The following is a question and response re: Do’s response to Ti’s exit (physical death of the vehicle she chose to use for the task of getting Do started in their joint task to guide their graduation class, aka the “Second Coming” of the real Evolutionary Level Above Human, aka The Kingdom of Heaven, aka The Kingdom of God.
Ti, known to her vehicles human family as Bonnie Lu Truesdale Nettles left her vehicle in June 19, 1985 from cancer of the liver, having had an eye removed in 1983 or so. Some have suggested that this was the beginning of Do going downhill as they see it, looking at their exit by laying down their lives, (The Heaven’s Gate group in the News that was headlined as a cult suicide in March 1997 by Do and 38 of his remaining students) as the bottom of the hill. However, as hard as it is to believe and comprehend for them it was not anything they did not genuinely feel ready to sacrifice and I witnessed all the considerations Do went through with literally every decision from when Ti left and there on, as I was a staunch member of his experiential classroom as we called it for 19 years starting at their first public offerring of information in 1975.
Question:
Hi Sawyer, I just wanted to write and say thank you for moving ahead with your review, and to say how thankful and honored I am that you are doing this. I have been thinking a lot about TI, DO and the HEAVEN’S GATE class a lot this week I feel it is probably because this saturday is the day I lost my mom nine years ago. Though I have gotten through her passing, I still feel a small part of me is missing around this time each year. I printed all the writings from the HEAVEN’S GATE website back in 2002, yet I am still confused and unknowing for the most part as to how DO felt when TI passed on, and how did he handle his greif and loss. Would you mind sharing with me how DO handled his loss. I only wish to know for my own personal and spiritual peace of mind. Sometimes I wish I was born a Vulcan so my emotions would not be so overwhelming. Thank you again and I look forward to our next emailversation. May peace and light shine upon you always.
Gary
Response:
Dear Gary,
Do was certainly very distraught when Ti passed on. It wasn’t all that evident, except when He expressed it to us in a meeting and He did at that time want to also move on – exit His vehicle as Ti and Do both for a long time literally hated what this world had become that though so many spoke of God few could see Their current representation of that Kingdom and were instead driven to near total self centeredness, a human mammalian, but even predatory natured behavior. Yet He knew He still had a job to do to complete the task He had taken on, that Ti started Him on.
During Their first couple years together, before They had any students, Ti, who was not called Ti then, but went by whatever name suited Them, as They were traveling delivering notification to religious and spiritual teachers nationwide notification of Their “Two Witness’s” arrival, Ti would say to Do that she was here to, paraphrased, “get Him started and then She was going to return”. Do was always puzzeled by what Ti meant in saying that, but Ti never expressed any more of what She meant, perhaps not having any further conscious explanation for Him. Do arkwardly wondered if She meant that She planned to go back to Her human family (husband and 4 then adult offspring), which at that point was hard to imagine as They were quite committed to who They had realized They were – having come from “outer space” to have something to do with the Bible, that later They realized had been spelled out in several place and ways in John’s Book of Revelations, but primarily in Chapter 11.
They had considered years before Ti’s vehicle’s death that They might both leave (exit) however that might happen, death by the hand of a distraught student family member or by being simply taken out of their bodies by the Next Level or being physically picked up by the Next Level, before Their students,which They spoke to us about in the late 70’s, to prepare us for, as They were always way ahead, in consideration, in order to also prepare us for whatever might be the motis operendi of Their/our task.
Then in 1983 when Do revealed to us that for some time Ti had been experiencing a great deal of pain surrounding one eye (that I as a student never saw any sign of, as Ti was almost always in participation with Do when They’d talk to us in group) with an operation to remove it and then the information that the doctor had said that “the cancer has probably spread throughout your body”, to which Ti admonished the Doctor for making such a blatent prognosis without further evidence, as inconsiderate, though the doctor probably felt it was his duty to express – we, the student body, spoken of as the Class were again being prepared for the ramifications, though after that, at least for me, I never thought about it (Ti’s potential departure in that way). I can’t say at that time I had formed any emotional connection to Ti, which wasn’t really part of the MO to do, though it was part of the MO to establish with Do (our (student) Older member/Father), as Ti was Do’s Older Member/Father).
