To follow is a question and answer session with a documentary writer who is working on behalf of National Geographic Channel. They aired a Heaven’s Gate documentary in the fall of 2008. I was interviewed for the production. They were attempting to deliver an unbiased perspective – a huge undertaking that in an hour can hardly touch the entire story but is a worthy effort that I applaud.
I know some follow these snippets I write. For those who want more background information about Ti and Do and what they were really about and why they did what they did as the media, as usual, harped on what was easiest to cover and didn’t challenge too many by delving into how closely it resembled the historic Jesus/Moses/Enoch stories.
I’m going to let this fly now but if you haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m taking about, do a search for “Ti and Do” with NowPublic.com or Heaven’s Gate and/or visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sawyer anytime, but live on the internet airwaves, generally Thursday nights 11pm to 12am or 12:30am EST. The site has archives of past shows and a blog and even some of the music I write and perform. I am sending you these snippets that are clearly raw because I don’t have time to polish it up and if I wait until I can I will never say anything because there are discarnates that hate everything about Ti and Do.
My aim is to show that no one need feel threatened by what Ti and Do said and what they did by laying down their bodies to final sleep in the gentlest way they knew how which was for most of them a 22 year decision that was in their Faith in God the ultimate creator (using evolutionary processes within laws of physics) of all we deem reality.
I know the whole Heaven’s Gate thing was bizarre for most but some could feel that it wasn’t the same thing as Jonestown or Solar Temple or The Moonies or Children of God or David Koresh and certainly has no relationship to Michael Travessor and for that matter no religion either. Religions are mans creation and it never accurately represents what acually happened to stimulate it. That’s why the world is an illusion as is said Maya in Hindi I believe, but those in India who read this please correct me. It’s because we build ourselves bigger than life and yet when that life goes away we are only left with residue – a spirit that is the vibrational voltage output of our flesh system.
The Kingdom of God sees all of us as their children and knows what we are capable of so doesn’t force us to grow any faster than we want to. This is why we are given lots of opportunities to take a baby step closer than before. I’m here to say you won’t be disappointed at any stage. The practical aspect to belief in Ti and Do has nothing to do with me or any human organization or membership or club or cult or answering to any human being of which I too know I am clearly the same. I say that as we’ve heard some say they feel like they are from this planet and that. I can’t actually speak to the accuracy of that but I am not one of those.
It is my understanding that Ti and Do will return with those that graduated their classroom to pickup those that want to go with them. If we die before they return, believing in them then they see that and take your spirit to them for safe keeping. Some who believe in them and are in body when they come, as they will come in a physical way this time will also go with them for safe keeping possibly with their body as well – taken up just as Jesus was. Those who believe in them but don’t feel ready to go with them in body can stay on the Earth to help others. There will be hard times compared to what many have grown accustomed. I could be wrong but suspect however Ti and Do show up, in whatever type of craft it will make ufo’s and any space aliens look insigificant and primitive and will affect the entire planets electromagnetic field, what the spirit level frequencies exist against. Many are picking up on this and preparing to live without electricity and not wasting time getting into the mountains and engaging in farming for survival in real community efforts.
I am not a doomsdayer – This experience will prove to be the greatest experience ever to have occurred during this current civilization and no one is ever forced or conived or deceived or coaxed beyond this kind of blowing of the horn.
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Doc writers question:
In response to Ti and Do appearing to fade in and out at the Waldport meeting:
Sawyer said:
I saw a haze in the room and // it was like around the stage and around them.
Sawyer offers no explanation for the strange occurrence.
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Sawyers response:
I was seated about 1/3 of the way from the front and to the right of the stage so I had some view of about 1/2 of the audience. I didn’t notice the haze at the start of the meeting. I first noticed it hovering over the audience like midway between their heads and the ceiling. I would have guessed the ceiling to be around 9 foot. Nearly simultaneously I noticed it was all around the stage above and to the side of where Bo and Peep were sitting and right behind them. The room was not lit brightly and the stage had a light above Ti and Do which is what created the contrasting visual. I couldn’t be sure where it originated but from my vantage point it seemed more dense nearer the stage but that could have been due to lighting and where I sat. At the time I made no conclusion as to it’s origin or construct. I guess it could have been smoke but don’t recall a smoke smell, which I was very conscious of normally as I was a smoker for about 3 years, having not smoked for 4 or so by then which tends to heighten one’s sensitivity to smoke and it’s odor. There were no ceiling fans in the room nor was I aware of any air movement like from a ventilation system. At the time it didn’t occur to me that this was what people used to call an aura or halo affect so it didn’t stand out to me as something supernatural. I just logged is as a curiosity though I did tell some people about it sometime later.
