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00:00This is March 19, 1997. I'm Doe. Some called our partnership T and Doe. That's not my name,
00:18but that's how I'm referred to on planet Earth at this time. I've been talking to my students
00:26that are sitting in front of me. Jim, Odie, would you want to stand up so that we can take
00:33a look at your uniform? Okay. And maybe we can back up a little bit and get a little wider
00:41picture of the uniform. Okay. Now, maybe we can zoom in on the patch. Great. See, it says,
00:49Heaven's Gate Away Team. We've been away, and now we're going back. Okay. Thanks, Jim, Odie.
00:57Now let's go to Dave Odie. They're all cameras. Yeah. Okay. Come on over to Steele, Odie.
01:08We came from distant space, what your religious literature would call the kingdom of heaven,
01:20and we're about to return.
01:26We might see you all again, and then we might not, but we hope that you remember us as we
01:32were and not how other people are going to try and tell you that we are. And one last thing
01:37we'd like to say is, 39 to beam up. Thank you.
01:44This is Master 55. Hello? Hello? Yes, I need to report an anonymous test. Okay. This is regarding
01:55a mass suicide, and I'll give you the address. I think it was a religious who committed suicide.
02:02There is confirmed 39 deceased. All of the individuals were similarly closed. It appeared as if it were
02:16almost a uniform. This was a voluntary situation. They may or may not have been influenced, but
02:23we'll never know that. But at this point, this is considered a mass suicide investigation.
02:31This wasn't just something that, oh, there's a spacecraft. Let's kill ourselves. These people
02:36spent 22 years preparing for what they did, and I wish people would examine that 22-year period
02:42instead of just examining their method of leaving.
02:44Instead of just examining their method of leaving.
02:49The score of persons from a small Oregon town have disappeared. It's a mystery whether they've been
03:17taken on a so-called trip to eternity, or simply been taken. Terry Drinkwater takes a look at that story.
03:24Here along the cloud-covered coast near Newport, Oregon, a mysterious couple appeared three weeks ago,
03:31circulating a flyer proclaiming a UFO would soon be ready to take whomever would follow them
03:36to another life, another world. They held meetings, one at this motel to recruit Voyagers.
03:42Francine first attended, but was unconvinced. Those people who choose to go along will be picked up
03:50by a UFO and they will be leaving this earth forever. Why didn't you decide to go?
03:58I'm too human and too normal. I love to travel, but I also like to know where I'm going.
04:03It was 34 people that actually ended up joining because of the Walport meeting.
04:14All different kinds of numbers were reported and I was among them.
04:20I was living in Walport, Oregon. I came out of a band practice,
04:25like an all-nighter party kind of thing, and I saw that poster.
04:34What piqued my interest about the poster that I remember making a comment about to my partner is,
04:38I wonder what these people look like. You know, they were talking about them being from outer space.
04:43I think I have a copy somewhere.
04:51What intrigued me was this statement. If you ever entertained the idea of a physical level above the
05:03human level, you will want to attend this meeting.
05:06Back then, I had a girlfriend, Erica, and we had been together for three years.
05:19We were going to take a vacation to Oregon to visit my cousin.
05:25All three of us drove out to Walport and attended the meeting.
05:38I was excited, but at that point, I didn't have a clue what my life would become.
05:45The place was packed. I would estimate there were like close to 200 people in this room.
06:00And Tian Do came out onto the stage and they just sat there for maybe a minute or two,
06:08which seemed like a long time to me.
06:09These are the two. The two who promised to take their followers literally out of this world in a spaceship.
06:25They said that they had come to teach the process of becoming a member of the next level.
06:31When a human has overcome all of his human level activities, a chemical change takes place and he goes
06:41through a metamorphosis just exactly as a caterpillar does when he quits being a caterpillar.
06:48And he goes off into a chrysalis and he becomes a butterfly.
06:52They said if you followed their approach that your body would chemically and biologically
06:58transform into a perfected space alien.
07:04And you would go physically onboard a UFO and sail physically into heaven.
07:10What they would call the next level.
07:17Once you overcome this planet, you are airborne. You are free.
