35
The Day After
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Time Text
Topic of News at 11 is a story that's making news across the nation and across the world, an apparent mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe.
There is confirmed 39 deceased.
You're looking at the site where 39 young men have been found dead.
Men believed to be in a religious group, men who dressed alike, and men with an apparent tragic mission, mass suicide.
All indications are that this was a mass suicide.
I am not confirming that it is suicide.
This appears to be a group of individuals who acted in concert to commit suicide at a specific place and at a specific time for an unknown reason.
The group we're talking about here, we know, is a group called Heaven's Gate.
The issue is you're going to hear about our exit in the news about these individuals who committed suicide.
We're going to tell you that those who write that kind of information are ignorant of the evolutionary level of us.
This goes out to all the people.
Make the most of your days.
Because in this world, our time is limited.
Be careful as you walk on the line.
Thanks to the Lord.
We're all living on borrowed time.
Living on the ball on side on side.
We're going to take an in-depth look at the cult as told by members of the First Harvest in 1975.
University scholars will discuss the beginning of the two, their socialization process, and their gradual end.
Walk through the Rancho Santa Fe mansion with Rio as he recounts finding the bodies of his classmates.
And hear how a member of The Last Harvest in 1994 tried to rejoin the group, but never made it.
Take a journey into the last days prior to the group's exit, the day after.
Living on borrowed time, growing up in the South, drinking strawberry wine.
Well, Dick, why did you decide the desert?
I mean, this is a great place.
You know, why here to talk to us?
It is a great place.
It's an incredible place.
It's like you're away from the city.
You're away from all the vibrations.
You're away from all the interferences.
It's pure, it's clear, it's very special.
And that's actually where when we first left and went out into campgrounds, that was one reason why they took us out of the world so that we could be out in places that were uncluttered and we could just kind of establish a connection.
And I think with Theo and I, when we're trying to kind of relive some things and examine some things, it's good to be in a place where you can just be uncluttered and get your head clear.
Really good job.
Yeah, there's definitely no distractions of any kind out here.
Yeah, definitely.
Well, how did you two first meet?
I mean, it was in one of the campgrounds.
I think we were doing a San Francisco, we were about to do the San Francisco meeting, something like that.
Right around that time.
And you were with Mark, with David Moore.
Yeah.
He was Mark and you were Abel.
Mark and Abel.
And we had a group of about, oh, I don't know, it was a pretty good sized group at that time, my partner and I, getting ready to do the meeting up in San Francisco.
Yeah, we were sure glad to see you then.
We'd been drifting around.
You know, I didn't meet the two until I was in the thing for some months.
So, I mean, just on the strength of the information, I joined, and that was enough.
That's true.
That's amazing when you think about it, that you, I mean, he came, he had never even seen TN Doe or Boeing Peep, as they were called then.
That was during what I call the diaspora, the dispersal, because when the news hit in 1975 that these 20 people had disappeared from Oregon after following the strange couple who were promising salvation on the UFO, then it was like T ⁇ Doe went underground and then we all just scattered for a while.
And during that period, it was really tough.
The story broke on national TV that 20 people had disappeared on the Oregon coast after attending a lecture held by a middle-aged couple on UFOs.
and it was all very mysterious All we know is that these people that came back, they were very evasive with information.
They just said that we are going on to a better thing.
And they gave away everything, including kids, all of their material belongings, property, automobiles, boats, and money.
And just land.
And we're getting calls from all over the United States now of other people that have children missing, have received letters from them from an area saying their children saying that they have completed their training and they will never see them again.
And this is the type of information that's being filtered in.
Nobody knew where these people had gone.
Eventually postcards started to come back saying things like, dear mom and dad, I've seen the light.
I'm going to follow it wherever it may lead.
I'm healthy and happy.
Don't worry about me.
You'll never see me again, like Bob.
That was literally the kind of stuff that was happening.
So there was this great mystery as to, you know, where have all these people gone?
And then little by little, reporters dug out the fact that this was a UFO cult and it was led by a former music professor and a nurse.
The professor was Marshall Applewhite, also referred to as Herf.
He was a very talented music professor.
He taught at the University of Alabama.
People describe him in the early days as being very witty, articulate, charismatic, a pied piper.
He was said to be an excellent choir director.
He had the ability to take a very ordinary group of students and transform them into something that was pretty impressive.
But he was a person in a lot of torment, a lot of conflict.
The biggest conflict in his life was over his homosexuality.
At the University of Alabama, he was married, he had two kids, his wife was very attractive, he was very popular in university circles, leading this respectable heterosexual life, but secretly was carrying on homosexual affairs.
And eventually he got divorced and moved away, threw himself into the gay lifestyle, but felt very tormented.
In a letter written in 1966 to one of his close friends, a tormented Applewhite appears utterly confused in regards to relationships.
I must explain that I am or have become thoroughly confused in regard to love, lovers, etc.
I don't think I shall ever try to give myself completely to another person.
I've tried too many times, all failures.
It was discovered that he was having affairs with young men, and it broke up his marriage.
