- 2 days ago
Category
š¹
FunTranscript
00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30Since there was no music in the group, I sold all of my instruments, and so when I left,
00:45the first thing I did was rent a flute and buy a harmonica.
00:49I like to, you know, mix it up.
01:00Yeah, I was hitchhagin' down to Texas one time, and I saw a UFO down there.
01:24It was about 1976, after I joined with what was called the UFO cult.
01:33But anyway, I didn't have any sex with aliens or anything like that.
01:45There's other parts of that that I could keep on talkin' about, but I don't wanna freak
01:54people out.
01:58Let's see here.
02:13This book was written by Tien Do.
02:17The cover says, how and when, heaven's gate in the biggest letters, the door to the physical
02:23kingdom level above human may be entered.
02:38As the two older members put out a statement and held public meetings over about a nine-month
02:44period in 1975-76 to bring their crew together, the media tagged them the UFO cult.
02:53Because of their expectation of leaving aboard a spacecraft, the two older members then went
02:59into seclusion with their crew.
03:05After that nine-month period of holding meetings around the country, Tien and I felt like we had
03:12instruction to call the students together and to begin an intensive or in-depth classroom training
03:21program.
03:31The numbers started dwindling.
03:32Cut about 50% to somewhere in the 40s or 50s.
03:38And then we started really getting down to the nitty-gritty.
03:58The point that I want to stress mostly is that you all are in a classroom 24 hours a day.
04:07Everything that happens to you is to see how you can respond as a member of the next level,
04:14not as a human.
04:15There is a task.
04:16Everything you do alone or with someone else is a task.
04:20In other words, you are striving to be perfect.
04:25There are no teachers in the next level.
04:30We're your teachers now.
04:33They said it was going to be the most difficult process that a human could embark upon.
04:39And that it's not likely that we would all make it.
04:48They put this together out of everything they thought was important.
04:52This is a list of their behavioral guidelines.
04:56These were distributed in November 1976.
05:00They read as very extreme if you're not a member.
05:05They said these are the guidelines of how next level members behave.
05:13If you don't want to do those, then you're not welcome.
05:19The first one is, can you follow instructions without adding your own interpretation?
05:25Two, can you deliver instructions as you receive them or do they change according to your programming?
05:31Three, do you participate in inconsiderate conversation?
05:35Four, are you physically clumsy?
05:38Five, do you halfway complete a task?
05:41Six, do you put tasks off, procrastinate?
05:44Strict obedience and accuracy were demanded for entry to the next level, so every task was regulated.
05:50You were not to come up with, well, I'm going to make the pancakes this big.
05:55There was a mixture, a size, how many a person got, how the syrup was poured on it, everything.
06:05Nine, staying in my own head, having private thoughts, taking any action without using my check partner.
06:12Heavenscape practiced a system called the check partner system.
06:15Your check partner would be assigned to you to make sure that you were following the rules.
06:20They'd pair you up with the person you least likely want to be with.
06:24And I didn't have a lot of rough street edges, so they gave me this really crazy, hyper, speed freak, street person guy that was, like, hard to be around.
06:37Major offenses.
06:39Lying to my teachers or any of my classmates.
06:42Breaking any instruction or procedure knowingly.
06:45Sensuality.
06:46Permitting arousal in thought or inaction.
06:51Sex, it's a tough one.
06:53It's a hard one.
06:54What if you slip?
06:56I mean, are you forgiven once if you make a slip?
07:00You make a slip.
07:01I am.
07:05Erika and I realized that we would be split up.
07:09But in terms of ascension into the next evolutionary level, why wouldn't we relinquish our intimate, personal relationships?
07:22What's left, right?
07:24Right?
07:25Someone would think, if I followed all these things 100%, then I would be a robot.
07:35I didn't like what I saw, because the rigidity and the... was a turnoff to me.
07:43I would never submit to anything that was controlled.
07:47See, I don't, anything that controls people, that's why I became a hippie.
07:52I did not like control.
07:54And those two things, I just thought, that's, you know, I don't want to be involved anymore.