07:22You are free. And we will show you how to make it to the next king.
07:29I was impressed with listening to the man.
07:33He was kind of mesmerizing. I kept looking at his eyes.
07:37These kind of eyes that you would look through.
07:40And I just remember feeling like, could this, like, I was trying to pick up on his energy, like,
07:47if it was really true.
07:53There was this haze floating around them, like a shimmering light.
08:00It wasn't like a smoke haze. It was more electrical looking.
08:05And I turned to my left and above the crowd, the people, there was that same kind of haze,
08:11but it was less distinguishable as an electrical.
08:15And so I recognized that that might have been, like, the Holy Spirit.
08:23I was pretty young. I was 24, so I didn't maybe have a lot of concrete beliefs.
08:28But I believed everything he was saying.
08:30I felt euphoric higher than a kite in this meeting.
08:36Erica had felt the same thing, the same euphoric feeling.
08:42I felt like I sat in front of the equivalent of Jesus.
08:47By the end of the meeting, I looked at my partner, and she looked at me, and it was like we knew that we wanted to do this.
09:00All they wanted you to do was to make the choice to go, and then leave your possessions,
09:11leave everything that was connected to your humanness, and to go with them to begin to repair.
09:17People have disappeared, yes. We have roughly 15 to 20 people that are no longer in the area.
09:30You have to say goodbye to everybody in your life and leave. Nobody else wanted to go with me.
09:35They thought it was crazy. I just went.
09:38They told us to bring any camping gear with us.
09:41Then we were given instructions to go to a campground up Boulder Canyon,
09:45where they would split us up into groups.
09:53I definitely was seeking something more than I had, but I didn't know what that was.
10:11I'm allowed to do this now, but not federally.
10:15These guys.
10:19My children. It's mild. I don't like any intense stuff, you know. I want to be able to function.
10:26It was in high school, when I was experimenting with drugs and LSD and stuff like that,
10:32that I started to get into spirituality.
10:34I was experimenting with different spiritual groups, you know, meditations.
10:46I would dance with the Sufis and relate to the Hare Krishna people.
10:50I read the book, you know, the autobiography of a yogi. And I remember thinking, gosh,
10:56I want to be enlightened like that. Like, I wanted that. I wanted to have that specialness.
11:02I wanted to do this.
11:04Heaven's Gate was never exactly mainstream, but it wasn't as alternative as we think about it today.
11:09So you have to imagine what it was like in the 70s.
11:12So this is the time when hippies and beatniks and folks like that are looking outside of established religions.
11:21Many people who were drawn to Heaven's Gate had tried all sorts of religious options.
11:25I was struggling with what I wanted to do with my life. I was a young, beautiful girl,
11:32a child model in Hollywood. I went out to Marin and became a hippie.
11:39So when the two came along, it just resonated with my own spiritual dilemma of being attached
11:46and being of this world and what role it played in my own, you know, struggle.
11:51We have the simple truth, though the most potent truth. And it is the identical truth
12:02that Jesus brought to human beings 2,000 years ago. Heaven's Gate is effectively, from my reading,
12:09a Christian offshoot. Now, this is important because it's also a time when many Christians
12:14looked around at the world and thought the world was about to end.
12:16And they have an understanding of time as coming to an end.
12:28Planet Earth is about to be recycled. Your only chance to survive is to leave with us.
12:38These kinds of millenarian groups tend to arise in times of societal stress.
12:46It's later than most people think. Whether it's five minutes to midnight or whether it's 10 minutes
12:55to midnight is debatable.
12:56And for Heaven's Gate, also, this is really the first generation of belief in flying saucers and
13:02things like that.
13:03What do we know of outer space? Is there anyone out there? And are they headed our way?
13:10One of the best-selling books at the time was Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, who claimed he had
13:17evidence that the world's ancient religions were actually founded by extraterrestrial visitors.
13:22I was interested in UFOs. Curious. Never saw one.
13:32That's why in the 70s, when people encountered Heaven's Gates, people didn't say,
13:36well, this is weird. They said, this is what I've been looking for.
13:40And so all these people, for one reason or another, accept this message that the two
13:47are actually who they say they are, space aliens, effectively, who offer them a way to get to Heaven.