He lost two jobs because of it, and I think it left him feeling pretty alienated and persecuted.
He confided to one of his gay lovers that he was very confused about love and sexuality and was really looking for a relationship that would transcend sex, where he could have a kind of platonic helper or helpmate where they could bring out the best in each other, but would not involve sexuality.
That platonic helper was Bonnie Lou Nettles.
He met Nettles at a time when her marriage was breaking up.
All right, so she was looking for a companion and he was looking for a way to cope with his sexuality.
It was at this point that he met Bonnie Nettles, who was a nurse, and right away they hit it off.
Whereas Herf had come from a very mainstream Christian background.
He was Presbyterian.
He had studied at theological seminary.
His father was a Presbyterian minister.
Bonnie, on the other hand, was a theosophist, a spiritualist.
She was very involved in metaphysics, things that today would be called New Age.
And Bonnie had been part of a group that today would be called a channeling group.
And they, the people in this group, Bonnie in particular, believed that a man fitting Herf's description would enter their lives and would have some very special mission.
Applewhite and Nettles began a mission that would eventually lead to the deaths of 39 people.
They went out on the road and, yeah, this was 72.
Went out on the road.
They knew that they had some special mission together.
And so they were going to go out and just travel around and try to discover what their mission was.
They ended up in Gold Beach, Oregon on the Rogue River, camping out.
They were camped up there for a number of weeks.
And it was at that point that they realized that they were the two witnesses prophesied in the book of Revelation.
I think they took a very literal approach to reading the Bible.
And especially when they read the Gospels and the parables of Jesus, Nettles and Applewhite identified themselves as the two witnesses mentioned in the book of Revelation.
And the two witnesses, according to Revelation, are martyred.
And then after three and a half days, they're resurrected and taken up to heaven.
Well, what was emerging was that as the two witnesses, they had the exact same mission that Jesus Christ had roughly 2,000 years ago.
Jesus Christ was a member of the next kingdom who had incarnated in the human body to conduct the Earth's first harvest.
That was the metaphor that they used.
But because the consciousness of mankind had not evolved to the point where people could really understand what he was talking about when he fulfilled prophecy by being martyred and leaving the earth in a UFO, their interpretation of the resurrection.
They were going around places and they were announcing that they were two space aliens here to gather together people who were ready to enter the kingdom of heaven.
And at that time they were promising that the mothership would land soon and pick everyone up.
According to the research of Rob Ball, she indicates that most of the people who joined were already seekers.
I think this was the hippie generation.
And so they were religious seekers, people who had already dabbled in, say, Eastern spirituality and were interested in other states of consciousness and were actually quite prepared on the spur of the moment just to leave everything behind.
Like when I joined in April of 75 after that first gathering in North Hollywood.
And we went up to Gold Beach, Oregon, and we were with them and they taught us on a daily basis and we talked about the Bible and we talked about spacecrafts, everything.
There was a lot of very intense contact.
And then they sent us out for like our first journey together.
They gave everybody $50 and they said, okay, we're going to meet in two weeks in Laramie, Wyoming.
And they said, you can either take your $50 and you can go right there, or you can travel around a while, run out of money, and see what happens.
And so my partner and I headed for Vancouver, British Columbia.
And I think it was somewhere we made our way through Spokane and down through Wyoming and Idaho.
When we got to Yellowstone Park, it was when we ran out of money.
And this really neat thing happened where we met these people in a church and they liked us and they helped us and we were on our way the next day.
So it was like, I mean, I'm shortcutting a lot here, but it was just all these incredible things happened.
I was so fascinated by this whole thing that I thought I'm going to infiltrate this group.
But I didn't really do it with the idea of a full-blown research project.
It was like, I want to get over to Oakland and I want to see what's going to happen because I don't think these people are going to be picked up by UFOs, but I want to be there and kind of get a sense of what's going on behind the headlines because it was a big mystery.
But when I got to Oakland, I was so fascinated that I decided to keep on with it.
The mystery behind the two started with their new names.
From fear of possible government persecution, Applewhite and Nettles decided to erase their identities by referring to themselves as Bo and Peep, then eventually T and Doe.
Despite setbacks, the first harvest was a success.
Their next step was to gather all the new members together and start the classroom process.
Burstle was through and we finally reconnected with everybody and T and Doe sent out a message that somehow got to most everyone and we all gathered together.
That's when what they called the classroom really started.
We stopped holding meetings because at one point T said, well, the harvest is over.
We've gathered everybody and we started going into a really intense classroom situation where we, for example, we were partnered with everybody for a couple days and then partner, then switch and switch and switch until you got through everybody's problems or everybody's quirks or everybody's foibles that you had a problem with and you just learned to get over it.
Or you were supposed to.
And at one particular meeting, I believe it was in Kansas, where they were getting a lot of heckling from the audience.
According to one story, Peep stood up and said, the doors to the next kingdom are now closed.
You know, the harvest is over.
And after that, that was the end of recruiting.
And there were a few people, two, three, four people maybe, who were able to talk their way into the group after that.