It was about two years later that seemingly out of the blue Do told us that Ti was very sick. Two weeks later she died and we were told the doctors said it was liver cancer.
Lvvody (a registered nurse) and Jnnody were during that two week period attending to Ti and with Do witnessed to Ti’s frame of mind and concerns saying that She never for a moment left Her consciousness of what Her task was and that She did express deep concern for Do primarily and how Her departure might affect Him and the furthering of Their joint mission to prepare the students for whatever was necessary in the completion of their graduation task.
Shortly after Ti’s vehicle’s death and thus physical interface with us, Do started wearing a gold wedding band on his left hand ring finger. This wasn’t spoken about except for one day when Do sat with us in a meeting and said there was something different about him, as he concealed his ring finger and he wanted to try an experiment to see if any of the students had begun to form a bond with him (evidenced by having a degree of mental connection to him), so he said each student could venture to guess what was different about him which we wrote on a piece of paper and turned in. The next day after he had examined the students response in private He said about 6 students (give or take 1 or 2, to my recollection) had guessed properly. He did not give any clues I can recall. I was one who did get it correct saying that it was a ring. I don’t know how I got that right. I was sitting in the back of the student body and was never known to be all that perceptive or attentive to details. I don’t know if he sat with the ring exposed but I can’t say I remember actually seeing it, so I was surprised I got it right. I just silently asked Do for the answer and the idea of a ring came into my head.
A couple days later Do had a type of ceremony (one of the very few we ever had) that was never repeated and wasn’t at all characterized by paraphenalia – garb or decoration, but just had a little set of words to express. It was a marriage ceremony of sorts. Do expressed that he wanted to express openly how he felt married to Ti though it had nothing to do with a civil or religous marriage and was not in any way tied to sexuality as Ti and Do were never sexual or even touchy/feely.
In fact early on, again before the classroom of students formed, when They were first becoming friends in Houston before Their 1973 physical departure from Houston when They knew there were various “forces” out to get Them prompting Them to finally exit Their familiar rooted environment (in part because Ti’s vehicles husband who I understand from reports, as Ti and Do never said to us that I am aware of was engaged into a degree of divorce from) was according to Do threatening violence against Do in what he felt was Do running away with his wife (Ti) to where They instigated a court order that barred him (Ti’s vehicle’s X) from getting physically too close to Do.
However Do did express to the class that He (at that time still going by the name Marshall Herff Applewhite) remembered thinking in the real early days of Their plutonic relationship that He wondered if Ti’s vehicle (Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles) was trying to in Do’s words “start a relationship”, so to speak, to which Do told us he had no interest, as at that time he was already leaning away from all forms of sexual types of relationships having ventured into some gay relationships that left him just as frustrated as with his previous to that hetersexual relationships and behaviors. When Do told us this, after Ti had exited Her vehicle, He felt sort of embarressed to express this, even choked up by it, because He at that time knew Ti had nothing of the sort in mind and that He was thinking like a human about Ti (being of course still in possession of the normal human thinking, that doesn’t change until one seeks to change it, which can only be accomplished when someone who is further along in that type of “overcoming” process, of which Ti was, confronts us with and then we accept and practice, the reason the Older Members are needed to help awaken younger or would be younger members – their students to) while since that time He had learned by many, many experiences was far beyond such human behaviors, so in a sense He felt like it was a put down to even hint at, and therefore difficult for Him to now express to us as it was trivializing the entire role Ti had taken on, to which Do had a number of additional examples He cited to us that occurred early on in Their “awakening period” to the task They had that He said He moreorless put Ti through the wringer in His reluctance to see Ti for who She really was, as She never told Him or leveraged upon Him in any decision that She was His Older Member. She didn’t deny it, when He finally awakened to see it clearly. However in their relationship that I observed, stictly as a classmember, not having lived in their quarters until after Ti had left, looking back I can see how Do looked to Ti all along as His Older member, which after Ti’s exit He expressed a great deal more, but that would take many pages to reflect on at this time, but that I will try to pull in for the sake of a thorough depiction.
