Cult Research - Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate Cult - Information from the 2020 HBO miniseries Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults
Episode 1 Notes:
Basic overview
Uniforms - Black button down shirt with a patch that says Heaven’s Gate Away Team
“we came from distant space, what your religious literature would call the kingdom of heaven, and we’re about to return”
Mass suicide after 22 years of the cult, 39 deceased.
The Awakening, 1975
From a small Oregon town near Newport.
A couple appeared (Ti and Do / “the two” / Bo and Peep / other names) and had a flyer saying a UFO would be coming to get them and they’ll be leaving Earth forever. They had a meeting to share what they knew.
“If you ever entertained the idea of a physical level above the human level you will want to attend this meeting.”
200 people came out to this meeting. The people leading the meeting were Ti and Do. They said they had come to teach the process of becoming a member of the next level.
“When a human has overcome all of his human level activities, a chemical change takes place and he goes through a metamorphosis just exactly as a caterpillar does when he quits being a caterpillar.”
They explained that people would physically change and become alien-like creatures, they would literally get on a physical UFO and leave Earth.
Accounts of attending the meeting
“I felt higher than a kite in this meeting. Euphoric. My girlfriend felt the same thing”
“I felt like I sat in front of the equivalent of Jesus”
They wanted people to agree to go with them, leave behind all of their possessions, and begin “to repair”
People started to go missing. They were told to go to Boulder canyon with camping supplies.
“I was seeking something but I didn’t know what that was” “I was in a spiritual dilemma when they came along”
Seems like a Christian offshoot
Millenarian - Feel that time will be coming to an end. “Planet earth is about the be recycled. Your only chance to survive is to leave with us.” Tend to arise in times of societal stress
A mix of science fiction and christianity - Chariots of the Gods was a best selling book at the time that claimed that ancient religions were started by aliens who came to Earth.
Cult info
Leaders Do and Ti were into musical theater - their names come from the song from Sound of Music. Said they were millions of years old and from outer space.
About Do (Marshall Herff Applewhite)
was a college music professor and performer
He was rumored to be having an affair with one of his male students
His father was a reverend and did not approve of Herff being gay
Herff’s wife divorced him and he left Alabama for Houston
He was going to try to be an opera singer in Houston
Had a psychotic episode during a rehearsal and was brought to the hospital. He met Ti at the hospital there.
Ti took advantage of Do when he was vulnerable.
She was an astrologer and did his chart. She said his natal chart showed they were destined to work together on a huge project, they were soulmates. They were never romantic.
About Ti
an RN
worked with babies at a hospital in Houston
“very entrenched in new age thinking” - astrology / meditation / crystals / ascended beings / channeling dead people / seances / UFOs
Didn’t feel like she belonged here, saw a light in the sky at one point that she thought could have been a UFO and it was here to take her away. Would fantasized about going to different planets.
She got a divorce and left with Do to figure out what she was supposed to be doing with her life. She told her daughter she’d be back once she figured it out and she never came back.
Basic beliefs
Believed you could not achieve this new level of existence once you’re dead - it has to happen while you’re alive so your physical body can transform.
“Your family, don’t forget, are those who are here doing the same thing as you.” Taught followers that their biological family really wasn’t their family
“It’s common for the person who is going through an awakening for their life to begin to fall apart”
“The kingdom of heaven cannot be entered as long as I still have attachments or addictions to the human condition”
“It’s difficult for our friends and loved ones who don’t understand why we do this”
No social structure
Name of their process was “Human Individual Metamorphosis”
No one was in charge of anyone else because it was such an individual process
A nomadic existence, travelling around the country to campgrounds. Asking for donations from churches and communities.
Meetings twice a day - morning and evening
“tuning in to the next level” with a tuning fork tune to Note A and placed at their forehead.
Group was very secretive
Would share information in coded messages left in books at public locations like the post office to direct people where to go to meet up
There were two sociologists who went undercover to study this group, a lot of the information comes from them. Cool as shit.
The leaders didn’t assert their authority. There was no evidence of coercion, manipulating, or brainwashing. It was all about free choice.
They would go out to the desert and just wait. They’d watch the sky for UFOs to come get them. They would have assigned duties to observe the sky in watches.