But from then on, up until 93, they didn't do any recruiting, or actually 94.
And one of the first things that they did was take everybody up to Medicine Bow National Forest in Laramie, or near Laramie, Wyoming.
And they began to make a lot of changes.
And then eventually Nettles and Applewhite devised a means of socialization to, and I really think the whole group coalesced into a monastic order.
And the kinds of disciplines that they practiced are similar to those of virtually any monastic order, whether it's Roman Catholic monastic order or a Buddhist or a Hindu monastic order.
The focus is on giving up attachments to personal relationships or to desires, any sort of desires.
Celibacy was practiced.
All kinds of methods were practiced to focus the attention in the present moment.
I think the people that joined had a lot in common.
For the most part, spiritual seekers, young, unattached, no strong commitments to anything.
They were like available for membership.
A lot of people had come to a kind of turning point in their lives where whatever they had been into was coming to an end and it was like, okay, now where am I headed?
It was something about that information that just, you know, hey, wow, this makes sense.
The light bulb went on.
It's like, I'm going to check this out.
All of us had different reasons for coming in, but I know all of us were seekers.
That's like fundamental.
And that's an important point to me because people don't always join these things just because there's something empty or something dissatisfying or something missing.
It may be because they just are looking for something more and they have a sense that there's more out there and they have the courage to go exploring for it.
I mean, did Columbus go explore for the new world because he was missing something in Spain?
Or maybe he had a sense of a whole world that he had not yet seen?
So now some people who joined were.
They just wanted to get off this planet.
And there were some really funny stories about people who were laying out in the desert in a place like this one night saying, please pick me up.
And the next day, one of our group would come by in a truck and say, well, here's what we're all about.
And they'd go, oh, this is it.
But the people who just were simply escapists didn't last very long.
I mean, because the pressures and the discipline was too much, don't you think?
Yeah, and at first there was the expectation of, oh, we'll be out of here in a few months.
And people who, that was their only goal, that was their only desire.
After a few months came and went, and it turned into a year and more, and they still weren't seeing themselves leaving, and there was a lot of discipline.
They realized, well, this is too difficult.
I just basically wanted to take it out of here.
But it was not a simple thing.
These were people who were seekers who felt that Nettles and Applewhite had something to offer in terms of spiritual attainment and spiritual instruction.
And therefore, they were glad to go through this process of socialization.
The first thing they taught us was that, well, they taught us about influences, which were real discarnates, they taught.
Individuals who were spirit.
And they taught that, like, if I didn't like something about Teo, it wasn't that I didn't like something about him.
It was that my helpers, my spirit helpers, maybe didn't like something about his spirit helpers.
And so when I would talk to him, I would say, well, Teo, you know, there's an influence with me that makes me see you as being too severe and harsh.
And then he would say, well, you know, there's an influence with me that makes me see your influences as being too sloppy or light-hearted.
And that's how you'd work things out with your partner.
Which was really a good method.
Because it was a way to get to the essence of who we were, because we knew what we really wanted and we knew how we wanted to be.
And despite that determination and that focus, it's easy for things to get in the way.
Relationships can be very difficult, even on the human level and also on the level that we were trying to overcome the humanness.
What happened over the course of time was that life became extremely regimented, very structured, and the whole idea was to develop crew-mindedness.
Crew-mindedness was one way for TNDO to avoid possible persecution from their recruits.
To avoid persecution from the outside world, Applewhite and Nettles devised a communication system that would allow them to speak freely to members spreading their information across the country.
Their system transcended traditional methods of communication and ensured total disassociation from the outside world.
To send messages back and forth, the students were instructed to meet at designated locations.
Upon arrival, they would find items such as food, whereby they were to dissect the ingredients or words written on the labels in order to retrieve their secret messages.
I bet this is the code here.
Clinical right there.
That's their secret low code.
And we got some brand.
Let's see what it says.
It says no preservatives, Ferndale Farms.
Seem old.
It's heavy.
Product of the Federal Republic of Germany.
What's it going to be?
Oh, how old must it be?
They got shipped it over here.
Yeah.
And then be old here.
question I don't know.
How did they ship something like this from Germany?
Expect it to keep.
There's no preservatives.
this is No preserving ingredients added.
Maybe they fly it over first class for homeless shelters.
Because where's the mold?
Where's the mold?
Best before end.
and then they don't sing that's before Best to consume before the end.
The end of the world.
Best before end of the world.
You can't have any independent thoughts.
And so all of these things were designed to eliminate independent thinking and develop true-mindedness and to get people to be totally in tune with Doe's mind.
You know, this is the same message that Jesus brought 2,000 years ago.
And there was even early on talk about how all the people who were on the process had been alive at the time of Jesus and had had some sort of contact with him.
And now they had incarnated in human bodies at this time for the express purpose of following TN Doe.
According to their theology, the teachings of Applewhite and Nettles, that they said that Jesus came 2,000 years ago from the kingdom of heaven, or what they call the, what do they call it, the evolutionary level above human, Tila.
Okay, so that's the kingdom of heaven.