I saw that haze again at the meeting Ti and Do gave at Arapaho Community College in Denver less than a month later and I noticed it at times around classmates when we gave public meetings – not all the time and not nearly as pronounced as in the Waldport meeting which was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that. The Arapahoe meeting was in a large lecture room and it was well lit. I was sitting on the floor in front of the seating that was stadium styled so that I was looking upward to Ti and Do. From that point I was not aware of any haze anywhere else, but I wasn’t turning my head around, but what I did see was clearly around them and it didn’t look like smoke at all, but something electromagnetic for lack of a better description.
There was certainly a surreal sense about that meeting and especially when the overflow crowd seemed to be stirring. I can’t pinpoint it and wasn’t really that aware of it consciously until a women shouted out very loudly, “you ought to be shot”, which I believe came on the heals of when Bo (Do) spoke about having to “leave all behind” and may have even listed family and children, saying children could not make such a decision.
And it’s interesting that so many groups are compared to Ti and Do’s but almost all have children which is a huge distingtion. Also most who took their lives in some way did so involuntarily – like in Jonestown where they were forced at gunpoint or hunted down in the woods and in the solar temple where some were coaxed and guilted into such committment. I know for a fact and every former member can testify should they be asked that no such thing ever happened in Ti and Do’s classroom. Sure they believed and took to heart what they felt their position and task was and there was always a sense that one would fail to leave but that was NEVER a part of any so called sermon they gave as is common in Christian and other religious sermons where the leader get all worked up into a big theatrical act. Ti and Do NEVER put on airs or spoke above a normal tone, nor with over the top voice inflection. Plus other groups didn’t have as part of their curriculum near the practical self disciplines – and over so broad a spectrum of human sensory participation. We didn’t do any group prayer (Which Jesus was clearly against as well) -We had next to no ceremony, though one year did put up a christmas tree and certainly had routines but the routines were rarely with symbolisms – one of the only times symbolisms were used was in their last days in their human vehicles – the purple shrouds and the nike sneakers and such but that was not for them, that was for us to ponder.
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Doc writers question:
In October, 1975:
Applewhite and Nettles tell their new followers they will be traveling cross country and living outdoors, on campgrounds.
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Sawyers response:
This was shortly after we did the 5 or 6 simultaneously scheduled meetings in the Denver/Boulder areas. Close to 70 of us, having increased our numbers from the Colorado meetings, where by the way the FBI sought Ti and Do thinking they/we were responsible for the very strange cattle mutilations that had plagued Colorado and Wyoming and Oklahoma near that time which also had ufo sightings in association, were camping at Cherry Creek. One day we had an internal meeting at the Denver town clerks building which seemed so strange. We were told our next task was to head to Chicago. We were told we’d have to “test” our way there, a challenge for us and a way to see if churches who profess service to God and those in God’s service would help us. We were grouped according to the available cars. I was in group with Jnnody (one of the 39), her partner who left the group in 1976, my partner dndody who left in the 1980’s and myself were in one car. We were given a full tank of gas and a little food and had already been equipt with sleeping bags, small two person tents, foam pads to lay on a couple cotts and coleman stoves with a pan and some utensils so we could always camp should we not find accomodations en route. Our instruction from Bo and Peep was to ask people to help us with our needs but the focus was on Christian churches. We were told to simply say we are traveling through doing work for the Lord or however we wanted to express it and to state our exact need. “We are out of gas – can you help us? for instance or “we are in need of some food”. We wouldn’t ask for money as we did not need money though some chose to give us money to buy gas and supplies while others sent us to a gas station that had an account with the church.
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Doc writers question:
Some are living in the cold and rain without tents; some have resorted to eating out of dumpsters.
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Sawyers response:
From my experiences this came later and was individual choices not instruction from Ti and Do. In fact when they found out that some had resorted to eating out of dumpsters they were upset by that. Upset didn’t mean yelling or shaking a finger at the perpetrators. They simply said they would not have approved of doing so.
On the way to Chicago though, we on a few nights did sleep in our sleeping bags under the stars but it didn’t rain that time, but I would imagine some were caught in the rain at times – again little that people did in those early days on the road in 1975-76 were with Ti and Do’s direct or implied instruction. Many didn’t have hardly any contact with Ti and Do while on the road – my case is clearly one of those from October of 1975 to May of 1976.