Humans have surmised in various writings that Ti’s vehicle’s death caused Do to become so distraught that the entire mission went downhill from there (though most thought it very downhill and insane to begin with) leading Do to seek Ti through spiritual means ultimately by taking the students to their suicide to leave their bodies to with be with Ti again. And it is interesting how there is a very slight form of truth to that premise but in my estimation, having had a great deal of experience with Them as a believer and as a dropout from Their class and then even moreso having returned to Their fold at the time of their 1997 mass “suicide” providing a moreorless unique perspective on it all so to be enabled to see it all in various lights unlike the one way of seeing that most all strictly human perspectives are limited which is 99% negative in it’s depiction, in order to support one’s own limited belief system. It really takes an in depth examination of the entire scope of the nature of Ti and Do’s relationship and mission to begin to comprehend more accurately, which requires someone a willingness to look at them beyond the average human view of two humans who became self appointed prophets, not unlike many husband/wife evangelical teams, but in consideration that these two very well might have been as They said…from the One True, many membered Creator Kingdom that is evolutionarily “Above Human” just as Human is above animal and animal above plant and plant above mineral/elemental. Without at least the amount of data I have to consider one can never present an objective view of their relationship and why they did what they did,.when, where and how.
The part that humans got right, just as there are parts to every religion that they get right, in a general sort of way that over time lacks more and more details, is that Do did miss Ti’s presense and eye to eye step by step guidence and leadership in the entire mission. Do had become dependant upon Ti. It was actually the way it is geared to work best. The Younger member (Do to Ti) is always increasing their capasity to ask and recognize the characteristics of their Older Member which IS the method of receiving an actual mind graft to that Older Member – “thy will be done” as depicted throughout the record left of the Jesus experience. He didn’t have His task laid out start to finish ahead of time. He had to come upon it gradually. He first had to believe He had a connection with God/His Father who art in the unseen Above Human condition termed Heavenly strata somewhere outside His immedieate Earth reality (again literal heaven’s (sky, atmosphere, sun, moon starscape). So in His silence, as Jesus said all prayer should be in the privacy of one’s so to speak “closet”, He would ask, and then at some point thereafter depending upon what He asked for (appropiate question to the task at hand and it’s stage) get the sense of the answer as an idea of something to think/act on but not trust it entirely until He enacts some baby steps and sees the “signs” in the environment that includes people’s responses and other available vantage points, such as whatever news service exists that might either confirm or eliminate the direction of the baby step and it’s revelation as a genuine answer which must also have a form of consistancy with what They had already come to know/feel/think along the same vein as what They felt led to be an instrument (mission) for. Thus in this way, Jesus, and as I witnessed to some large degree with Ti and Do, They considered all the religious and spiritual writing They had come accross, but for the most part mostly directly reflected in the Judaeo/Christian recordings considering that being kept enough in tack – an accurate record – to be as a type of guidepost for the task on hand’s script. In other words, it would have been exceedingly hard to consider “laying down one’s own life” as one prime way to accomplish something at the appropriate time and for an appropriate reason in the 20th century task unless it was also the MO 2000 years ago, as it was during the Jesus task. However, just because it was the MO then didn’t mean it was all the MO now, that is in exactly the same way, as that all depended upon the students progress and then what the world (humans throughout the world) had become that might warrent a different tact to accomplish the multi-faceted garden production program that is not just for the graduation class but for all those that might be affected by the graduation class’s next step forward that always looks like blind faith to those who have not had the same experiences.
So yes, Do was distraught by Ti’s exit but He also knew he had to follow through and as he did, he gradually gained confidence that Ti was still in close communication with Him but that it was now left to Him to pull on Her mind (that was now outside a physical human vehicle) as hooking into a thread to know what baby steps to take in what direction and to remain senstive to what not to do and when in accordance with the responses by the students as that was the focus of His task at that time which included whether or not to seek replacements of the students that fell away, because there was a set number of souls that returned to finish their overcoming and then how to go about that and whether or not that was to be continuous or not.