And Jesus came to harvest the souls that were ready to go up to the kingdom of heaven.
But apparently no one was ready to make that transition and unfortunately Jesus was executed.
Okay.
And Applewhite believed that he was Jesus come again to once again to harvest the few souls who were ready and to take them up to the kingdom of heaven.
Only the difference was that he came this time with his father, his, you know, the soul to which he was attached, who had guided him into the kingdom of heaven.
And his father, in this case, was Bonnie Lou Nettles.
At the beginning, I was talking about Herf's background and his homosexuality and all that sort of thing.
Until I really understood his background, I didn't really understand where the belief system of the group came from and where a lot of its basic structure came from.
And this is a whole complicated topic, but I think one of the most important things is that by assuming that messianic identity, he was able to resolve his own inner conflicts.
And the way that he resolved his problems over his sexuality was by developing a relationship with Bonnie that was totally platonic, a completely celibate relationship.
And back when they were still Herf and Bonnie, Bonnie even confided to one of her friends that she was disappointed that Herf didn't want to be intimate with her.
So they were totally celibate.
And what they did was they put all the members of the group together in male and female partnerships.
There was a slight excess of males, so there were some guys that were paired together.
But the ideal arrangement was male-female paired together in a totally celibate relationship, going out on the road and being tested by the next level exactly the same way that Herf and Bonnie had been.
My first partner was a little woman who was Judy Rowland, who's just a wonderful being, of course.
But in those days, I mean, I came out of gay Hollywood.
I was a gay man, so I didn't much care for women to begin with.
Judy was just the essence of the little kind of petite woman, and I reminded her of her ex-husband for some reason.
So right away, we were partnered, sent out of the road.
So we had to work through all this stuff.
And I had to, I can remember at one point saying, Judy, I am not your ex-husband.
And you know, But then in a very short period of time when you're alone and you're both committed to something and you're out there lost or in the wilderness or on the road, then you bond quickly and you support each other.
And I can remember talking to one church group somewhere, it was in Vancouver.
And Judy kind of made the mistake of letting it be known that she had left behind two young children.
And this woman was saying, well, how could you do that?
How could you do that?
because she didn't understand the kind of commitment that this step took.
And I learned to come to her defense and say, look, you have no...
Yeah, so we came to, we came to support each other real quick.
And that's why, you know, after all those years together, I mean, the bonding is so powerful.
Then in 1984, tragedy struck the group.
Doe's spiritual partner, T, died of cancer.
Left to carry on the mission they'd started in 1975.
Applewhite was devastated and needed to make changes to his doctrine.
It was explained by Doe to the group that T had completed her task at the human level and so she would return and but that she would be back for them.
So I've been told that the group seemed to take it in stride even though it was a devastating experience for Doe.
But I really think that that was a major turning point because it was so totally contrary to what they had always said.
At that very first poster that I mentioned, it says, are you ready to take your physical body to the next evolutionary kingdom?
And now Bonnie has left her vehicles.
But still, she's gone back to the next level.
So I think that was a real turning point because it opened the door to the possibility of some other way than making a physical exit.
Prior to this time, they were very explicit that if you died, your soul simply left your vehicle and awaited another incarnation at the human level, but it would not enter the kingdom of heaven.
So I think that was a significant event, although apparently it was quite a long ways down the road before the topic of suicide was broached.
Give up everything that you have of this roof.
Get rid of it, give it to the poor.
Come and follow me.
Applewhite spent over a decade of his life posing as a savior for those who were lost.
Claiming to have the mind of Jesus, he and his former partner successfully recruited hundreds of men and women throughout the years.
Things were different now.
T was dead.
Doe was alone, and there was no spaceship to pick them up.
Consequently, many of the early members left the group, and Applewhite searched for new ways to gain unwitting members.
Plagued by ridicule, Applewhite decided to go back on the road.
In January of 94, they were down to two dozen members.
And what actually prompted them to go out on the road again, I'm not sure.
They had been posting their stuff out on the internet, and apparently they'd been met with virtually nothing but ridicule.
And so that wasn't working.
They had been through, what, at that point, 19 years of disappointments, of sometimes, you know, packing everything up, going out into the desert and waiting because T and Doe had said that the ships are going to come down.
And it didn't happen.
Disappointment again and again and again.
So what specifically prompted that, I don't know.
But I was told when they came through Missoula that they had divided up in four groups and each group had a specific itinerary and Doe was traveling separately from the rest of them.
And they were doing one last sweep.
One of the members decided to videotape the group's journeys while traveling around the U.S. Initiate docking procedures, Alex Odi.
maneuvering thrusters only I like this video
What you're seeing is an actual push assistance.
Green Van would not start, so we affixed some pieces of tire we found on the side of the road to the front bumper of Blue Van to use as a buffer.
And we've been pushing it along for about 20, 30 miles now.
And it seems to be working all right to get us to our next town.
And there it goes.
And the class was split into about four or five groups that were in different parts of the country holding meetings and they'd been doing this for since January.
There were about four groups around the country that were traveling and holding meetings, telling people about the information.