A case in point: when I and others ended up detached from Ti and Do and any organization at one point I was taveling in a van with 5-6 others and we had no tents. My partner and I had lost our car, actually the third of forth we had been using, some being donated by other members. Our last car broke down in Vermont and the police took us to the station to investigate us and were trying to charge us to have the car towed. They searched us and after 3-4 hours let us go, which put us on foot and hitchhiking, though when we got to Montpelier we met up with others who we had pre-arranged to meet having come from the meetings we organized in the Boston area. That’s when we hooked up with some in a Van. At that time we stayed with a family for 3 or so days but then would find other places to sleep – in a church or at a park. For a while we were eating cold canned food we received from churches and slept out in the open and did get rained on maybe once before scampering into the van. I awoke a number of times with a wet sleeping bag from frost and on at least one occasion with an inch or two of snow over my sleeping bag. That became a signal to get out of the north – as the Montpelier meeting was poorly attended and there were factions within our group that were very hard to deal with. One person went by the name John the Baptist and another by Lightborn – we had internal group meetings to make decisions and Lightborn especially was viing for control to a point of which he would not agree with any concensus and I did lose my cool one time while we were meeting in a tennis court of a park where we were using just as a place to talk in the Boston area, where I told him if he couldn’t work within the group – if he always had to have adamant contrary ideas then perhaps he should leave. I wasn’t the leader though I had had more experiences with Ti and Do, however limited that was at that time it was more than most of the others that had hooked into our groups in those early days, most of which who soon fell away. Dandy (later Dndody) and I eventually ended up in the same car with John the Baptist and Lightborn who were partners and we only had more problems as they were trying to split up our partnership. They thought we had become attached to one another but Dndody and I felt that since Ti and Do put us together as a partnership they would have to be the ones to split us up. Others like lightborn and John the Baptist were not partnered by Ti and Do as they came to the group by meetings given by fellow students at the time after we were scattered about that lasted until late June of 1976.
(But sleeping out of doors was not that strange for me as I had, before joining, hitchhiked cross country three times and spent many a night sleeping in all sorts of places to name a few – the side of the road, in the bushes on the grounds of the state capital in Austin Texas, in the bushes on the ground of the Berkley campus and on the roof of the free clinic in Berkley, in Ken Kesey’s infamous warehouse in San Francisco, in the woods among the redwoods, etc.)
The dumpster episode I recall was short lived. We had just split up into about 6 groups while we were staying in the Chain O’ Lakes park north of Chicago which was where the national news broke that revealed the names of the “mysterious two”.
The group I was with consisted of two cars with about 8-10 of us between them. We were instructed by Bo and Peep to head south to Oklahoma. We were actually all going to meet up there and only two members of our group were told the destination to protect against being followed as it was in this campground that Rob Balch and David Taylor were discovered as infiltrators. We met up in Oklahoma at a reseviour with another couple groups and the group leaders which I was not & got instructions to continue our meetings in the New Mexico and Phoenix areas. When we got to Phoenix at times we were hungry and often without a car, we’d pick up dates that fell from the date palms that were all along the roads and were ripe at that time. We had exhaused the churches so a few of us, as funny as it sounds, one was our group leader, Prsody who was one of the 39 and was at that time I’d say in her early 50’s and certainly not a vagrant type of person, well groomed and a responsible grandmother before she joined, said she found perfectly good donuts still in boxes in the dumpster behind Dunkin Donuts. So we tried it and walla, perfectly clean and eatable donuts – so we ate donuts on 3-4 occasions but that for whatever reason was the only time I so called “ate out of dumpsters”, that is until I met my current partner who showed me perfectly good organic veggies in a dumpster in Woodstock NY, behind the natural foods market – not anything wrong with them, but thrown out so we would carefully take what we could use and clean it up and consume it.
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Doc writers question:
After the media attention from the Waldport meeting 1975, regarding Ti and Do’s whereabouts:
The bad publicity forces them underground. They will not be seen or heard from again for several months – not even by their own followers, who continue to spread the message in their leaders’ absence.
Do you have any idea where they may have gone during that time?
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Sawyers response:
I guess the bad publicity spoken of here was the national news that broke their human identities as Marshall and Bonnie. They were in Los Vegas at that time when that became news. They told us they stayed in their hotel room for 3-4 days feeling like they would not be able to show their faces, fearing arrest and an end to the task they felt so strongly was theirs to follow through with. They felt “shot down” at that moment. However, they picked themselves up and decided they must continue so headed to Chicago to give their 70 or so students the next instruction which was to split up. I can not speak for other groups. I know Ti and Do were traveling in their own car but as a group with 6 students, three partnerships.
The group I was with, as I said went to Oklahoma, then Sante Fe and then Phoenix, then Berkley. At that point 6 of us headed for the east coast and did the meeting at Worchester, Mass. It was not before june of 1976 that I with my partner who ended up hitchiking back and forth accross the mid section of the US giving little meetings at every chance seemingly accidentally (though the night before, in Arkansas I was moreorless screaming to God to help me see the next step) ran into that group of 6 helpers and Ti and Do at the meeting they gave at the library in oklahoma city.
Ti and Do were glad to see us and assigned us a group that was part of the network as were 5 or 6 other groups. It seems the core stayed together for most of that time and only a few got totally detached.
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Doc writers question:
What is the significance of the name Total Overcomers Anonymous? :
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Sawyers response:
At the time we were looking at the 12 step programs – alcholics anonymous but mostly sexahaulics anonymous and sex and love addicts anonymous, not to become members but to see if we could help it’s members. Ti and Do felt they were trying to overcome their addictions and that was good, but that all too often they were further substantiating their addiction by constantly referring to themselves as once an addict always an addict and by recounting the details of the harm they did to themselvs and others along with some graphic descriptions of how addicted they were.