13:52In 1975, there were two individuals who came public, held some meetings around the country,
14:06and said that they were from the Kingdom of Heaven.
14:11And those two individuals were T and Do.
14:15They go by a variety of names, but they also just call themselves the Two.
14:18And they went to Bo and Peep after that.
14:26They said, I guess our names are Bo and Peep, because we now have sheep.
14:34And then Bo and Peep became Do and T in that order, relative to the names.
14:41I didn't know at the time why they chose those names, but I learned not too long after that,
14:47that came from that musical, The Sound of Music.
14:52When you read, you begin with A, B, C.
14:56When you sing, you begin with Do, Re, Mi.
15:01Do, Re, Mi.
15:02The Sound of Music was one of T's favorite movies.
15:07We watched it probably two or three times.
15:11Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti.
15:16Oh, let's see if I can make it easier.
15:18T and Do were both fans of musical theater.
15:22Do's first love was music.
15:23Before he got into religion and spirituality, it was music.
15:29It's very disorienting when you call him Marshall.
15:44Nobody called him Marshall.
15:45Everyone called him Herff.
15:47So when Herff Applewhite came to the University of Alabama,
15:54he didn't look at all like a professor.
15:56He was very casual, very laid back.
16:00There was no hint that all this catastrophe was looming in his future.
16:08He had a fantastic voice.
16:10He had a lot of charisma.
16:11He was such a natural performer.
16:15He would have the audience in the palm of his hand.
16:19But it was widely rumored that he was having an affair with one of the male graduate students.
16:24And his father was a very, very hard-nosed Presbyterian minister who did not like the fact
16:32that he had a gay son.
16:33I'm sure in Jesus' eyes, his relationship to his father was,
16:40goodness, when will I ever grow to be like my father?
16:43I'm so ignorant.
16:45I do things so poor.
16:47I can't get them right.
16:52And yet, his ability to recognize his father
16:55and want to be like his father and realize that he is nothing but a child.
17:03His wife divorced him.
17:05I remember her very well.
17:06Very nice family.
17:07Then that seems to put him in a bit of a tailspin and so on.
17:12He left Alabama for Houston.
17:15I got a call telling me that this notorious couple in the news was actually, you know,
17:25Herf Applewhite and his former nurse.
17:30This is the story that I heard.
17:33He was going to attempt a career on the opera stage at Houston Grand Opera.
17:38He was going to do his biggest role there, which is the role of Olin Blitch.
17:43He's a traveling preacher who seduces Susanna in the opera Susanna.
17:50The Lord, he spoke to me this afternoon and he said,
17:55Lynch, there's going to be a lot of lost souls at that meeting tonight.
18:01Don't take no text. I'll put the words in your mouth.
18:08He was in rehearsal and he had some sort of a psychotic episode
18:11and was actually hospitalized.
18:14We met just perchance while I was visiting a sick friend in a hospital where T was a nurse.
18:25I think most people don't think of T as the real leader of the group,
18:30but she met Doe when he was obviously at a vulnerable point.
18:33She convinced him that that he was her soulmate.
18:37T had more experience and was older than me. I could see T's control was better than mine.
18:46T really recruited Doe and Doe was her follower.
18:50Nettle says, well, I'm an astrologer and I can do your chart.
18:53And she deduces that they're fated to work together on some grand project.
18:59They are destined to be spiritual partners.
19:02After that, they became very close. He eventually went to live with her.
19:07They were never romantic.
19:08But she was very much the force behind the group,
19:14the founding of the group and the way the group functioned.
19:17Now the part that hurts for you is the fact that all the ones that you considered your family
19:24really is not your family.
19:26Your family, don't forget, are those who are here doing the same thing as you.
19:31And those other members of the next level, they are your family.
19:38You're a sweetie, yeah.
19:54This is mom.
19:57The others are similar, but she looks, for some reason, she looks sad in those pictures.
20:02My mom was an RN.
20:10Her passion was working with babies.
20:13So she ended up being a baby nurse at a hospital in Houston.
20:20I always wanted to be with her.