At this time, all these groups were going to meet and converge in a campground in Phoenix, outside of Phoenix.
And so it was this chilly night in Phoenix, I think it was March, and around this huge campfire, we all had the tents around this circle.
And I would see Doe just kind of Doe and his two helpers showing up walking out of the darkness into the firelight and everybody was just whispering, Doe's here, Doe's here.
I remember Rio said, you know, you've got to be sure you want to do this because this takes everything of you.
You know, we're not going to lie to you and say that, oh, just come on, it's going to be easy.
You know, and they said, you know, you don't need to bring any money.
You don't need to, we can provide for you.
There was never any coercion at all.
It was prove it to them as opposed to them trying to prove it to us in a sense.
I could see that what they had to say had a lot of similarities with other belief systems, but it really was their own thing and little parts, pieces of the puzzle started to fit together and it made real, real big sense to me.
And I asked a friend of mine on the way home that what did you think of it?
And he says, it sounds like the truth to me.
And it was, I mean, we were in the car and it was kind of eerie because it sounded like the truth to me too.
And we had never heard anything like that before.
I think he joined in February of that same year and this would have been in July.
So he'd been in the class for four or five months I think at that time.
Whereas others had been in since 1975 and 76.
And usually the people who spoke were in the class, had been in class for longer just because they'd had more experience and they could present the information in a much more undiluted form in a sense.
My situation might be a little unique in the fact that they allowed me to continue to have a relationship with the group even after I was out of the group.
And that allowed me opportunities to get back with them if I was to choose to get back with them.
Not able to do what the others were doing.
I would find that I would not exert enough effort to kick out those influences.
And so it was out of laziness.
It was pure and simple laziness on my part that I wasn't doing enough homework and overcoming to find myself acceptable in the conduct that was required in order to stay with the group.
Hi, Rick Cody.
Oh!
I have to give you the grace, guys.
Come on.
You notice that I put a piece of tape over this red part so that the people don't know that they're being recorded.
I do remember Rick Odie talking to me about how it, I mean, he knew who his older member was, but it was difficult for him a lot of times to stay in the class because of some sort of vehicle programming that he had to fight.
And he was one that left the class and returned quite a few times.
Now, when you jump ships, so to speak, you're just back in the water on your own.
And I know I left the group in 1990 for the final time.
And I still don't feel like I have completely adjusted to being sort of back in the human world.
I still feel sometimes like a stranger in a strange land.
And I'm told with most cults or groups or whatever, it seems to take as long to readjust as you spent in the group.
And I hope it doesn't take that long.
But it's a very difficult situation.
So how long were you in the group?
See, I was in for 15 years.
And I've only been out seven.
Well, that sounds like a long time, but in terms of there are still like deep-seated things with me that I'm still working my way through.
In the fall of 1994, Apple White declared the last harvest closed.
Like his partner T 19 years earlier, he'd had enough.
Aside from all the ridicule and badgering, their recruitment meetings were successful.
They added over 30 new members to their roster.
Some accepted the information and lessons taught by Doe.
One night Doe was speaking to us and there was this thought hanging around in my head that was being really hostile towards him.
And it wasn't a thought that was coming from me.
It was almost as if something outside me was trying to use me to be hostile towards my older member.
And I didn't express this thought to anyone.
I just, you know, I didn't do a very good job of getting it out of my head.
And after he was done speaking to us, this was in this little hotel room somewhere.
As he was leaving, as he always did, he waved bye to everyone.
And then when I waved by to him, he kind of looked at me like sort of funny.
And it was as if, and I kept thinking, gosh, he knows that I wasn't pushing those thoughts.
I don't want to say he was reading my mind.
That's not it at all.
It's more like he sensed the presence of that thought.
And the thought on its own wouldn't have any power, but when someone starts to think it and to believe it and to listen to it, that makes it louder.
And then it was starting to sort of perturb his ability to think and communicate clearly.
And I, like I said, I didn't express this thought to anyone.
And the next morning, he calls the room and says, you know, he wants to talk to Carlin.
And, you know, the vehicle's harsh started racing.
I'm thinking, you know, gosh, I'm going to get in trouble.
And I went and talked to him.
And it wasn't like that at all.
He just said, you know, I can tell you're dealing with something.
How can I help you?
You know, he wasn't being mad at me or anything.
He just said, I can tell that there's something hanging around that thinks that I'm full.
You know, he said the thought was saying that I'm full of garbage.
And he said, you know, I want to know, do you think I'm full of garbage?
Because if you don't think I'm your older member, in a sense, then, you know, maybe you should think about whether or not you want to be here.
And he wasn't, like I said, he presented it.
I can't even do justice to the way he presented it to me at the time.
And I said, no, I know who you are.
It's just that I'm not, I don't have a lot of control yet.
I'd only been in the class for a month at this time.
And he was very caring about how he brought it up to me.
He said, I know I can understand that when people first come into the class, they kind of want attention because when you're in the world, you get attention from people.
And he said he thought that that was one of the things I was dealing with, is that I wanted someone to recognize that I was working hard.