Ti and Do knew we had fairly successfully had our bodies under our control. We were not perfect but that part of the way to conquer any addictio is to not focus on it, not give it energy, put it out of your mind – even your thoughts to where you become the total controller of every thought and action you have. Ti and Do had some of us go to some of the groups to offer what we had learned to them, but they saw us as “know it alls”. Alxody, Nancy Browns son was one that went to one of their meetings to present what we knew about overcoming addictions and in particular to sexuality/sensuality.
That was the anonymous part, but it was also because it did not excentuate the “self” – we were make up of anonymous members.
The total overcomer part had to do with as jesus said “overcoming the world”. All things human are roots of human and there is nothing wrong with them that is until one tastes of what else there is which only occurs when a member from that higher above human kingdom gives us a seed that is a smelling salt that enables further recognition of the Kingdom of God’s reality as opposed to it being an imagined place – or a spirit world. Jesus said he had overcome the world and that those who choose to follow him MUST do as he did and thus overcome the world. The world is more or less everything and includes even our physical lives eventually though not all have that calling at the same time. There are grades in school that eventually when followed bring us to overcoming ALL -all relationships, all likes and lislikes, all security, all luxury, all pleasures, all careers and even our innate desire to “live” as a human being.
We took that name at the release of the Beyond Human video tape series so people could write to us if they wanted to ask questions.
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Doc writers question:
September, 1994, after Do first mentions that the group may have to take it upon themselves to exit:
Only two members decide to quit the group. Most others feel too invested to give up.
Please confirm that you decided to leave the group of your own volition after having reservations about remaining in the group.
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Sawyers response:
Yes I absolutely left the group of my own volition but to say it was after having reservations about remaining in the group is misleading implying that those “reservations” if we want to call them that were related to the impending self administered “exit”.
But first…I don’t believe the statement “…most others feel too invested to give up”, accurately depicts a significant percentage of anyone’s mindset.
I can only say that considering the committment and internal battles I had, the committment of which I demonstrated on a number of occasions that entailed willingly “giving up my physical life” to as Jesus said to have a much richer and fuller life after a “spirit birth” in the Physically natured strata above human that is in circulation among the physical stars and planets and city sized spacecrafts that are part of the Kingdom of God.
Fact: After having joined I had been clearly willing to give my life at least twice before – once in delivering unpopular materal to the public when the press mistakenly printed on the cover page in Liberal, Kansas, where my partner Dandy and I were apart from the larger group and any contact with Ti and Do, were holding meetings while hitchiking around, following departure from the northern Vermont country. We had given the newspaper the Ti and Do information to get publicity for the meeting we had arranged at the public library in Liberal. The newspaper printed our pictures saying we were the two witnesses who would be killed and would demonstrate being resurrected – raised to eternal life and the details of the meeting and some of the content of our talk which included references to Ti and Do being of the same family as Jesus. So this would have been seen as extremely blastphemous. The day or two before the meeting Dandy and I saw the newspaper and I remember we were both freightened that we might be killed. Of course no one was taking us nearly as seriously as we took all this so that wasn’t going to happen, but nonetheless we were faced with it and decided we must continue to hold the meeting. We did and the first thing I said to the 50 or so people who came was that we were NOT the two witnesses. We were their students. However after that and in many other settings as I spoke at meetings all over the country during that 8-9 months in church after church I was literally told to leave and never come back, told I was representing satan and were harrassed by police to the point of Dandy being put in jail for a couple hours in Tenessee somewhere and then again in 1993 when Jwnody and I were going to be sent out by Do to do a public mission on behalf of the classroom, that turned into the entire classroom doing so in 1994 of which I was a primary speaker and group leader who many times said bold things at meetings that were met with significant anger against us.
Then there was the time in the spring of 1991 that we had sold all our house living stuff and were again living in tents and trailors and had moved from New Mexico to Arizona to begin a fast in the Arizona dessert 30 miles or so west of Phoenix with intent to “go out” OR to be “picked up” by Ti in a spacecraft. Do cancelled the fast after two weeks. That fast had begun as zero food and zero drink and after a couple days Do added water which then continued for two weeks. I clearly remember barely having the energy to walk around as we were still active in a camping environment during the fast, even still selling some of our household belongings at a local phoenix flea market which entailed going to our storage rooms in phoenix and loading up a small 1 ton truck we had and taking the stuff, furniture and household things to the flea market, setting it all up and staying all day, though in two hour shifts, while still maintaining our living standards at the camp that entailed hauling lots of water (though without food preperation was minimal) and then packing it all up and returning to the camp. We did this several days in a row during that two weeks. At that time our numbers had strunk to about 25 + Do.