08:00As people left the group, for one reason or another, got spun off, the energy inside the group would actually increase,
08:13because everybody really wants to be there.
08:16And you're getting rid of the people that have doubts, questions, kind of still too much into their own personal habits.
08:23Those people kind of fall to the wayside.
08:25Do you feel that you have made the progress that you wanted to make?
08:30Have you met the expectations?
08:33Well, the thing is, our expectations are constantly growing.
08:36It's like, I know I've changed some, but I haven't become nearly what I want to become.
08:46I don't think people know how deep their humanness goes and what it involves trying to overcome it.
08:55It gets down to the nitty gritty of your ways of looking at things and your ways of responding,
09:01and things that have been ingrained in you for years and years in this particular body that you have.
09:08And there are a lot of things that I've been feeling, but nothing I could describe.
09:30So this was one of their publications. It's called Ruffles.
09:33It says here, snacks for thinkers, because this spaceship kind of looks like a potato chip.
09:39This was given to me by Dick Jocelyn.
09:43And everyone was asked to turn in some kind of little saying that fit very much with their ideology.
09:51For example, a goal is not reached by just learning how to reach it.
09:56The goal is reached by doing what you learned.
09:59So it kind of shows their sense of discipline.
10:03Everyone interprets the truth at his own level of understanding.
10:08This is like alternate facts, right?
10:11This is very relevant to today. These people were very ahead of time.
10:16Reality is not something you escape from.
10:19Reality is something you escape to.
10:22So that means you're not really living in reality.
10:28What cults need to do is to turn you into a conformist, you know, to get you hopefully to become a true believer.
10:36They need to break down you and create a new you.
10:41When you're in the process of overcoming this vehicle, it loses its identity.
10:56It loses the consciousness of who it was.
11:00The deepest part of the indoctrination came when they were convinced that they were not human beings.
11:09They were convinced that they were actually these beings from the next level above.
11:15And that they were essentially living inside these human shells, which they called vehicles.
11:22We'll use the term vehicle when we speak of this body that we're wearing, this flesh and bones.
11:34Because we don't relate to it. It's not me. It's just a suit of clothes that I wear.
11:41Any religious group has its own terminology.
11:44As you join the group, you have to learn the language. It's sort of an unofficial initiation process.
11:49The house was a craft, like a spacecraft.
11:52The kitchen was the neutral lab. The laundry was the fiber lab.
11:57The vehicle's sexual organs were plumbing.
12:01Sex was sensuality. Not that we talked about sex much.
12:06Except for avoiding it.
12:10They didn't explain it when they changed the terminology.
12:13But all these terminology changes also changed the way we thought about things.
12:18So it didn't stimulate memories.
12:22One of the things that helps you, and this was kind of adopted in a way in the Catholic Church.
12:29When nuns and monks that isolate themselves in thoughtful, studying conditions,
12:37they take another name.
12:40It helps disassociate them with the family tree.
12:48The family tree.
12:51Around 1977, members of Heaven's Gate effectively became monks and nuns.
12:56They became monastics.
12:57Remember, they were celibates.
12:59They were living exclusively for trying to achieve this sort of this entrance to heaven, to the next level.
13:05And they were given new names.
13:07The system that eventually was used by Tien Doe was to use a single syllable, effectively a first name,
13:16and then a shared last name, which always ended in Odie.
13:20Tien Doe said that the next level was adopting us into their family.
13:30So the family name was O-D-Y.
13:33If I were in the group and my name was Rob, I would be Robody.
13:38Three consonants always capitalized, R-B-B, and then O-D-Y.
13:45So all the names were six letters.
13:48And so I became Soy Odie.
13:51Hi Dave Odie.
13:52There's Al Odie.
13:53Alex Odie.
13:54There's Vern Odie.
13:55Stam Odie.
13:56Avon Odie.
13:57An Lodi.
13:58Dest Odie.
13:59Jun Odie.
14:00Golden Odie.
14:01We call him Tal Odie because he's a little taller than Lig Odie.
14:03Odie is a diminutive.
14:05So it means a little member.