And that's not how it is in the next level.
You don't need that childish recognition to say that, oh, you're doing a good job, Carlin.
Keep up the good work.
So anyway, that was my only lesson from Doe.
Over the next few years, the group traveled around the southwest looking for signs or indicators that would lead them to a spacecraft.
M-O-O-N, that spells spacecraft.
Hi!
Hi there, hi!
We were always Looking for signs to show us it was time to go.
We didn't know whether the next level was going to pick us up in a spacecraft or whether we would have to leave our vehicles and then enter the next level, which if you really think about it, that's the same thing that Jesus did.
Finally, the sign had come.
In the early months of 1997, a comet was discovered, later to be named the Hailbomb.
After many failed attempts to predict their departure, Doe found a way out.
Doe told us that the comet was the indicator, and we still weren't sure whether we were going to be picked up by a spacecraft, which everybody wanted because it would be fun, or if we were going to have to exit the vehicles, which everybody would do anyway.
I think it was just that T had sort of let Doe know that this comet is the marker for you guys to leave.
I mean, they were taught, the class was talking about leaving back in 1975.
They've been talking about leaving for years.
They started talking about voluntarily exiting their vehicles when I was in the class.
So this wasn't just something that, oh, there's a spacecraft, let's kill ourselves.
I mean, these people, these individuals spent 22 years preparing for what they did.
And I wish people would examine that 22-year period instead of just examining their method of leaving.
But that's the time where I had the same type of feeling that prompted me to join the class told me that I had to do something outside of the class.
Six weeks before the suicides, Rio decided it was time to say goodbye to his classmates.
I asked to meet with Doe and we talked with he and his helpers and told him how I was feeling and that I felt like there was something telling me to do something for the class outside of the class and outside of the confines of the class that couldn't be done by the class members still in that situation.
And so after a while he we I told him about it and we kind of went off and did our separate things for a little while during the day and then he called me back and in that period of time he had spoken to T. And he told me that he feels that T has told him that it's part of the plan and that they would take care of me and do whatever needs to be done before
I left the group.
They bought me a train ticket from San Diego and I went on the train to LA and got a roommate and started living here and started to work for Interact.
But Applewhite had a more important task for Rio.
He would soon be his messenger.
See he says Heaven's Gate awaiting and that's exactly what that means to us.
We've been away and now we're going back.
A few days before their deaths, the members of Heaven's Gate recorded one last video.
This was Applewhite's last chance to recruit.
Okay, there's Doroti and he's even looking at the camera, aren't you, DeRode?
Stay looking.
There we got it.
Okay, thank you and let's move on over to Arisoti.
Questoti, I'm sorry.
There's Questoti.
Hi, Questoti.
Can you see the camera?
There you are.
That looks good.
Thank you.
Okay, and there's Check Odi.
A lot of you all watching this film know these individuals, I'm sure, and are curious about all the things that have transpired in their lessons since you last saw them.
This is March 19, 1997.
And I'm Doe.
Some called our partnership T and Doe.
That's not my name, but that's how I'm referred to on planet Earth at this time.
I've been talking to my students that are sitting in front of me about talking to you.
And let me say that our mission here at this time is about to come to a close in the next few days.
We're going to begin our interviews today with Saroti.
How long have you been in this classroom circumstance?
I've been in years.
Since Valentine's Day, 21 years ago.
Well, I just wanted to let everyone know how lucky and happy I feel to be here and let you know that what we're about to do is certainly nothing to think negatively about.
We're all choosing of our own free will to go to the next level with T and Doe.
Jan Yoy and I, both these vehicles ended up being a couple that were in Oregon in 1975 and we took these two vehicles.
You probably heard of the news media story in 75 about a bunch of people disappearing from Walport, Oregon.
Well, we're still here, but not for long.
You've probably heard from everyone, quite a few people before me, and they've all expressed what the class has meant to them and what they've learned in the class.
But it's hard to express in human language what we know or what we feel from what we've learned in the classroom.
I was fortunate enough, I am fortunate enough to have been in the class for 21 years.
I had a lot of lessons I needed to learn compared to some of the others.
And I was one of the lucky ones to come in in Los Angeles when I heard T and Doe talk.
I just couldn't deny it.
I had to come.
That's all there is to it.
Glenn Ready?
Well, first off, I wanted to apologize for my appearance.
I sucked my hair wrong last Night, as you can see, it's just a mess.
Anyway, I've been in the class also since 1975, and I've never left, and I never would leave.
This is just the greatest thing.
It's the only thing there is.
If you're viewing this right now and you're hearing what I'm saying, and you might, after hearing this, you might go read the information and then you might say, goodness, that's me, and they've gone.
If you act quickly and you leave this world of your own choice, what?
Go commit suicide.
Suicide is separating from the kingdom of God when the kingdom of God has reached out and offered life to you.
That is suicide.
So to us, it would be suicide to not leave.
I knew Teetles anyway.
And I knew when I heard their words.
And I heard what they had to say.
It was there.
They were the answer.
There's no other answers here.