20:23She was my best friend. We did everything together.
20:25Actually, I was a candy striper at the hospital where she worked.
20:31And so we'd hang out at work.
20:34And she'd take me to dance classes and acting classes and music classes and all this stuff.
20:38And we'd talk about everything under the sun.
20:43We spent a lot of time talking about spiritualism and mediums and astrology,
20:48things like that.
20:50Even before she met, uh, Marshall Applewhite, she was someone who was already very entrenched in
20:56New Age thinking.
21:00After you have gone through the meditation, just try to hold that bright light in your body.
21:06It's supposed to heal your body.
21:08You know, all of this kind of stuff, crystals and ascended beings and channeling dead people and seances.
21:18I have come and I am going to work with many of you today.
21:23And part of that interest was in UFOs.
21:27We used to dream about a UFO picking us up and taking us away from this world.
21:41We didn't feel like we belonged here.
21:46I don't remember if I saw it first or she saw it first.
21:49We saw this light in the sky that appeared to move in different directions.
21:59We would talk about how neat it would be if it were a UFO and it would come down and pick us up and take us away.
22:09And we would speculate about what it would be like in going to different planets.
22:15Because both of us wanted to leave this earth.
22:19We were going through an awakening period.
22:24It's common for the person who is awakening for his life to begin to fall apart or her life to begin to fall apart.
22:33It got kind of tense at home, you know, because now there's another man involved.
22:41And eventually my parents got a divorce when I was 19.
22:44My mom said that we need to find out what we're supposed to do.
22:52And as soon as they discovered what they were supposed to be doing, she'd be back.
22:56But that it didn't turn out that way.
22:59They travel around the country on this journey of self-exploration, and they visit other New Agers, various gurus, alternative health centers.
23:29They stop and stay in churches.
23:31They have no money, so they take odd jobs.
23:34Their car is always breaking down, and they're digging ditches to try to make money.
23:38Shortly after my mom and Herf left, and my mom sent me this picture, it's Herf and my mom in Vegas.
23:46And on the back of the card, it said, Herf, cut my hair.
23:49How do you like it?
23:50Love you, mom.
23:51You gotta be all right now, gotta be all right now.
23:56In July of 1973, Bonnie Lou and Herf had been on the road for over a year at this point.
24:04And they end up on the Oregon coast.
24:05And it occurs to them that they finally figured out the answer.
24:18Herf and Bonnie Lou discover that they are the two witnesses who are foretold in the Book of Revelation.
24:26They are destined to be martyred.
24:36And then to rise from the dead.
24:39Revelation chapter 11, verses 3 through 12.
24:43And after three days and a half, the spirit of life from God entered into them.
24:48And they stood upon their feet, and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud.
24:54Ti and Do believe that they will then lead all those who accept their message into outer space,
25:00to the kingdom of God, the next level.
25:03And they refer to this as the demonstration, initiating the end of the world.
25:07They say when the Book of Revelation talks about ascending up to heaven in a cloud.
25:14Well, they say, well, first century, second century, people wouldn't have understood a UFO.
25:18So they say a cloud. But in fact, that cloud is a flying saucer.
25:25This spacecraft is not an etheric craft.
25:30This craft is a real, contains physical elements, contains physical individuals.
25:37They saw themselves not ultimately as offering religious or spiritual guidance,
25:42but scientific, technological message.
25:45Because they taught that with a powerful enough telescope, you could see God.
25:54I think they took acid.
25:55There was a short period of time when in isolation, we went through an extreme awakening period.
26:09This is unimportant information. The only thing that's important is, can you shed humanness?
26:16And then hang on to your head.
26:20Because from that point until the time you leave, will be one major growth after another that will
26:28change you from a human into a member of that next level.
26:33When they started, you know, the, the leaving was imminent. The spaceship was going to come and get
26:40them and it was going to happen tomorrow. And there was really the sense of immediacy,
26:44which if you were one of the early followers, you know, you really bought into that.
26:47Dick Jocelyn was a young man in, in Los Angeles. He wanted to be an actor and he was one of the first followers.