14:07And that Tal Odie or Star Odie were little members of the Kingdom of Heaven.
14:11It's like the diminutive for God.
14:14And they're all on their way to becoming gods.
14:19And that when we became adults, they would drop the Y.
14:24And so we'd be the family of Odie.
14:26Which is like a little next level humor.
14:29Because we were kind of Odie.
14:32They began wearing uniforms.
14:34And they had a unisex look.
14:38Very short hair.
14:39A woman wore no makeup.
14:41They had slacks, tennies, shirts that they wore.
14:46A button clear to the top, long sleeved.
14:49If you had a look that you were attached to.
14:51If you'd worn a beard, you know, for years and years.
14:54You should get rid of all that.
14:56And adopt a new appearance in the same way that you took a new name.
14:59Because those were all things that symbolized your identity as a human.
15:03We saw a fella the other day.
15:06I don't know if you all have seen this boy, George.
15:10You can't tell whether he's a boy or a girl.
15:13Right. His image is androgyny.
15:15In a sense, it's good.
15:17Because this guy doesn't care what he looks like.
15:20Now, it doesn't mean we want all of you to go sloppy.
15:23Like, boy George, okay?
15:25He isn't right, but at least he isn't trying to dress in a sensuous way.
15:35Members of Heaven's Gate didn't see themselves as robotic or having to live within an oppressive system.
15:40They really saw themselves as living and enjoying it.
15:43I remember I talked to one ex-member who said,
15:46actually, the best part of my life was when I was with the class.
15:49I had the most, I had the greatest growth.
15:52And I think they even used the word fun.
15:54Nothing here strikes me as fun.
15:56But I suppose if you're in it with a group of several dozen other people,
16:01and you're all working together and you think you're doing it for a greater good,
16:05perhaps that's what is so meaningful.
16:10It's not that I enjoy being the instrument of giving out these procedures,
16:14but these students love it.
16:17They've seen the value.
16:18It does not restrict them.
16:20It frees them.
16:22But you have to have been there to know what we're talking about.
16:26Otherwise, you can easily doubt it.
16:29For one thing, you have to consider what we as individuals wanted to become.
16:34I think everyone in this class wanted something more than the human world had to offer.
16:39They were seeking some type of goodness, some type of rightness that they did not feel in this world.
16:45I'm seeing people actually develop into what I always wanted to believe they could develop into.
16:51And it's like I want to go out and put headlines on all the newspapers saying,
16:56it's possible to overcome the humanists, because I'm seeing it happen.
17:07Having that kind of discipline and struggling through it and knowing that you're all struggling through it together,
17:13creates a sense of family, which is part of what binds people to these groups.
17:17And when you think about years and years and years of that, that's what makes it so difficult for people to leave.
17:24This is the only world they know.
17:26It's so hard not to get choked up when you talk about this.
17:30But I met the people that are here.
17:34I met my teachers, T&O, and I knew that I knew all of them and that they were my family.
17:39And I've been happy ever since.
17:42I mean, it's been tough.
17:43Anybody who's been on this, like she said, you get hit with everything but the kitchen sink, trying to turn you away.
17:48But it's been wonderful.
17:51And in making the decision that we made to do this, we know that we broke hearts.
17:55We know that we hurt people.
17:56We don't take that lightly.
17:58We didn't want to hurt anyone.
18:02Unfortunately, it's the individuals that these vehicles cared for the most that are actually the greatest threat to us.
18:10T&O were almost paranoid to the extent that they were afraid they were being tracked by ex-members, family members.
18:29One of the repercussions is they were constantly on the move during the late 70s.
18:34They moved from campground to campground to campground.
18:39They never quit camping entirely, but in 1978, they finally had to move into houses.
18:46Apparently, some members had inherited some money and one of the ex-members who was close to Bo and Peep estimated that it was somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000.
18:57And at that point, they began renting mansions.
19:00My cousin, David, his dad was the president of the New England phone company.
19:11And for the first seven years of the cult, we lived off of his trust fund.
19:20They liked upscale suburban neighborhoods, nice houses, big houses, in quiet, upper-middle-class areas.