Some cult members left behind their kids to join this cult. Felt they had to let the past and the people of their past go, so they could work on ascending and the people in their past could work on moving on too.
One of the interviewees was 10 when her parents left her because they believed they were going to be taken away by a UFO. She was like “literally what the fuck.” “it was like trying to compete with God. Made me feel rather meaningless.”
One of them says she felt bad about leaving her parents behind. “you have to realize that when Jesus met his disciples, he said you have to leave your family behind if you want to surrender to a higher principle.” She truly felt that if she wanted to fully follow this belief she needed to leave behind her loved ones.
Cult members weren’t supposed to be forming “human level” relationships
Ti and Do travel the United States in 1972 working odd jobs and searching for spiritualism, end up in Oregon in 1973.
In Oregon, they “discover” that they are the two witnesses that are put forth in the book of revelations and are destined to be martyred. They will rise from the dead and would ascent up to heaven in a cloud.
The “cloud” is actually a UFO, the people way back when who wrote the bible just didn’t know the word UFO (lol yes of course, totally makes sense)
They believed they would lead all those who followed them into heaven. This was called The Demonstration.
Saw their task as being technological advisors, not religious gurus.
They felt The Demonstration would be happening imminently.
They later said that when the media attacked them, that was their martyrdom. They went into hiding with a small group of followers as a result.
*One of the interviewers says typical cult members are well educated / from good families / no prior psychological problems. “cults don’t want lonely strange people, they want highly educated individuals who can help run the cult.”
Observations:
Really interesting intersection of pop culture (sci-fi) and religious belief - a unique view that I haven’t seen in my research yet.
Ti had an interest in New Age stuff like Astrology and Tarot! Could maybe be useful inspiration for my story concept somehow.
They had kind of wild beliefs that people went along with - did people really believe they were going to transform into aliens? Why did no one question why Ti and Do hadn’t transformed? They also used these beliefs to separate people from their family and friends - “oh they just don’t get it” “they’re part of your test to see if you’re attached to your human form” etc.
Really interesting that at first they didn’t have a hierarchy - everyone who was there was an equal and not under the control of any others.
Even though they were all about sci fi and UFOs and aliens, they still made a connection to Christianity and the bible. They used the bible as evidence for their beliefs.
Episode 2 Notes:
The Chrysalis - 1976-1991
Ti and Do wrote a book called Heaven’s Gate
Began an “intensive classroom training program”
The Classroom - July 1976
Numbers dwindled to 40-50 people.
Meetings were now recorded for “the class”
“Every tiny thing you do, alone or with someone else, is a task to see how you respond, to see if you were ready for the next level. You are striving to be perfect. There are no teachers in the next level. We’re your teachers now.”
The cult created new language according to their beliefs - Home was “Craft” / Money was “sticks” / Office was “Compu-lab / Sex organs were “plumbing” / Job was “Out of Craft Task” / etc.
Changing the language for things meant rewiring understanding of reality because the new words don’t have previous associations. They were also given new names for this purpose.
A single syllable first name and a shared last name “ODY” (RBBODY - “rob-ody”) When they “became adults” they would drop the y to indicate that they had elevated.
They wore uniforms - the same short haircut, same pants and shirts and sneakers
Behavioral guidelines - led to people leaving the group (lol huh). The people who stayed behind were the people who would follow these guidelines, so the group’s fanaticism increased.
Strict obedience - EVERY task was regulated. Even down to the size pancakes could be.
No having private thoughts
No taking action without consulting with check partner - you’d be paired with someone you would not want to be with. You were responsible for checking that you were each following the rules
No lying
No knowingly breaking rules
No music allowed in the group.
No permitting arousal in thought or action
Couples would decide to split up in order to ascend and see each other in a more elevated form in the next level
They followed these rules because they felt it gave them structure and community, they enjoyed these rules because it brought them together and closer to their greater good. They’re working together to overcome something they all struggle with - their “humanness”.
“We were all searching for some good that didn’t exist in the human world. We found it in The Class”
“It’s been tough, but it’s been wonderful”
“We know that we hurt people and we don’t take that lightly. We didn’t want to hurt anyone. Unfortunately it’s the individuals that these vehicles cared for the most are actually the greatest threat to us”
17 steps
Questions to ask yourself (there are more than these, these are all they shared from the text)
Can you follow instructions without adding your own interpretation?