26:58A matter of some months ago, those of us who were up here were sitting in a meeting similar to this,
27:06where you are, and listening to two individuals, a man and a woman, share some information with us.
27:18It's important to understand that you cannot die and achieve the level we're talking about. You cannot
27:26die and get to heaven. This level that we're speaking of is obtained only while you're alive
27:33and physically healthy in a way that you've never been alive before. We're not here to convince you of
27:41anything, but we know that there are a lot of people, at least some people, who are waiting
27:47for this information and they will recognize it when they hear it.
28:06My name is Robert W. Balch. I am a sociology professor, now retired, at the University of Montana.
28:13My connection with Heaven's Gate began in 1975, when the story broke about 20 people who had
28:23disappeared on the Oregon coast after attending a meeting about UFOs. Initially, 1975, I had gone to
28:33Sedona, Arizona to do research on what was then this emerging New Age community.
28:40And so I'm walking down the sidewalk and saw this poster on the wall.
28:50It says, humans, do you really know what Christ came to tell us? Do you believe in flying saucers?
28:56Are you ready to take your physical body to the next evolutionary kingdom?
29:01I looked at it and I thought, boy, I wonder if these are the people that I've been reading about in the
29:07newspapers, the people from Waldport, Oregon.
29:15I just thought, this is so weird. I want to go see what they have to say.
29:21We're now in the process of overcoming the world and converting all of our energies
29:29to becoming next level individuals. Members of the group were presenting the message.
29:37The leaders, the two, they were not there.
29:43Nine people decided that day to join the group.
29:47And so I am thinking, this is very bizarre. I've never seen anything like this before.
29:55And it was at that point, I thought, maybe I should just go undercover.
30:06And so that night, I went home and I called my friend, David Taylor.
30:10I said, would you like to do this with me?
30:15He called me and he said, do you think you could join me for a couple of weeks in California?
30:21David was at the time, this kind of hippy trippy graduate student here in our department. And he
30:27was the only person I knew who would drop everything spur of the moment to do something like this.
30:33And sure enough, he did. At that point, we knew that the members were all on their way to be reunited
30:44with the two who they hadn't seen for a few weeks at this point.
30:53I told them I wanted to join the group. And so how are we going to rendezvous with you? And they're,
30:59well, we don't know where we're going to be yet. So here's what we'll do. Go to the town of Orinda,
31:07which is outside of Oakland, find the post office, and we will leave you an address on page 100 of the
31:15zip code book. Rob said this group is very secretive, not just about publicity, but scrutiny from the media
31:25and the police. We get to the post office and find the zip code book. There's no address. They just say,
31:36meet us at the top of Mount Diablo.
31:44We had to hitch a ride to get to the top of this damn mountain, and there is nobody else there. And
31:50I look through the garbage can, and sure enough, I find some of the group's literature. And so I know
31:55that they have been there. And we think, oh, my God, we've come all this way, and we just freaking missed
32:01them.
32:06And just then, two cars pull up full of members of the group.
32:09They're like, hop in, and off we go.
32:24It was really important for me to be able to keep a record of everything that I saw,
32:29everything that I heard going on. And of course, that had to be done secretly because I was an
32:35infiltrator in this situation. Initially, I was writing on just scraps of paper. This I found
32:43somewhere. And so I was recording all of my notes. One of the interesting things that I discovered was
32:50that there was no authority structure whatsoever. The name of their process was human individual
32:59metamorphosis. Because this is such an individual process, nobody felt like they had any authority
33:09over anybody else. You need to be focused on your own overcoming.
33:16The kingdom of heaven can't be entered as long as I still have attachments and addictions to the human
33:24kingdom. Whether it be people, things, careers.
33:31Is there some special place that you have people go and learn about how to do this? Camps or something
33:39like that? You mean here on this planet? There was something about going to Colorado.
33:47There we have no training camp. Ti and Do didn't give a lot of formal instruction.
33:57So the group lives a nomadic existence, but also one characterized by what I would call social chaos.
34:04For a while, there's several hundred people traveling around the country going to campgrounds,
34:08thinking that their leaders are going to teach them the way off planet Earth.