There's no human here that can give you anything.
They cannot give you anything.
These humans here do not know how to get to the next level.
Even before I finished reading the message, I knew I was hearing my Lord, my shepherd's voice.
After meeting T and Doe the first time, I instinctively knew who they were and where they came from.
There was no doubt.
It's like a knowing inside that you can't deny.
The information that they brought us about the next level and their ways and conduct were not human ways.
And it became more clearly evident the more I was with them that I wanted to become like them.
There were a couple things that I suspected there might be individuals out there who would like to ask us if they had the chance.
And one of those questions I thought people might want to ask is: how can you, when you, so many of you have so many capabilities and talents, when you could have done so much in the world, choose to throw all that away and go off with some cult and just lose your life.
Okay, so in response to that, well, one thing you have to consider what we as individuals wanted to become.
I think everyone in this class wanted something more than the human world had to offer.
They were seeking some type of goodness, some type of rightness that they did not feel in this world.
So that's one thing.
You have to consider what we wanted.
I just wanted to say that I've been with the class for over approximately 21 years.
And when I came in the 70s, it was the time of change.
And this vehicle liked change and was into a lot of areas, social action, education, politics, religion, women's lib, whatever, at the time.
But as it became more and more involved in those areas, it realized that it needed to make changes individually, that I needed to be changing myself rather than being concerned about other individuals.
If you do believe in us, and the ones we have worked so hard to represent are our older members, T and Doe, who are from the next level, then you can be sure the next level is watching.
Because by your belief, you allow them a chance to save the part of you that may become a child in our father's house too at a later time, if that is where you want to be.
Thank you for listening and good luck.
The only reason we're doing this little tape right before our departure time is in case there are some that still might see this because this world has become so corrupt that the only way you can be a media event is to do something like what your world would translate a group suicide.
Suddenly that's a media event.
We're going on to something greater and better and that we hope that someday you will understand this and you might join us.
Jesus 2,000 years ago did exactly the same thing.
See, if you think about it, these people who took their lives, they took their lives twice.
I mean I gave up my life.
Right.
So to tell, at least once, because to leave as we did was to leave your whole life behind you.
And so the second giving up of their life was almost easy for them.
The End A few days later, two members of the group received packages containing the details of their classmates' tragic ending.
After a few weeks of being there, I get this Federal Express package and it's addressed to me with the return address to me from me.
It was like I nailed it to myself, which I knew I didn't and I knew that the only people that would do that would be the class.
And be that as it may, there would be nothing for them to send me unless it was to put it on the internet.
And that told me right there that this was it.
It was time to go.
And they didn't give me any indicator of whether they were getting picked up or they were going to exit their vehicle.
So I didn't know what happened until I read the note that said, by the time you read this, we will have exited our vehicles.
And I knew exactly what was going on.
I got my FedEx package on, was it March 25th or something like that?
And I almost knew that something major had happened.
I didn't know that they had actually left until I opened the package and saw another one.
That there was no, oh, gee, I missed them and those poor people, they killed themselves.
And that's blowing me.
I knew exactly what they had done.
And I agreed with them 100%.
I feel I support the class 100%.
I know who Doe is.
I can't deny it.
I feel like I can't deny it even if I wanted to.
I mean the whole time, you know, I was only in the class three months and it's been three years since I've been out.
Now you'd think that'd be plenty of time for me to be reprogrammed or deprogrammed or whatever it is they call it, but the whole time I was out, I never found anything that made sense the way that did.
I mean, it's the truth for me.
*music*
So I went in and if I felt it was true that they had accidental vehicles and if so, I felt that the odor might be a little overwhelming and this vehicle has a pretty weak stomach.
So I took some cologne with me and sprayed it on my shirt and held my shirt over my nose and then got my video camera out.
So I started to see these bodies on the mattresses and I went around the house yelling to have anybody answer and nobody answered.
And then I just walked around the house and videotaped whatever I could see.
The members of Heaven's Gate died over a three-day period.
One by one, they surrendered their lives by digesting deadly doses of drugs and alcohol.
It was pudding and barbituates.
I was fingerbarbital with applesauce or pudding and vodka.
And what you do is you take, you ingest it, and then you lie down on your bunk and wait quietly.
And it's a very easy, very painless way to go.
Of course, I'm not advocating that people do this, but I'm saying that this is the procedure that these people took.
And after which, it's my understanding that the ones that were helping assist put these purple, what they're calling shrouds, over the head and part of the chest.
Well, we know that they're in the next level, that they are in the keeping of the next level.
We don't know if they're on a particular spacecraft, if that spacecraft is following Hale Bopp, if it's even, you know, behind the moon, behind Hail Mop being still, or whether it's just hanging out up in the atmosphere somewhere.
We don't really know.
And this, I feel, is more dignified than anything else.
Because, like I said, these people had a huge amount of dignity.
And so did Doe.
And also, they had a lot of respect for the people that might find them.
They were preparing for a trip.
They were literally preparing to leave.
And every time we prepared to go on a trip, we would pack a bag and we'd put $5 in our pockets.