Can you deliver instructions as you receive them or do they change according to your programming?
Do you participate in inconsiderate conversation?
Are you physically clumsy?
Do you halfway complete a task?
Do you put tasks off or procrastinate?
Quotes from Ruffles, one of their publications with members’ thoughts about the ideology
“everyone interprets the truth at their own level of understanding”
“a goal is not reached by just learning how to reach it, a goal is reaching by doing what you learned.”
“reality is not something you escape from, reality is something you escape to”
“What lies behind us lies buried, because it is dead”
Ti and Do were afraid they were being tracked by family and ex cult members - this was why they stayed on the move and went to different camp grounds all the time.
One of the cult member’s family members passed away and he inherited a lot of money. This went to the cult and the cult started to rent mansions.
they would have like 15 people in a house but then only have certain people who were allowed to go outside so it wouldn’t be apparent that so many people lived there
A concerned family member contacted the FBI but there wasn’t much they could do because the cult wasn’t violent. There was a parent network led by Nancie Brown, she would try to notify people when she got news of where the cult was.
Ti and Do didn’t like this - they told cult members to not share information like this with their family. They weren’t supposed to have attachments like that anyway.
**Ti was still writing her daughter once a month! She wasn’t following her own rules! They even spoke on the phone, but Do was always listening when they talked. She never wanted to talk about the cult, only about her daughter’s life. She started to get more paranoid and felt she was unsafe.
Ti had been diagnosed with cancer - her eye was removed and a later doctors appointment discovered that the cancer had spread to her liver. She died quickly, within a few weeks of her initial diagnosis. The cult was shocked because she was supposed to be leading them into “graduation”
Two cult members went to tell Ti’s daughter that she had died. Ti’s last wishes were that she didn’t want her daughter to know that she’d died. A cult member said that Ti wasn’t the same person anymore, that her “vehicle” was the same but that her mind wasn’t, so she wasn’t really Terrie’s mother anymore.
Terrie kept calling Do to try to find out about her mother. He sent a tape to Terrie explaining why she hadn’t been told. She felt it was part of her task to leave her “vehicle” without emotional attachment.
Do was afraid of being the leader of the cult after Ti’s death because they were supposed to be partners. He questioned whether he should continue the class. He allowed cult members to go home to visit family members. Some of the cult members considered leaving at this point. It had been 10 years since they left home at this point. One person stayed home, the rest of them went back to the cult.
Do had to deal with the cognitive dissonance that Ti died of a human illness, which undermines the theology of the cult. The explanation was that “her next level consciousness burnt up her human body”. They had to adjust their beliefs to accommodate this event. They shifted their belief to see their task as leaving their vehicles behind.
Ti was called “the older member” and Do said his connection to the next level went through Ti. Do felt that Ti was still guiding him, just through outer space. He said “Ti is my heavenly father.” A decade later he announced that he was Jesus and Ti was God.
After Ti’s death, Do brings more a biblical understanding to the cult rather than the new age metaphysical ideology that Ti brought forth.
Do tried a thought experiment with the group - “if you had $100 to spend to buy something you want, what would you buy?” This totally went against the cult’s prior teaching and was very confusing to the cult members. The answer Do wanted them to get to was a wedding band, to symbolize their love for God.
He had a ceremony where the cult members “married” him. “He was weeping profusely. It was like he was giving birth. He was birthing students into the next level.” The cult members started to wear wedding rings. Their loyalty now was not to the ideology, but to Do.
“Ti and Do were never out to con anybody. If they conned anybody, they conned themselves first.”
Cult objective
To turn you into a conformist
To create a new you by breaking down the old you, turning you into a true believer
Convincing the members that they were not human beings, they were aliens living within human shells called Vehicles.
Observations:
The rules are enforced by cult members, not by the leaders. The cult members increase the fanaticism and check on each other. There’s a sense of community in this while also being a form of policing - they are ALL struggling to follow the rules so they understand each others’ challenges, AND they expect perfection from themselves and others.
The cult’s beliefs have to change to account for life’s unexpected hardships. Instead of allowing the cult ideology to unravel, it becomes more complex.