34:12Sometimes we're together in groups of 10 or 20, sometimes we're together in just two or three of us.
34:18It was kind of like the blind, leading the blind, because we didn't really have enough
34:25of a deep understanding of what we were getting to. We would have meetings twice a day, morning and evening.
34:34Most of those meeting times were spent tuning in to the next level.
34:38They gave us tuning forks for each group. It had a tuning fork.
34:46The note A, 440 hertz. They said that we should tune our mind to that frequency.
34:55So you take it and hit it and stick it on your head and then kind of like hum it to yourself. You know,
35:00they didn't give us instructions on how to do any of that. And we were living on donations at that point
35:05that we would ask the churches for. So you'd have to go knock on doors and spread the message and then
35:11maybe if you needed money for gas, do something for them. The things that we need to literally live on
35:18this human planet until we get off are provided by situations that come up. Help will come in the
35:26of the strangest ways. In early days there was a lot of this, we've got this message that we maybe
35:35picked up and they would go out in the desert and wait. We'd look up at the sky a lot where the UFO is
35:43coming for us. We had a signed task. Somebody would get up and watch the heavens for an hour and then go back
35:53to sleep. And we burned the fire the whole time too. That's where I got the name Sawyer. I was the
35:59woodcutter. Do you regret at all giving up what you had to give up? No regrets. It's been such an
36:07accelerated growth experience that no matter what happens, I could never regret taking this move.
36:15It's difficult for our friends and our relatives who really do love us to understand that it's us who
36:21really want to do this and they might think that it's better for us not to do this endeavor.
36:29So I get asked this question all the time about, you know, is there a certain personality type
36:34who gets into a cult? And the answer is no.
36:39People who join cults are typically well-educated, often from very good families.
36:46They don't have prior psychological problems. Because in reality, cults don't want lonely,
36:54strange, weird people. You know, cults want highly functioning individuals who can help run the cult.
36:59Right now, Joyce is going through the process of leaving. I did have to decide what to do with my job. I was
37:14in a job that I was very satisfied with. But I think the biggest thing was working with my children and
37:20talking to them. I do have twin girls who are 13. They will go with their father.
37:26Mm-hmm. If an individual finds themselves with children and they know that it is time for them to
37:36move up into the kingdom of God, they must weigh where their responsibility is to their heavenly father
37:45or to those children. This is a rare photo. It's my mom, me, and my dad.
37:59How are you there? Looks about three-ish, two or three-ish, yeah.
38:04My mom had a real affinity with nature. Definitely really into astrology. She looked a lot like me.
38:19My dad was an inventor. Here's one of my father's inventions. It's an ergonomic workstation.
38:28They both were very, very, very, very smart. That was probably one of the biggest challenges,
38:37that they weren't very simple in how they thought about anything.
38:43Well, I attended a meeting at La Cañada College, which is north of San Francisco,
38:51in late August of 1975, and recognized at that time that it was the truth, that it was what I had been looking for.
39:06They both sat me down and said that they were going to go with this cult.
39:15I remember trying to discourage my mother about it. Oh, it's nonsense, UFOs, come on.
39:29I don't know how they ever believed that. I really don't, you know. I mean, me, a 10-year-old,
39:34I didn't believe that. How did they? It just never made any sense, you know.
39:40They really explained it as though they may not even be here much longer than a month or two.
39:49I mean, it was really an immediate state of mind that everything was going to change.
39:54The UFOs are coming to pick us up any day now.
39:59I went to live with my mother's parents, my grandparents.
40:04It was very hard, very hard.
40:13It's easier for those who are left in the world to go ahead and move on with their lives.
40:19So, in a way, I think that's been the pattern for most of us, to let that, the past go, you know,
40:27the people that have been our past to go on with their lives.
40:42It was trying to talk sense, like, to your parents, how they're telling you that
40:52that the likelihood that they were going to go off in UFOs, and I would never, ever,
40:59ever speak to them again, never.
41:03Even if they didn't, as soon as they were gone, I would just,
41:07it was absolutely no contact with me ever again.
41:10And I just couldn't imagine what it was like trying to compete with God.
41:25That's really what it felt like.
