Subject: UFO UpDate: Foundation of Cult Investigated
From: RSchatte@aol.com
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 04:32:19 -0500 (EST)
To: updates@globalserve.net
Subject: Fwd: Foundation of Cult Investigated
AT LAST THE MEDIA IS GETTING THE PICTURE...
but would you call them a UFO CULT?
.c The Associated Press
By RON HARRIS
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The mass suicide in Rancho Santa
Fe, Calif., may have its roots in another cult-like following that surfaced
in California more than 20 years ago.
In 1975, hundreds of residents from California, Colorado,
New Mexico and Oregon left family and belongings behind to join a group
headed by Marshall H. Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles.
The leader of the Rancho Santa Fe cult may be Applewhite,
who co-founded a group known as the ``UFO Cult'' with Nettles, an astrologer,
after they met in a psychiatric hospital where she was working as a nurse.
Nettles died in 1985, and Applewhite may have been among
the dead found in the hilltop mansion on Wednesday: his date of birth has
been listed as May 17, 1931, making him 65, and the list provided by the
medical examiners office includes a 66-year-old male.
Applewhite taught music in the 1960s before meeting Nettles.
In the 1970s, they referred to themselves as ``The Two,'' ``The Him and
the Her,'' and ``Bo and Peep.'' More recently, they were known as ``Ti
and Do.''
The Rancho Santa Fe group's Heaven's Gate web site also
refers to its founders as ``The Two,'' and says they began ``rounding up
their crew in '75.''
Years ago, ``The Two'' held various meetings at public
locations throughout the western United States, promising followers celestial
bliss and a ride in a UFO.
They called their group Human Individual Metamorphosis,
or HIM, and convinced many listeners to shed their personal belongings,
relationships and children to prepare for the trip.
Cult expert Margaret Singer said she has interviewed several
Applewhite followers since the 1970s, including one former cult member
a few years ago.
``He said they had sent them around from city to city
to await the coming of a spaceship to pick them up,'' said Singer, a professor
at the University of California at Berkeley.
Similarly, an advertisement announcing a HIM meeting in
San Jose in 1975 explains ``The opportunity is here, when we as humans
can fully evolve into a higher being. There is now on this planet two people
from the high level, UFO Beings here to help us and many others with this
transition.''
The similarities between the beliefs of the HIM followers
and those associated with the Heaven's Gate cult in Rancho Santa Fe appear
rooted in an odd belief system incorporating UFOs and biblical Scripture.
The Heaven's Gate Web site says ``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 passage also proposes ```graduation' from the Human Evolutionary
Level.''
Similarly, an advertisement announcing a HIM meeting in
San Jose in 1975 explains ``The opportunity is here, when we as humans
can fully evolve into a higher being. There is now on this planet two people
from the high level, UFO Beings here to help us and many others with this
transition.''
Also on the Heaven's Gate Web site was the prediction
that ``before that spacecraft comes, one or more of us could lose our physical
vehicles (bodies) due to `recall,' accident or at the hands of some irate
individual.''
Similarly, ``The Two'' distributed fliers saying they
would die and then be resurrected. They later told talk-show host Victor
Boc at KOME radio in San Jose that they would be assassinated within the
next two months.
Bob Thompson, a computer programmer at the University
of Oregon who had attended some meetings, recalled ``The Two'' talking
in vague biblical terms. ``The implication was that you might leave in
a UFO,'' Thompson said in 1975.
In 1974, Applewhite was arrested for auto theft in Harlingen,
Texas. The arresting officer, Capt. Joseph Vasquez, told The Associated
Press that Applewhite appeared nervous and evasive.
``When he started talking all this outer space stuff,
I ran his license because he seemed kind of strange,'' Vasquez said Thursday.
``He had a following of people who were supposed to meet him on top of
a mountain in Colorado.''
AP-NY-03-28-97 0028EST