19:29They would move people in and none of the neighbors would know.
19:34We would live 15 people in a house, and there were designated people that could go outside.
19:41And the same people were seen outside all the time.
19:44So it appeared as though there was just a few people living in a house.
19:49We didn't tell our parents what we were doing.
19:53David's dad was well off, had lots of resources, had connections with the FBI,
20:01and was even traveling country with FBI agents looking for us.
20:10We live very nonviolent lives. We don't reach any facility.
20:16We can do what we want to.
20:19And the only thing we have to do is hide from us in a while if our security seems threatened.
20:25This is Marshall Herff Applewhite's FBI report.
20:28There's a letter from a concerned parent, which was sent to a congressman, forwarded to the FBI.
20:34And the FBI dutifully responded and said,
20:38there's really not much we can do about this group.
20:40They're consenting adults.
20:42Doe wasn't worried about the government so much as family members intervening.
20:55The magnetism of Ti and Doe enticed 19-year-old David, Nancy Brown's son.
21:01I couldn't believe that he was really going off to do this.
21:04And I had to have some knowledge of why.
21:07I mean, after all, you've spent 18 years raising a child.
21:10He was now 19.
21:11And he said, you know, I can't ever picture myself just living a kind of life that most people take to be normal.
21:20He left in 75.
21:24And this was now 1980.
21:27Apparently some parents and people have hired private investigators and nobody's been able to find out anything about them.
21:36There was a formation of a parent's network by the late 70s, led by a woman named Nancy Brown.
21:43So anytime there was any news that the Heaven's Gate members or part of Heaven's Gate was in a certain location, she would notify folks.
21:52And this is a newsletter from, from that network.
21:57There were many of them.
21:58This is just why.
21:59As the years passed with no word from David, Nancy Brown feared for his safety.
22:13I reached the pit of despair when the Jonestown news broke in 79.
22:20And I remember sitting there watching this horrifying sight of bodies scattered around the compound like crumpled leaves.
22:32It was just this little message in my heart all the time.
22:37Where is he?
22:38Is he all right?
22:40Is he alive?
22:44Will I ever see him again?
22:59Getting back to the newsletter, I don't even know what all the fuss is about.
23:05A lot has been made out of nothing, really.
23:08Because it isn't unusual for sons and daughters to leave home and do what they want to do.
23:16But all of your families are not with the network.
23:21Just don't add any to it.
23:23Don't any of you who aren't with them, tell them about it.
23:25No.
23:41This is 74, 75.
23:43My mom wrote me once a month.
23:53My mom did all the things that they weren't allowed to do.
24:08But she never talked about it in the group.
24:11All she wanted to do was talk about what I was doing in my life.
24:17And I wanted to know what was going on, obviously, in her life.
24:23And we even talked to her occasionally on the phone.
24:28But the thing that I didn't like was she mentioned that any time she called me,
24:34Herf was on the other line.
24:36I received a letter on August 13, 1982.
24:48She said, Terry, if you are with others, please do not let them know who this is from.
24:55Especially that network woman, Nancy Brown.
24:58She is not to be trusted.
25:02I am well and safe as of now.
25:06Sorry I have to be so secretive, but that's the way it is at this time.
25:11I just didn't know what that meant.
25:13Are you trying to tell me something?
25:15Is something going on?
25:19T had been sick.
25:20Vynola Nettles had been sick.
25:22She'd been diagnosed with cancer.
25:24And she was exhibiting illness.
25:28She had cancer of the eye.
25:37She had her eye removed and a prosthetic put in.
25:43She never talked about it.
25:45Never mentioned it.
25:46Never complained about it.
25:52They went back to the hospital and she had an examination and they said that
25:57the cancer was in her liver and that she only had a short time to live.
26:01And they couldn't do anything for her.
26:04It was only like two or three weeks from finding out to her pregnancy.
26:11But we were all devastated.
26:16Most of all, you know, how could this happen?
26:21This wasn't supposed to happen.
26:23We were all supposed to graduate together.