Episode 3 Notes:
**Recommended book - Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan (a cult exit counselor)
**Asch conformity study - A scientific study on influencing others’ perceptions of reality.
6 people are shown a set of 4 vertical lines, one line by itself on the left and a grouping of three lines on the right. They have to decide as a group which of the lines on the right is the same height as the line on the left. Everyone on the panel is part of the experiment except the person in seat 6 who is planted by the scientists. The group gives the correct answer for two rounds and then start to give the wrong answer to see how the person in the 6th chair responds. 2/3 of people who do this experiment end up agreeing with the group. This shows the social science of adapting to the people in our environment to fit into a group.
The second harvest: 1991-1995
About brainwashing:
Cults prey on vulnerable people who are looking for guidance from a higher power. They use manipulation tactics to convince them the cult is what they’re looking for.
“When we think about the term brainwashed, in a lot of ways we hope we are”
“Ti and Do gave us the tools to brainwash ourselves. To wash out the humanness out of our brain. It’s the same idea as baptism”
People stay in cults because they get scared and don’t know how to leave. Sometimes people would leave and then come back because they didn’t know how to survive outside of the cult. The cult leaders themselves get into a place where they can’t end the belief system.
“You’re leaving your whole world and you don’t know what’s out there.” In Heaven’s Gate you’ve left everything behind, including yourself, so you don’t have anything to go back to if you consider leaving.
“physically leaving the cult doesn’t get it out of your head, especially if you’ve been in it for years”
Leaving the cult can feel like having a split personality - the part of you that’s free to live life with feelings and desires and choices, and the part of you that feels you should be living according to strict rules and doctrines.
People who can’t live according to the rules of the group and are asked to leave feel they’ve failed, feel they’re “pitiful”
Some people who leave, either by choice or by removal, continue their belief in the cult in a muted way. Adapting their current lifestyle to be a reflection of the cult’s beliefs without the extremes that the cult enforced.
People are cut off from family and friends, made to be in couples so they don’t have privacy, forced to change their names / clothing / diet to create a pseudo identity that is obedient to the cult leader.
The group was coerced into obedience with the fear that if they miss their chance to ascend they’ll never get another chance.
People go through deep psychological changes that are brought about by the indoctrination methods of the group.
Do liked the idea of being a cog in the machine of a larger wheel, to him it depicted the next level, a collective consciousness.
The cult wanted to be part of a crew that acted on behalf of the whole. They saw Star Trek as an inspiration. Star Trek was one of the approved TV programs. “The Borg is a good model”
Do wanted them to disconnect from the concept of gender because there isn’t gender in the next level.
With regards to sex and sexuality
They were taught to eliminate the feeling of desire because sex is “a potent drug”
They had “wash clothes in the bathroom for a man to use to clean himself if he had a nocturnal emission” but cult members were afraid to use them because that would reveal that they were struggling with sexual thoughts and desires. They created a sign out system to tract who had nocturnal emissions. There was a sense of shame, of needing to start over in your training.
Do was gay and hated that about himself. He created a belief that his body was abhorrent. He had an assistant that he was attracted to and he told the assistant that he couldn’t be Do’s helper anymore because Do’s vehicle was becoming attracted to his vehicle. Do admitted to the group that he’d had a nocturnal emission and he was looking into having himself castrated. He asked the group if they would want to do the same thing. The group had committed to lifelong celibacy. The group and Do began to feed off each other, there were group members who began to influence Do with their fanaticism.
The group established a sterile room to perform the castrations. One of the members was a nurse and performed the procedure.
One of the members had the castration and it didn’t go well, seems like there was an infection from how the interviewee describes it. Do said this was a terrible thing, that he went too far in allowing this to happen and that the cult should take him to the police. The cult refused.
They were afraid to bring their group member to the hospital because it could get Do in trouble. They called a priest to see if he could help because “priests had experience with this kind of thing” (…?). He obviously couldn’t help lol.
They ended up bringing him to the hospital and they threw the member’s testicles into the pier to hide the evidence of what they’d done. Do didn’t want them to continue with the castrations and cult members were disappointed so they found doctors who would do the procedure. 7-9 of the group members, including Do, were castrated. The procedure was a choice. Some recognized the insanity of this choice and left the cult.