We'd have some quarters or phone calls.
And that's exactly what they did.
They were preparing to leave, to go on a trip.
It was just that sad.
When I'd sit some nights in bed and think about what I'd given up, I'd start to go crazy.
I'd just want to go in my car and start driving and hope I'd find them.
And in fact, in March of this year, I had it all planned out.
I had saved up some funds and I was going to get in that car of mine and I was going to start driving around the western United States.
And I was going to hope that the next level, if they thought I was sincere in my desire, would link me up with the class.
And well, and then they left on me.
Well, not on me.
I left on them.
I don't look at that as them leaving me behind.
I left, I voluntarily left myself behind, in a sense.
Finally, they got off this hideous planet.
It was my fault.
I mean, it was wonderful that they're now no longer having to deal with these primitive vehicles and this hideous place that people still like this planet.
I don't know why.
I don't like it here.
Hi, my name is Ricody.
By the time that you see this tape, I'll be gone.
I'll be leaving this vehicle, and they will probably find this vehicle in a motel somewhere.
And I'm going to be leaving in much the same way that my classmates and my older member left.
I'm not dying.
I'm not going to be dead.
I am simply leaving this vehicle.
I know that's going to be hard for people to take.
I know that with the response that people have had from my older members and my classmates leaving, I've been acutely aware of how the world has responded to that.
All they see is their vehicles laying around without life in them, and they immediately jump to the conclusion that these individuals are dead.
They are not dead any more than a caterpillar is dead when it goes into a chrysalis and changes into a butterfly.
There is substance to souls and substance to the mind that is in these vehicles.
And that substance doesn't go away because the vehicle is dropped off.
Unfortunately, it's about the only way that we can get out of these vehicles is to kill them off.
We can't just leave without the vehicle expiring.
It cannot live without a life force in it.
And so when we take our life force away from the vehicle, the vehicle is considered dead.
Please, don't look at my older member, don't look at my classmates, and don't look at me as having died.
We have not died.
We have simply moved out of these vehicles.
Everybody asks me, is Chuck going to try to commit suicide again?
I don't know.
I haven't talked to him for months.
I think if he reads the stuff that he is currently making available, He'll realize that if this is true, he's missed his opportunity to get on board the craft.
I don't see Chuck having either the desire or the charisma to start a group of his own.
I don't see that as a real possibility.
So I don't know what is in store for them.
I think for the Heaven's Gate believers who are still here, They need to wrestle with this question because they're here.
And so they need to think about, well, what does the future have in store?
And if the earth is going to be spaded under, what is the nature of that?
And what's going to happen to them?
Because they're here.
They're not in the kingdom of heaven.
Existence here is a strange duality.
And I know that when I do leave this planet, however way that is done, I'm not sure just how it'll be, but I feel in the meantime that I am here to answer a lot of questions that people might have as far as the class is concerned, that those concerned.
I was the last one to be a member of that class before they exited.
And I know the procedures that they had developed at that time and the changes that the mind changes because everything changed, even procedures over a number of years.
And I hope to help people understand that.
In February of 1998, nearly one year after the deaths of his classmates, Chuck Humphries took a drive to an isolated location in Arizona.
He assembled his tent and placed it beside the tailpack of his car.
Dressed in black, with the garden hose in hand, Chuck laid down inside the tent, placed a plastic bag over his head, and to ensure death, he inserted one end of the hose inside the tailpipe, the other inside the plastic bag, and surrendered his life.
The vehicle meant nothing to them.
They knew they were the soul.
And they knew that they were filled with the mind of God.
They were part of God because they were filled with this.
And to drop the vehicle was incidental.
Because they knew, and they had their guide with them, they had no fear.
We had no fear.
What would we fear?
What's to be afraid of?
There's nothing to be afraid of.
When I wonder who is God, I think of UFOs.
God is even real.
I don't think anybody knows.
Whether he is in the sky or deep inside of me is a subject for debate, along with whether he's or she.
When I wonder who is God, I think of UFOs.
Jesus wrote a cloud of light.
The Bible tells me so.
I guess Buddha rode an elephant and Krishna changed his shape.
Did we all start back in Eden or are we descended from an ape?
Which is the same apart progenitor.
When I wonder who is God and why I am alive, I think these New Age gurus preach a bunch of New Age dive.
I'm not knocking airy fairies with their crystals on the shelf.
Because to tell the honest truth, I am myself.
So when I wonder who is God, I think of Sigmund Freud.
Is God just some big daddy we create to fill a void?
If heaven's within me, no wonder Satan chose to fall.
Yeah, I love Lucy.
He got a bad rap after all.
When I wonder who is God, I think of UFOs.
Look at Virgin Mary, she's magnetic and she glows.
So why can't God be E.T. with two pinholes for our nose?
And great big eyes and green skin and webs between his toes.
In conclusion, let me say, after thinking of it all, my conclusion is confusion.
Can't conclude it all, but I don't think I belong here.
I'm a lost and lonely pup.
So come on, God.
Or Captain Kirk or Scotty be me.
Oh!
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