My point is that during this time I anticipated losing my life. I recall climbing into the top bunk in the trailer where I slept, barely able to do so, out of weakness and curling up to sleep in very hot weather not knowing what to expect but not thinking any thoughts of quitting or what investment I had til then. I was naturally a little wary of what I might experience but not having any thoughts that this was madness nor something I had reservations about doing. I did not have doubts of who Ti and Do were – at least not doubts that stood out and I had by then 15 years of experience with Ti and Do in many settings that in one way or another told me they cared about us a great deal and would not do anything to harm us, but we all by then felt quite conscious that we were not the physical body alone. At that time I was not even that aware of how much Jesus had talked about the seperation of mind and body and how his teachings were further seperating the two so that eventually we had next to zero care for the body relative to those who think their body is all who they are so will not put any priority to living according to their non-flesh perspective. And that is understandable as had I not been given the opportunity to see that I too would have been purely beholding to my body’s every like and dislike, though within reason still according to past guidelines given by members of the Next Level through the teachings of Moses for example.
Right after that fasting experience, a few months after was another major area to where my retorick was put to the test. How we got to this next point is a long story but it was when Do offerred what srrody and I had said we wanted on many occasions in notes and in person to person talking and this was the first castration. Did I have reservations about doing that? Well, yes and no. Do asked me directly person to person. I said my vehicle was not looking forward to it and in that way had a reservation but that I was clearly wanting to override my vehicle and follow through with it. It had nothing to do with any “investment” I felt at that time. However it did put me to the test as we all know how talk can be so cheap and even unintentionally convienient a way to get to do or not do something. We did have a policy of: “if in doubt don’t” taught to us about taking action when we couldn’t check with our Older Member and when it was an irreversible action especially.
I cringed more years earilir when Ti suggested having all my teeth pulled out and replaced with dentures, as was done with Smmody (Betty Deal) as a practical economic decision. I remember thinking…I hope she is not serious. I had just had two partials created to replace many teeth I’d had pulled before joining the classroom and some since. No, I did not have all my teeth pulled out. It was never brought up again.
But the idea that we did deal with what “investment” we felt is not absent of accuracy either. It is very difficult to say that generally about anyone unless they told us and many might not know. It’s far easier looking back to see what we thought that is IF we divested ourselves enough to not remain bias to support whatever cause we are in debted to on some way. Maybe it’s the way I’m hearing that phrase about “investment”. Hear’s what I mean.
There are no doubts that all have shades of doubt big and small that surface in many ways. In this case what doubts people entertained depended on how well they disciplined the content of their own thoughts. Ti and Do could not control our thoughts. They didn’t want to. They wanted us to control our own thoughts. In about 1980 we traveled to Biloxi, MS and were still living outdoors full time. At our first class meeting after having arrived we were told, we would have to “give” them (Ti and Do) our minds. Ti told us Do was very uncomfortable with that but he knew it was his responsability to accept. It was to be done by wanting to be like Do in every way – not in appearances though that wasn’t out of the question but they weren’t going to go out and all by the exact same clothing, yet in a sense we ended up all dressing alike, however we had to consider how we appeared in the world – we did not want to attract any more attention than we automatically did. But this is how one tigthly bonds with another. Live with them and seek to think as they think, and act as they act and do as the do as much as possible while still remaining students.
Yes it is “mind control”, but far more honest than the way we humans are mind controlled and yet part of that is that we are not. How many buy their clothing according to the latest trends and how many build their dreams based upon what is being presented as popular in chic or “in” or most comfortable or best to earn money by? How many think they must have umteen insurance programs to think they are covering themselves for everything that could go wrong, then walla, they lose their job, their pension, their 401 K plan and then their house and whatever or they are in a Katrina flood or come upon a major health problem that even money can’t fix or keep up with. How many of us are mind controlled to think we must be authorized by the state and/or church to marry. How many think our religion offers us salvation after we die? Compared to these and many, many others that we as humans all encounter and consider the “norm” the mind control in the group was…well it was still intense because it meant monitoring our every thought and then selecting only a few to even register in our heads. That is impossible to do without help from someone who has experienced it. Ti and Do seemed to have this under their belts somehow. So, yes it is mind control but the key is deciding who we want to give that control to. Remember the Lord’s prayer, Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy(your) WILL be done on Earth AS IT (will) IS in Heaven(outer space many mansion abode). So this boils down to the integrity of who we decide to give our will to and to what degree. If we give it to the gov’t our reward comes by having a parade and financial package if we die in their service. If we give our will to our church leaders, we get to feel like we are working for God, which is contrary to what Jesus taught, thus our own fault for believing others when the record is right before us and if we give our will to our career we enjoy the benefit potentially of a nice sized bank account that other’s might enjoy when we die or if we give it to family then we enjoy feeling useful and loved and if we give it to a charlatan cult leader whom we don’t know is a charlatan and they won’t even think that way about themselves then I’d bet the real Kingdom of God cansee that desire to serve, so when that person dies, the Kingdom of God takes that souls and keeps it in their care to be brought back for a new opportunity to grow further towards membership in the Kingdom of God. All giving of ourselves can be to our advantage as it’s not an mammalian characteristic.
