Knocking at Heaven’s Gate

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.” [...]

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. [...]

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 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. [...]

This is a summary extract from the full article as it appeared on OhMyNews, March 26, 2007
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