Now the ceremony was to issue each of us a gold ring and then one by one Do met with each of us, not in total privacy but in semi-privacy to give it to us. When he did that he hugged each of us and said a little something. Before Ti had left, she instigated our outward expression of committment to our Older Member Do. She told us at that time that Do was uncomfortable asking us to be committed to Him but that it was a necessary step for us to form that bond and the bond can not be successful if we didn’t express it to him. Our expression of committment to him was to be done through notes we’d write, the same way we’d write notes to Him, but addressed to Ti and Do for all other matters having to do with our overcoming/outgrowing humans ways and attachments that became the impetus for many a meeting topic as each student had their own particular history and areas that were more or less difficult to identify and see for what they were in order to learn to short circut their programming that would stimulate habits, memories, feelings and responses that were all under our own and others (that we’d ask for help from) helpful scrutiny. Before this period we’d engaged many lesson steps that included the willingness to “give over our mind” to our teachers, what Jesus spoke of as the requirement for discipleship recorded as “deny yourself” but that just talking/thinking about is a far step from living day to day.
As I’ve said some people thought Ti’s departure was the turning point that resulted in Do making what to them were wrong choices that resulted in the 1997 laying down of their lives. It’s understandable that so few can consider the alternative as the alternative was that it really was the same group of souls – teachers and students in so much that the work they’d done before, being the souls who had committed themselves to Jesus were when they died literally “saved” for their next opportunity to move ahead in their overall lesson step, what some think is reincarnation but is not the same thing. All spirts that die were never given the soul pocket/container. When these die they simply go to what they believed whether the “light” or to hang around to be their families guardian angels (as they have come to be spoken about and in some cases witnessed to exist). However the real angel is one of two types of beings. They are either souls that were literally saved for their next step who meanwhile can learn through some on the job training but in a less than full membership in the Kingdom of Heaven capasity, as what Ti and Do called domestics which is also what function served by angels (messangers) and Watchers, which was where the dropouts referred to as Lucifer and 1/3 of the fallen angels came from. They dropped out and some or all turned against the Kingdom of God directly or indirectly and as a result lost their opportunity to regain even the partical graft they might have begun, that is if they ever did establish much of a graft to the Older Member that was assigned their cultivation.
But speaking to those that critisize Do’s actions after Ti left, they would find if they took the time to look into all he did that he was more conservative after Ti’s departure. Before Ti left we had a voluntary but recommended visit to any who had family. It encompassed flying and having a couple nights with whoever we wanted to visit. Then after Ti left, a couple years later Do instigated yet another visit. As a result of that second visit a few decided to leave the classroom. Do also started a far stronger dietary nutrition/cleansing plan after Ti left. He said that Ti didn’t need to go through this, thus her timing on departure. He also said that the reason Ti’s eye became cancerous was due to the frequency intensity and quality of mind she was primary to pull in to perform the task she had which was akin to the analogy Jesus gave saying you can’t put new wine in an old wineskin or the new wine will cause the old skin to burst. Wine was the analogy for mind, the figurative blood that flows through all Kingdom of God members and that students was just beginning to acquire gradually by reducing all their thoughts and behaviors to one focal point – making ones’ eye single but seeking to focus on their Older Member for all their needs and satisfaction, which as long as we were using human vehicles was impossible yet was possible to take far enough. It was the amount of effort that was most important, not the works themselves though the works were the method of drawing more Next Level mind into our souls (the new wineskins provided us) that was a fit for our genetic vehicles where the quality and quantiy of mind Ti needed to bring to focus though it’s hard to understand ended up being more than even her vehicle could handle for very long, but long enough to get Do started by.