Do told us later on that Ti thought they would lose 1/2 the class by telling us that. To me I was already doing that as completely as I knew how. I still of course had a human animal body that didn’t necessarily consciously que me into my doubts.
If someone was allowing certain thoughts to exist at times and never revealed it and to what degree then that was their choice and for those, certainly doubtful thoughts could have been among their permissiveness, given the object was to overcome anything and ALL that might take us away from what we were in pursuit of.
There is no doubt that most had invested a great deal of their lives in this endeavour. I for one did reflect at times of doubt pertaining to how much I had already invested. Part of that investment is not allowing thoughts that would entertain what else we might do should we leave. Those who did entertain those thoughts mostly likley left soon thereafter and I know of several who went through very difficult periods battling whether to stay or leave, and this was way before there was any mention of self-exiting. Flxody was one. Prsody was another. Strody was another – interestingly all three were more elder females. Prsody and Strody were among the 39.
So I don’t feel it is accurate to say…”most others feel too invested to give up”. For most it was not on that level of, “well I’ve come this far, I can’t quit now”. Again, not saying many never had that thought but it didn’t have to be a significant justification to staying.
Each member was seeking to form a significant bond with Do, (their Older Member from the Level Above Human, aka Their Father, as their seed giver). The whole “process” was two fold – first to eliminate all human bonds/roots attachments desires and pursuits, then to acquire the identity of a non-human (not an alien though as they are human equivilents) – above human as represented throught the example of said non-human incarnate in human vehicle – Do. The details to forming that bond is to “want to” be and do everything exactly as Do did it. That’s how we show love. Jesus called it doing the will of his Father in Heaven and Do sought to do this with Ti while Ti was in a physical body and after her physical body died, though with Ti they did operate more as a partnership for the task’s sake rather than as Do did while operating the Jesus named human vehicle in seeking to relay all things his Father gave to him to say and do for and with his students.
Do did tell the class that to exit we may need to take it upon ourselves and asked each of us on a number of occasions that i was present for, if we had reservations about it. At one meeting I believe three or four new members from the 94′ public meeting offerring voiced reservations of some kind and one did leave the next day and another a few days later.
I did not voice reservations and did not have any. That did not mean I was eager either – in my case it was of much different than most I would say, as I had fallen off the wagon by then significantly. I remember having the thought when asked in group who had reservations and saying I had none but thinking…”lets get it over with”. I can’t count how many times I’d been through the evaluation of my committment. Ti and Do periocially required that we entertain doubts to see if they could take us out of other class. They knew once one opened their heads to thoughts of leaving they would be tempted to go with those thoughts and therefore it also provided a way to strengthen our resolve, though for some they did end up leaving. The object of the class wasn’t numbers of believers as in other groups. From the start it was more a process of elimination of those who truely weren’t ready or weren’t genuine enough – were still too self interested as I believe I fall into that category though didn’t know it until much later.
I did not leave because of fear of taking my own life. The “process” of HOW we might take our own life was more fearful than my dissappearance from this world. Naturally, I didn’t want pain. We had spent years detaching from strong sensory and emotional connections. We had detached from family, physically and mostly mentally. Not entirely. I still felt love for my family but when I would get those pangs I knew it would only increase if I dwelled on them. Ti and Do felt some of our pangs were from their wondering about us. It was largly their anxiety in not knowing what we were up to and whether we were alive or not, especially because it was assumed we were doing something “wrong” or “bad” or under someones spell. Had we become part of a catholic order that was cloistered, then they wouldn’t have generally felt that way.
What Jesus taught as detachment was for a reason. It wasn’t to appear holy by how much you sacrificed – how you inflicted emotional pain on yourself or others in the name of God. That’s a distortion. Ti and Do did nothing I saw that intentionally and primarily “tested” us in that way. They knew certain things they said or instructed would put us to a test but that wasn’t their purpose. Their purpose had practical aspects. We needed to be moreorless cloistered in order to have a very concentrated experiential lesson ground among others that were also as dedicated and as single minded and determined to see it through. If we have or want to care for our children and mother and father and sisters and brothers and houses and jobs and the myrid of things that come up to care for, we factually don’t have the mental or physical energy to do anything more than flop down in front of the TV or computer or to a book before bedtime. In other words being human means giving away all our energy every day to human cares and pursuits of this world. We were seeking to shift our cares and pursuits to the cares and pursuit of another world – a different world, a world that was in actuality more stable and in that sense “real” than the Earth bound world not because both are not real but because both are not real indefinitely thus one can actually be in observance of the other’s world in it’s entirety thus be far more objective and influential just as we can view the lifecycles of ants and know what they are capable of and what they are absolutely “NOT” capable of. Humans are only more capable than other life forms on the planet because they are the last step of the evolutionary ladder before having the opportunity to step away from human altogether to, when it is offerred to become a member of the next higher strata of life above human.