26:28When I didn't hear from her for a while, I was going every single day looking for a letter from her.
26:42I came home from school one day and I got this phone call from members in the group.
26:54A couple named Liv and Dick Jocelyn.
26:57They wanted to come talk to me about my mom.
27:00When they showed up, Liv said something about my mom going to the doctor.
27:09She talked about my mom's eye and she was having trouble with it.
27:13And out of the blue, I just looked up at her and I said, Mom's dead, isn't she?
27:20And she said, yes.
27:27At first, I mean, you know, for the first few seconds, you're in denial, you know,
27:31and is this one of those dreams I'm having or is this a reality?
27:35I just felt like somebody had ripped my skeleton out of me.
27:41You know, I just, I just wouldn't live.
27:48I was a total basket case.
27:50I mean, I was in shock.
27:55And I remember going to bed that night and when I woke up the next morning,
28:01my pillow was soaked, my hair was wet, my face was wet.
28:04I'd cried all night long.
28:09These are the death certificates.
28:11And this is the first time I, I ever saw when my mom died.
28:23She died June 19th, 1985.
28:26I found out March 22nd, 1986, nine months after the fact.
28:34T's last wishes were to not tell Terry about her death.
28:41But she was able to talk some during that time too.
28:45So she could have called Terry.
28:49But she didn't.
28:50I know Terry has a hard time with that.
28:54I understand that.
28:55I'm sorry for that.
28:56I'm sure that's very painful.
28:57But, but T was not the same person as her mother.
29:03It was the same vehicle.
29:04But another mind came into that vehicle.
29:15I wanted to know more about my mom.
29:18I tried to contact her for Applewhite and he wouldn't return any of my calls.
29:27He wouldn't respond to anything.
29:29I was constantly fighting to get answers.
29:32And then all of a sudden he sent me a, an audio cassette.
29:38And he talked about everything but what I wanted to hear.
29:41Terry, this is Doe.
29:48I'm a bit embarrassed and awkward about the fact that I didn't contact you when T left her vehicle or died or however you want to look at it.
30:03I was so torn between trying to comply with her wishes.
30:08I guess in honesty I, I was so awkward that I, I might have been chicken and not just taking it into my hands and, and talking to you.
30:22This task and her mission for the kingdom of heaven was everything to her.
30:27She felt that this was the only consistent way to even end her part of the task.
30:34I think if you'll think about that, you can understand it and certainly don't grieve in thinking that she didn't want you to know because of lack of love for you or anything.
30:46Cause that certainly wasn't true.
30:48I'm going to pray for your release from this suffering.
30:52The suffering has, has been very great for me.
30:58And, uh, uh, I want you to, uh, know that, uh, I love you and I wish I could do more for you.
31:09It, it hurt me to hear the emotion in his voice because I understood it.
31:18But at the same time, this was my mother.
31:24This was a friend to him, a spiritual partner or whatever you want to call it.
31:28It, it's just not the same thing.
31:33I found out later that my mom lived in Dallas, not far from where I was staying at the time.
31:41I had moved to Huntsville for college.
31:45I was four hours away.
31:46I should have been there when she was sick to, to hold her hand, to tell her I loved her, to whatever I needed to say.
32:02Yeah. You took all of that away from me.
32:04Were you ever able to have you and your dad or anybody else in your family, did you have a ceremony or anything?
32:18No. Nobody seemed to be interested.
32:21Do you feel like that in any way, you having any closure over that?
32:25Well, my doctor wanted me to see a psychiatrist because I was having, I gotta stop for a second.
32:41I feared being left with the responsibility of the mission with my partner being gone.
32:50But I can remember in the first few weeks that I met Tee, that Tee said,
32:56Why do I feel that this is something that I'm to give to you and then I'm to go back?
33:04And I didn't know what she was talking about.
33:11But I know now.
33:19Do's response was deep, heartbreak, um, grief.
33:30And to the point where he questioned whether he should continue the class.
33:49So, since Eric and I were both visiting Calgary, because that's where our parents lived,
34:07Do decided we should travel together as Czech partners.