For instance Do instigated several attempts to see if the Next Level would either pick us up or we might leave our vehicles in order to complete our task. It was early 1992 when we sold three big homes worth of furnishings, and re-outfitted our group with trailors, pullers and tents and moved into the Phoenix dessert some 50 miles west southwest of Phoenix, towards Yuma. Once there we began to fast first on nothing – air. The premise was that if we showed the Next Level we were ready, they might pick us up. Do didn’t want to assume anything and part of that was not assuming the Next Level would come to a city area to pick us up so we went out into the desert. Additionally, He didn’t want to assume we could continue to consume as we had been. He felt the Next Level might prefer we empty our stomach/digestive systems, while also disciplining the vehicles to not “live on bread alone” and facing that we might fast until our vehicles literally died, that is if the Next Level wanted to pick us up in spirit/soul form. Now some of my fellow classmate(s) – one I know of who left the class a year before I did told me last year that he had no sense that we might moreorless starve ourselves to death. Yet I thought that was a big part of what was in the cards. But in the committments I’d written to Do I expressed on many occasions my willingness to do whatever it took and that I trusted him with that decision, so perhaps this other former student didn’t form that kind of committment thus wasn’t willing to go that far and therefore had we continued the fast may have asked to go home, which he didn’t do as Do called off the fast. Actually after two days on nothing, Do instigated the addition of water and then we fasted on water for another 12 days more before Do called off the entire fast and we broke it by eating fruit.
Needless to say the Next Level did not pick us up at that time either, though we made yet another attempt to be ready to leave after that. There were three serious attempts to leave. The first was instigated by Ti back in around 1980. Do felt we still had more to do and he was dissappointed, I believe genuinely. I wasn’t. I was willing to leave but I never felt like I hated it here. One has to realize that it’s no piece of cake living and moreorless denying oneself of all the distractions and pleasures and relationships others have that are what make life interesting and doing that year in and year out. It’s also not at all pleasant dealing with all the negativity that attacks anyone who attempts to seperate themselves from the world’s activities. Even monks with a religious order of some sort, have a support network for their life and are frequently looked up to by society in some ways that boosts one’s ego and insomuch becomes a type of drug addiction called piety and holiness. We never acheived freedom from all the discarnates that attacked us day in and day out. By discarnates I’m talking of the manifestations of thought/feeling attacks be it nostalgia regarding our old lifestyles and relationships along with the sense that we are seen by others as insane and neglecting our families and even the cause of their anguish at our absense and living in a way they can’t fathom, not having regular contact with us – being with a known assumed evil minded cult against our will. It was hard for each to deal with their vehicles likes/dislikes wants/desires, cravings, habits in thought and deed. For one person it might be sensous sexual thoughts that plague them around the clock that need to be guarded against which takes effort and an occasional backslide to some degree. To another, it’s not allowing the vehicle to get figity and demanding about what it wants. To another it is longing to be important – to hold a seemingly respected position in the group or with their life. To another it’s dealing with impulses that might cause us to want to have offspring. To others to be able to have an apple anytime they want it or a piece of cake, etc. To another it was a lack of intelligence building – the study of this or that information. All these and many, many more were the “boogers” that by giving into could drag us out of the committment we sought to build. Even still, I didn’t hate the process because as it turned out I was getting a certain amount of satisfaction from the increased roles I was assigned/given, working with Do one on one more than most, being given more responsability and trust in some ways than many others, that is until that was brought to a head and I was put to the test big time and flunked out fast, a story I’ve told and will tell again to any who want to hear it.
Do was also weary of the fact that the students seemed almost stuck in their overcoming, not making headway on their own particular overcoming issues. We felt like we were just waiting for some to make up their mind to leave or not, so much so that at one point Do offerred anyone $1,000.00 to leave the classroom as He did not want people getting comfortable in the communal lifestyle that in some ways was very easy compared to people in the world that have no support network to help make ends meet with bills and so forth. One person took Him up on that offer.