One of the group members wanted to leave and wrote Do a letter that said he had no choice but to leave. Do told him “You’re throwing away your chance at graduation, you’ve done nothing to displease me. There’s no reason for you to leave.” He left anyway, he had been in the cult for 18 years. He left in 1993.
The cult started to go to the media to recruit new members because the turn of the century felt like the end of the world.
They started a satellite TV series called Beyond Human
They took out an ad in USA Today and set up a PO box for people to reach out to them.
They created VHS tapes and mailed them to people who were interested
They recruited new members and reconnected with old members, and they started travelling again to put posters up. They were widely met with rejection.
They started a business website called Higher Source to earn money so they could be self supporting. They were really technologically advanced. **This website is still operational. Wild shit.
They were posting their beliefs, essentially a manifesto, to online bulletins and were cyberbullied. They didn’t realize how outlandish their beliefs were to the world outside of their group. They took this as a sign to give up on the planet.
They didn’t see their deaths as suicide, they saw it as graduation. They didn’t plan to stay on the planet, they felt they were going to go on to the next level.
Waco had just happened, Jim Jones had happened years before. The members of Heaven’s Gate were afraid of being a target in the way those cults were. Do suggested that the group buy firearms to trigger the government to come attack them, that would be the beginning of their graduation process.
They discussed suicide as a group. The cult was 20 years old at this point. 5 people left after this conversation.
The Hale-Bopp Comet coming through in 1996 seemed like a sign for a doomsday incident.
Observations:
Choosing to leave a cult does not mean you are recovered from the cult mentality. There is a difficult adjustment in reintegrating into society and leaving the cult practices / beliefs behind. There’s also a sense of feeling like they failed in their service to their belief system.
Individuality is erased through changing names / clothing / appearance / vernacular used with cult members. Leaving a cult means leaving behind the identity you established in the cult and figuring out who you are after.
Used a natural phenomenon to explain their beliefs and anticipated doomsday event.
Episode 4 Notes:
Episode starts with a trigger warning and phone number for a hotline. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, talk to someone: 1-800-273-8255.
Three months before “the exit”
The group had a theme song with lyrics according to their belief system, set to the tune of the song from The Sound of Music (lol)
The Exit - 1996-1997
They were in touch with people who believed in UFOs. They ascribed to a conspiracy theory that there was a flying saucer trailing the Hale-Bopp comet and the government was hiding it. Art Bell was a radio personality who proposed these conspiracy theories.
This concept fits the Heaven’s Gate belief that a UFO would be coming to pick them up. They thought this was Ti coming for them.
They went to town to get an expensive telescope to watch the heavens and record anything they felt was unusual. They returned the telescope because they couldn’t find the Hale-Bopp companion lol. They said the telescope didn’t work.
The companion object was a fraud. Radio hosts announced this but the group took this to mean that the UFO was the comet itself.
The comet was closest to Earth during Easter. This all seemed to align. The cult members had a sense of relief that their graduation was coming.
The group went to Gold Beach Oregon where Do and Ti had their initial revelation. The group was traveling, taking a vacation. They knew already that they were going to commit suicide - that had been decided at the end of 1996.
The cult was trying to get a lot of media attention in their last days because they felt the world might follow them.
Exit interviews were recorded on March 20, 1997
Sent to former members. They wanted the information shared after they were gone.
They are excited to leave behind their vehicles. They are clearly fully into the ideology.
The cult members emulate the emotions and behaviors of Do. Evidence of brainwashing.
They signed out on a final roster saying they do not intend to return.
“39 to beam up. Thank you” and the group can be heard laughing in the background of the video
“What we’re about to do is nothing to think negatively about. We’re all choosing of our own free will to go to the next level with Ti and Do.”
“We all feel very emotional about the gift that we’ve been given. I’m the happiest person in the world. “
March 22, 1997 - The Exit
March 26, 1997 - Three days after the Exit
The mass suicide was reported via anonymous tip. An ex member had been notified by mail. He left the group two weeks before the suicide - he left because he felt he had a mission to complete for the group. He was asked to go to the house to make a recording of what he saw. He found their bodies in the house, made a recording of them, and shared it with news outlets.