34:12Of course, the understanding was that that's all we were.
34:15When we stopped for a layover and we're sitting on the same bench in kind of a secluded area.
34:27I had this overpowering desire just to give her a hug.
34:40At the same time saying, I asked Do if I could hug you.
34:48And he said yes.
34:49That was the first time we had touched in about ten years.
35:01I just felt, let's run away together.
35:06If she had said, let's stop this.
35:20I've had enough.
35:22Let's go do something else.
35:25I would have said yes.
35:27Do you want to do some work?
35:36Do you want to do some work?
35:37Do you want to do some help?
35:38I'll do some help.
35:39Let's continue with the tour.
35:40He looked well.
35:42Of course, it was absolutely marvelous seeing him.
35:47Phone calls are nice.
35:48Letters are nice.
35:49But to actually just to see and hug him and talk to him and spend a couple of days together was very, very important to me and to all of us.
36:03And these parents literally didn't know if their kids were dead or alive because they had not heard anything from them since 75.
36:15One woman I talked to described her son when he came back on Mother's Day.
36:20She said she was shocked because he was clean cut, he was polite, he was really helpful around the house, called up his old friends, went out with them, stuck around for two weeks.
36:30And then all of a sudden said, well, it's time to go, I can't tell you where I'm going to go, what I'm going to be doing and I'll be back in touch again sometime.
36:38And then he vanished.
36:39I think that T left when she did because it was my time to assume the responsibility that is more difficult for me, but I hope that I can rise to the occasion for whatever time there is.
36:56left for this task.
36:57If they were really these other beings that weren't weren't really in this body, this body had nothing to do with them.
37:06Why then did she die a very human death of cancer?
37:07Why then did she die a very human death of cancer?
37:09So this was one of the snafus that Doe had to deal with.
37:13That was a very tough one for me.
37:14Because T and I thought that we just knew it seemed that we would both be a very tough one for me.
37:19That was a very tough one for me.
37:20Because T and I thought that we just knew it seemed that we would both be here for the full duration of the task and it didn't occur to us that one.
37:34might leave prior to the other one leaving.
37:51One of the most powerful forces in religion suddenly reared its head there.
37:58It's what we call cognitive dissonance.
38:00The moment in which an event occurs that seems to undermine your very theology, your very doctrine.
38:18The basic idea of Heaven's Gate up to that moment was that you would chemically and biologically transform your body from being a human being into becoming a next level alien.
38:28And then you would physically get on board the UFO which would sail off into Heaven.
38:33What happens when Bonnie Lou Nettles, when T, dies?
38:37The vehicle broke down and humans would say, well the vehicle died.
38:42And so how can you say she left her vehicle?
38:45The explanation which is given to members is that it looked to us like she was suffering from cancer.
38:51But in fact, her next level consciousness burnt up her human body.
38:57Cognitive dissonance comes in.
39:00Your faith system shifts to make room for the event.
39:05It tested me, it tested the class, and we're all ten feet taller because of it.
39:12There is a parallel here with Jesus and the Jesus movement.
39:19Jesus' followers believed that Jesus was the Messiah according to the Jewish definition of the Messiah.
39:32But there was a huge problem.
39:35A dead Messiah is by definition no longer the Messiah.
39:41And so Christianity didn't just go away.
39:45They fundamentally redefined what Messiah means.
39:52Messiah is not an earthly king, it's a heavenly king.
39:58The kingdom that the Messiah creates isn't on this world, it's on the next world.
40:03Understand that no one had ever said these things before.
40:07And for Heaven's Gate that big shift would be the idea that if it happened to her, it might happen to others as well.
40:15He's thinking was, if that's what you have in mind for me, and if that's what you have in mind for Dove, and for the class, then that's what we want.
40:26When Nettles dies, it undermines the entire point of the bodily transformation.
40:34And now, it's a spiritual transformation.
40:38We're going to leave our bodies behind.
40:42So in a strange way, the tragedy of Heaven's Gate, the suicide of all those people, is a direct result of the unexpected death of one of the co-founders.