I observed in Do more than Ti the pain he felt from the reports he got from students expressing the anxiety of their human families. It was for this reason that, even before Ti left we had visits to family, a time when they could see what we had become, that we wern’t being held against our will in any respect and were not so brainwashed in what they were taught to fear was a negative manner that we still did not care for them. It was hard to do those visits and it was hard to leave them and then we did the visit again after Ti had departed our company – yet another opportunity with 2 years in between to determine what we wanted.
So we didn’t try not to feel things that tied us to our past. What we tried was to not let it draw us back which occurs by dwelling on anything – the content of our thoughts is who we are which is what we end up acting out – doing with our lives. That’s our mind. So the rule was to not think about the past. Of course now that’s been popularized as living in the now which is fine except in how it masks an avoidence of any real future as a next level member and from learning from our past which can only be done by recognizing the same lessons and coming up with strategies to conquer old weaknesses. Many times living in the “now” is a convienent way to escape responsability for what we’ve done in times past or might strive to do in the future.
Of course doubts and sense of losing investment could have been deeply subconscious – a natural instict for all of us in human vehicles, but then psychologists among others love to have buckets to throw all the cases that don’t gel with their general postulates about our mental condition.
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Doc writers question:
When did the group settle on the name “Heaven’s Gate,” and what is its significance?
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Sawyers response:
This is one of the few questions I can not accurately give a date and time answer to as I was not a member when they settled on the name Heaven’s Gate however saying that I have no doubt that I do understand it’s significance.
Just as Jesus brought the path to the “kingdom of Heaven” – the strata of life above human (as Jesus said even the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the greatest on Earth) that upon graduation – passing through the gate, opens us up to a indefinite lifespan with a new less limited physical body to circulate within a limitless environment though with tasks to do, not just to take in views, rather than on one planet with one life and then a negligible spirit existence with no feelings or ability to become anything more than what we already became while last alive, contrary to the idea that we are all in a reincarnation progression which was taken from the idea that God can “save” those who are preparing for gate entrance until they are ready to do so consciously which God provides us on God’s schedule. So in that way if one believes in the last representative from the real kingdom of heaven they might be “saved” from merger into the spirit world and therefore could be returned to start an interface with a human to take over that human body to take it through a graduation classroom when it is offerred.
One can’t go through the gate unless they know what it is they are seeking – not a religious idea that is essentially illusionary – based upon the misinformation that is flooded upon us after each member from the Next Level departs the Earth environment, having left many with seeds for the next opportunity for graduation that occurred this time in Ti and Do’s arrival.
Those that followed Jesus and lived as best they could by his guidelines and rules, were not ready to go through the gate that he represented as the only member of the Next Level that was physically among us so if they stuck to their guns so to speak in “feeding his sheep” by delivering the information of how to gain entrance through the gate – loving (giving) God ALL your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, even to the degree that those opposed to the kindom of God seek to shut you up by even killing you then you have given ALL and therefore qualify to be “saved” and counted to being a participant in the next classroom that would be a graduation styled classroom rather than a prepatory one as occurred at the time of Jesus and Elijah and Moses and Enoch. It take a great deal of time and effort to bring a seed to harvest.
The gate is just like the birth canal. It is simply the entry requirements – like a Key that unlocks the door. One needs a midwife to deliver a baby. This is someone that has done it before. Ti and Do were serving as these spirit birth midwives but Ti was primarily here to get Do going as this world had become so foreign from the Next Level’s reality – due to religions and other largly symbolic focus that a stronger mind than Do’s was needed to be able to recognize they had a task to do that originated from outer space – Ti’s essential realization and that it had something to do with the bible – again what Ti became aware of and Do as he built his relationship with Ti had the same revelations. Once she got him going, she needed to leave for various reasons. (I’m not saying which of Ti and Do first had these key revelations – but it is a fact that Do knew Ti to be his “older member” or “Father” who “fathered” him out of his human condition in some civilization before the one we are engaged as we speak which is nearing closure.
So Heaven is the Above Human Condition (world) that exists wherever they need to be throughout the physical heavens. The Gate is the current representative (Do) because no one comes to the Father (Ti) except through them (Do) because that is the way the chain of minds are set up. It’s what makes it a Kingdom. There is one central chief of chiefs whose mind is drawn upon and given, drawn and given older member to younger member and eventually given in a small dose to humans that causes those humans who receive the seed to seek more.
So Heaven’s Gate in it’s shortest form is Do but to say that no one will stand a chance of understanding it.
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Doc writers question:
We understand that many of Applewhite and Nettles’s most faithful members came from a small seaside town on the Oregon coast…
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Sawyer’s response:
Of the 39 I can only recall these 4 joining from the Waldport, Oregon meeting:
Chkody
Lvvody
Jnnody
Ollody
Yes, initially there were 27 people that dissappeared from having attended the Waldport meeting of which I was one. 5 of my closest friends also joined but 4 left in the first couple months and one stayed for about 12 years.