41:29And it made me feel rather meaningless, to be honest.
41:33I mean, I felt bad on a personal level that my parents were freaked out.
41:44And some of my relatives thought how horribly mean it was of me to be so, like, they thought
41:49I was a spoiled person who just did reckless and didn't care. But that was not the case.
41:56You have to realize that when Jesus met his disciples, he said,
41:59you have to leave your family behind if you want to surrender to a higher principle.
42:07You can't have it both ways if you do adhere to that belief.
42:11So the point is, is even though it seems extreme and drastic,
42:16I was put in a position, if I wanted to be 100% faithful to this belief,
42:21that I still love my mother, but I needed to follow this higher calling.
42:29The whole time that I was with the group, you're not supposed to be forming human-level relationships.
42:42So all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and just go through the motions and play the role.
42:48At this point, it's been three months since I've joined the group, and I had no idea what had become of David.
43:00We had separated, and it was like, well, I'll see you back in Montana.
43:04It's also in December now, and my deadline for having to leave the group is before Christmas.
43:13I've got to be home for Christmas with my family.
43:15So the decision was to write a series of academic papers, beginning with Psychology Today.
43:29We were the only people who had been behind the scenes, really, in that group,
43:35and Psychology Today jumped at the opportunity, and so we ended up being the cover story.
43:43Here we are, me and David.
43:49One of the big issues then was, why are people joining, and what happens to them after they join?
43:56Are they being manipulated? Are they being coerced? Is there brainwashing going on? What does that really mean?
44:04What we concluded was this group was really unique.
44:09The two leaders didn't assert their authority near as much as your typical New Age leader.
44:16We found no evidence of manipulation, no evidence of coercion, no evidence of brainwashing.
44:24Everything about it just was all about free choice.
44:29Now, it'd still be another 20-some years before this mass suicide was going to happen,
44:34and I don't think I grasped in my own mind the gravity of the situation here.
44:45Recently, we had the story of a small town in Oregon that was visited by a man
44:49and a woman who said they were millions of years old from outer space.
44:54Nobody knows if they are earthly hoaxers or pied pipers from outer space,
44:59but apparently some people believe their story.
45:04Unfortunately, very little of the human element across the globe is even interested in this information.
45:11You would not believe what we go through to even try to get it to people,
45:19and the harassment that we go through, how difficult it is to find anyone who even cares to hear.
45:25Tien Do felt like the demonstration of dying and resurrecting, like the two witnesses would
45:35depict it as doing, was Tien Do being shot down by the press.
45:39They say, well, actually, the media has killed us. It's a metaphoric martyrdom and resurrection.
45:49No one knows how many others are following the couple, known up to now only as he and she,
45:54or the two. Well, that mystery at least appears to be solved.
46:03When all of the news broke, it really spooked Tien Do.
46:08Most of the treatments were not serious. Most people looked at the group and thought that it sounded ridiculous.
46:19There's lots of rumors that there's a connection with the Charles Manson family,
46:23that these people are going to commit suicide by starving themselves to death.
46:28They're being connected with cattle mutilations.
46:31This is the biggest cult story in the country.
46:37The meetings at that point were very poorly attended.
46:40And T. stood up and said, the harvest is closed. And that was the end of the meeting.
46:52They told the remaining students, you made the first cut.
46:57That's the way they put it. That's the way T. said it.
47:00The fact that T. and I expressed that caused us to retreat and take our little classroom and go
47:09hide with them was because the last thing we could stand was to have people say blasphemy.
47:17You say you're from the kingdom of God. Who do you think you are? Jesus? Who do you think you are? God?
47:25Because they didn't understand.
47:26So our hope and our prayer for your sake is you will start warding off all the bombardment that you
47:40will begin to hear that say, boy, is this guy crazy. Is this a cult if I ever heard one? Yes, it is.
47:47It's a cult. I mean, it's the cult of cults. It's the cult of truth.
47:51And I see that we're down to five seconds. We'll see you in our next session.
47:59We'll see you in our next session.
48:29Bye.
48:31Bye.
48:50Bye.
48:51Bye.
48:53Bye.
48:54Bye.
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