41:01What it meant to me, even though it still breaks my heart, to recall the experience, it very swiftly and very solidly put me on firmer ground in relationship to my Heavenly Father.
41:29It put me in a better relationship with T than I had before she left her vehicle.
41:38I know that T is still to this day my primary, if not my total, link with our Heavenly Father.
41:50During her lifetime, she's called the older member.
41:53He deferred to her, and Dove also said that his connection to the next level went through T.
41:59After her death, Dove looks to her as still guiding him, but now from outer space.
42:07T is my older member. T is my Heavenly Father.
42:14And in fact, it's no more than a decade after her death that Dove publicly declares himself Jesus returned to Earth and declares that T was the one known as God the Father.
42:28Even though she was raised as a Baptist, Bonnie was involved in metaphysical teaching, she's involved in New Age ideas, all of this stuff that must have just driven Dove crazy.
42:42Because Marshall Herff Applewhite Sr. was a very prominent Presbyterian minister, and by all accounts, Herff really wanted to emulate him and become a minister, just like he had done.
42:56And if you read the Heaven's Gate book, it came out much later, Dove is like really harsh on the New Age, and New Age is like that's one of the big ways that Lucifer is trying to get his hooks in humans.
43:13After T dies, the message becomes much more biblical, moving away from T's ideas to more Dove's thinking.
43:24We see the world. We see the world as the anti-truth, the anti-Christ. The world will see us as anti-truth, anti-Christ. We know that that is inevitable.
43:43T gave us instructions before she died, of course, to make our commitment to Dove. T trusted Dove 100%. Dove came to a meeting, maybe the second or third or fourth meeting after T left, and he said, there's something different about me. I want to play a little game.
44:09Dove called everybody together one day and says, well, I've got a little test for you. If you had $100 that you could spend for something for yourself, what would you buy?
44:30Apparently, it just drove everybody absolutely bonkers. Here they've been in the process of giving everything up. They have no personal possessions at all. And all of a sudden, $100 to buy something only for yourself, what would it be?
44:53Now, when you become a candidate for our father's kingdom, our father then says, I'm a jealous God. For a period of time, you might have thought you loved me more than you loved those other things. But if you're going to get into my house, you have to love only me.
45:20What it was, the answer was, a very simple gold band, a cheap $100 gold band, a wedding ring.
45:29Herf doesn't have Bonnie as a support system anymore. So the class itself becomes his support system.
45:56I knew he needed me.
46:00Dove became even more obsessed with control after she passed on.
46:09And so we had a little ceremony to where we were marrying him.
46:14He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me.
46:23The instruction was to come up one by one. When I got to be the one to go up to him, he was sweating profusely. I could see the sweat on his brow and he kissed me on the forehead and he was weeping.
46:37It's like a diamond dance. I'll take a chance. I will because he needs me.
46:46He was giving birth. Maybe it's because he's so alone. He was birthing students into the next level.
46:56Had a home. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me. He needs me.
47:07Up until this point, the focus was on the message or the process of overcoming.
47:13But what happens with this marriage ceremony is now the loyalty is shifting from the message to the messenger.
47:28That is why, after that, when you see people in the group that there's a picture that shows their hands, they'll have wedding rings on.
47:35It is a question that will not go away. What kind of messenger could convince 38 followers to commit suicide alongside of him?
47:59Doe was a wonderful person. He was very helpful, a very good teacher, and we had a lot of reverence for him.
48:09Here's the problem. Once people's lives are conformed to predictable patterns through peer pressure,
48:15and you saw the people, they were dressed the same way, they sported the same kinds of haircuts, virtually anything is possible.
48:21Tien Doe never, um, were out to con anybody. If they conned anybody, they conned themselves first.
48:31Ms. Lodge, let me start with you. Do you believe this was suicide or murder?
48:36I believe it was murder.
48:38You don't own me. I'm not just one of your many toys. You don't own me. Don't say I can't go with other boys.
49:01And don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me what to say. And please, when I go out with you, don't...
49:13and then ...
49:14Just move on to the front of the phone.
49:15Go!
49:17END
Be the first to comment