It does seem that in terms of any one town, the first four meetings – 1 in LA, 1 in Stanford and another in N. California, then Walport probably made up about 1/2 the long term 39 members but I’d have to reseach it futher to be sure.
If you send me the best list I’ll tell you where most joined from as I was present as a group leader during the early and late public meeting engagements.
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Doc writers question:
(AT WALDPORT MTG)
Applewhite begins speaking and lays out their message. He stresses that the end of the world is near.
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Sawyer’s response:
No, he never said anything about the end of the world. I could have missed it, but then it wasn’t in any of their early literature – Statements 1, 2 or 3. In fact he never really spoke about the End of the World. In the 90’s he began to talk more about a spading or recycling, refurbishing for a new civilization but their message was absolutely not a typical “end of the world” scare that so many christian preachers used to generate support. We were never freightened into “belief”, of that I can attest.
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Doc writers question:
(AT WALDPORT MTG)
Sawyer, believes they are answering his most often asked questions.
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Sawyer’s response:
No, not at all, except in the most general of senses. I was 24 at Waldport having lived away from my family since I was 19 and across country since 20. I was always mystified by Jesus, had no belief in UFO’s until I saw one after I joined, was not born again or even knew that phrase, was not depressed (though my girlfriend and I did break up, but were together again), had a good musical band and participated in various new age explorations of thought and practice to include meditations, yet was not even comfortable with that. I remember saying I wanted to be enlightened while reading the Bhagavad Gita one day. I was given the Gita by a krishna devotee at an airport in San Diego though I don’t know why – I paid him nothing and did not intend to join but I took the book and tried to read it but it seemed like stories and did not find it of much value.
I didn’t have a specific question about my life’s purpose yet at the meeting felt compelled to join without hardly a second thought as it felt like my life’s purpose and what did occur soon thereafter was a sense that all events in my life that found me where I was and joining were pointed to that moment – as if it was planned ahead of time. (And it was I later learned, but that’s another discussion).
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Doc writers question:
(AFTER WALDPORT)
The couple and their newfound flock of about 70 set up a campsite in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Here, Applewhite tells his new recruits they must choose new names, to further disconnect them from their former lives.
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Sawyer’s response:
Well 70 sounds about right at that point and yes new members were told to pick new names for that reason – to not linger in focus on the past that keeps us to a degree thinking in the past.
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Doc writers question:
(AFTER WALDPORT)
The group’s numbers have rocketed to around 200.
Sawyer’s response:
That’s the overall number estimated to have joined over the first year but it wasn’t that many that made it to Chicago – at the Chain O’ Lakes State Park. It was more like 70 by then – October of 75. There were 96 who made it to Veedavou National Forest near Laramie, Wyoming which was July of 1976 – the end of having meetings, that is until summer of 92 when we were down to 24 when the beyond human series attracted former members to return to bring us into the mid 30’s again and then added another dozen or so new members from the January 1994 public meeting tour that lasted for 9 1/2 months. Some of the returned members left again, some first time joiners also left, leaving the group down to 38 students though 3 left afterwards, Rkkody, Jstody (who I joined to do the 60 Minutes show together) and Oscody, who had joined in 1975 but left soon thereafter but remained a believer and at one point was in contact with the group and expressed wanting to join them, to which he was instructed to remain outside the group. There were 1-2 others that were reported as suicides at that time that came to my attention in a most unusual way that lead me to suspect they too were laying down their lives for Ti and Do, niether of which seemed to have ever been in the group, which would bring the number to 42-43 students. I say this because Ti had said “all who came would return”. She was referring to the souls that were in their third trimester towards Spirit Birth having been with the Older Member 2000 years ago and before that in Moses company, the first two trimesters. These are called the Saints in the book of Revelations. She never said how many Souls she thought that was. But it seems the number 24 is the most likley, leaving others as not quite ready to “graduate” thus would have to be assigned additionally learning opportunities before completing a successful third trimester.
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Doc writers question:
June, 1992
Laguna Hills.
Now living in southern California, Applewhite’s group calls itself Total Overcomers Anonymous. The name signifies (ABOUT HOW MANY?) XX members who are still working to overcome their human tendencies
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Sawyer’s response:
By about that time we were down to 26 (with 2 long time members (And, Pmm) leaving in the next two years) but after putting out the video Series called Beyond Human, The Last Call, close to a dozen x-members some of which were staying in a type of half way house rejoined us.
Two of those were from the 19 that Ti and Do told in 1976 were not serious enough to stay in the group so formed a temporary group for them at a different location and these eventually got jobs and broke up and went about their seperate ways. These two however ran into us in Amarillo, Texas and wanted to rejoin. Right before that 2 long term classmembers who had joined from the Waldport, Oregon meeting were told they had to leave us because one could not accept the idea of the lesson step, “I could be wrong” and the other member wanted to leave with him. She had been having other problems so this became a reason for her to leave though I believe they are to date still believers in Ti and Do and I have occasional contact with them.
Sawyer Stands for Ti & Do's Heaven's Gate 