Do was also seeking Ti’s will day and night and there was a great deal of frustration in doing so as it was infrequent that he’d really feel Ti’s presense with him. There were a couple times I know of that he came to the class very charged saying he felt Ti’s presense. There were other times he was near beside himself expressing that he didn’t feel his connection with Ti at all. One time when He had us pick up three homes worth of furnishings from the Colorado area and we rented 5 24 foot Ryder trucks we packed and drove to Atlanta where a crew ahead of time leased three big beautiful homes and some of us who had out of craft tasks, what we called jobs to make sticks (money) secured jobs. I got a job with Peachtree Software. But then once we were all there Do was literally weeping because he couldn’t feel Ti and couldn’t ask us to pick up and move back, but at that meeting many of the students expressed to him that we needed him to feel Ti, so we were perfectly willing to move back and try to get our old jobs back. I remember hating that because the jobs I had and others had were high tech by then. Companies don’t like losing their good employees that they have investment in and they don’t like loosing people they just hired, in my case before I really got up to speed to do anything significant in their employ. But I sucked it in and gave told my employer I had to leave and could not get my old job back so had to hit the job market again, something I’d done many, many times because even when we stayed in an area it was rarely for more than a year at a time.
It’s important to understand that a number of the things that Ti and Do instigated or told us, changed and each time students dropped off, but Ti and Do felt at times they had egg on their faces and dealt with whether or not they were doing the best job they could. They later learned that these were all used by the Next Level to weed out those who really were not ready for graduation. That’s what happened to me and virtually all 50 or so that dropped out before I did. It was in 1977 that Ti actually selected 19 students to be eliminated from the classroom, though 2 of which in a mysterious way made it back in some 7 years later.
Do also set up a half way house in Dallas for some students that didn’t seem to be progressing while in the classroom. He also considered inviting any and all family members who wanted to visit us to come to where we were living in Costa Mesa, in one of John Wayne’s old mansions.
Looking back, one can see that so many things were done to offer us a way out of the group to include being required to think about whether there was anything in the world we longed to do instead of what we were doing. This kind of examination was instigated at least once a year but not by any schedule.
Then there was the time when we saw the movie Cocoon that we wondered if that was a signal from the Next Level on a way we might depart – by boat, going out and waiting for pickup or even considering sinking it with us in it. We went so far as to buy a large enough boat for the 28 or so remaining classmembers. This was in 1991-2 and we had it docked in Houston and a crew went there to get it ready while the rest lived in Dallas but then Do nixed the idea. If he had flipped out at Ti’s departure why wouldn’t he had followed though completely with all these ways of exiting our vehicles. We even had the book by the Hemlock society that listed all the ways and ramifications of ways to die. It wasnt mandatory reading but some of us had access to it. I remember thinking what it would be like to die this or that way.
So if we had a death wish, it would have really been easy to have done it way before 1997, but Do was concerned that he not instigate something when it was unreversible until he felt like he received concrete confirmation from Ti, which he did some weeks before that day in 1997 as outlined in Rio’s book when a number of classmates all had experiences on the same night with beings in their rest chambers and Do did too, along with other collaborating evidences, namely the witnessed approach and reports of an object outside the orbit of Pluto that showed itself to slow down and change directions indicating some kind of intelligent direction. This was togther with the fact that we’d gone public for the second major time so that all the planned seats were filled as the Next Level had a precise number of arrangments for new members. This is another discussion all together but all in all it was clear by 1997 that they’d done all they came to do and that he had all those he felt like Ti gave to Him to care for just as occurred to Jesus and then Jesus got some physical proof in what was called the Transfiguration that shortly afterwards though he was still somewhat fearing it, decided to turn himself in to those he knew hated him and would see to it killed his body. That was the stage Jesus was demonstrating – that of delivering the information when much around you hated it and sought to stop us by doing us in. At this time 2000 years later the corruption had become so intense that no one cared that much what anyone said, they instead of hating you ignored you and so they wouldn’t do the service of helping us exit our human vehicles thus we had to take it upon ourselves or end up tredding water for years as Do and each classmate died from some so called natural cause. Do couldn’t bear that either as he did grow to love all his students as his own children and they loved him as their own parent. I too developed love for him though it was a bit tainted by my own self centeredness that I still needed more lessons to overcome which I’ve come to understand since leaving them.
There is a great deal more to all this but this is a stab at it.
sincerely,
Sawyer
Sawyer Stands for Ti & Do's Heaven's Gate 