Suicides occured in a multimillion dollar mansion in Rancho Santa Fe 20miles north of San Diego. The group had moved into the mansion in the fall.
The bodies were first thought to be all male because they all had short hair. The news reported that a “monastic group of men had been found dead”
The medical examiner said the only way he could describe it was “peaceful.” They didn’t know the cause of death at that point.
Bodies are found lying prone with their hands at their sides.
They are wearing the same clothing, black nike shoes, and a wedding band. All appear to have a square of cloth covering their upper bodies and faces
21 women, 18 men - (one of them is the brother of Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Uhura in Star Trek)
Most had 5.75 in their pockets. A Mark Twain story said that 5.75 was the cost to ride the tail of a comet to heaven.
They had been dead for varying lengths of time - some 24-36 hours, others more than 3 days. They seemed to go in 3 groups. The first group went, the second group helped and cleaned up after them and covered them with a purple cloth after death. The third team helped the second team. Two people were the last, they were not shrouded, so they were likely the people to care for the third team. They had plastic bags over their heads. Do was in the second group, he was not one of the last two.
Cause of death for the majority of the group: poisoning. They were directed to take pills, eat pudding and drink a mixture they created (alcohol and phenobarbital), then lay down and try to fall asleep.
Cause of death for this last couple was “asphyxia by plastic bag”.
At least three ex cult members committed suicide weeks and years after the news story broke. Some of them wished they had stayed with the cult to have graduated with their peers. “Heaven’s Gate - What if they’re right?” t-shirt is shown in documentary.
One ex member who was interviewed for this series said he felt he had “flunked his test” and he could have graduated with them.
Terrie says Ti had never would have allowed the group to go that route.
Do felt their death was going to come about through a government assassination that would be aired on TV (how they interpreted Waco, I’m assuming) and that news cameras would then see a UFO come down to pick them up.
Public response to the suicides
People said they were brainwashed idiots, that they were laughable. SNL did some skits about them.
“Mental illness disguised as religion”
The media didn’t make an effort to truly understand the cult. Cults are complicated and deeply psychological. The people who join cults are usually intelligent and educated. Doesn’t make any of this right, but it is more nuanced than people who have no common sense blindly following a weak ideology. To them the ideology made sense, they were part of creating it and living it.
1998 Reunion of ex members in Montana
Some of them are still true believers. Believe that their classmates are on a higher level. Some of them believed they were brainwashed, but they were still able to get together and reminisce about their time in the cult.
Terrie brought letters from her mom and read them to the group. The group was shocked that Ti had been maintaining a connection to her daughter and advising her daughter to “by all means, conform to society so you can have peace of mind.”
Evidence that even one of the group leaders didn’t believe in what they were doing and she felt stuck, couldn’t leave.
Evidence that their deaths were for nothing. A fake belief system.
Final thoughts from interviewees:
Two lessons from this story: To not be judgmental and to be careful. “we tend to look for these easy answers, and its important to remember that nobody has all the answers. And once you turn that over to someone, you put yourself at great risk.”
*Goal of cult deprogramming is not to force the person to agree with the logic of the rest of the world, the goal is to empower the person to think for themselves. One of the things that people struggle with in deprogramming is that their peers in the cult were also intelligent, emotional, feeling people. So how is it possible that their peers are still in the group and they are choosing to leave. How can one of them be right and one of them be wrong.
**One of these documentaries I watched during this research, I don’t remember which one, mentioned the idea of each person having three deaths. Maybe the Waco one?
1. The death of the physical body
2. The death that occurs when the last person who knew you dies.
3. The death that occurs when your name is spoken for the last time.
The cult was immortalizing themselves, essentially, by becoming a media spectacle in their deaths.
Observations:
Alright so suicide is fucked up, that’s not in question. But I think the group felt comforted by what they were doing because they were exerting control over death, something that is notoriously out of human control, and they were doing it with others. They were excited for what they were about to do because they were choosing it and doing it with people they trusted.
Interesting point about deprogramming really being teaching critical thinking. It’s hard to think for yourself when in a group of intelligent people who seem to be fully buying into a belief system that you don’t fully understand. You doubt yourself, maybe you’re not as intelligent as they are so you don’t see what they see. How can they be wrong if they’re so well educated?
