The following is from a Q and A Ben Zeller gave on Reddit.com under the account name of Heavensgate
by Noah_J_Simm that Sawyer critiques and responds to comments
I. DR BENJAMIN ZELLER AMA – ANSWERS
Noah_J_Simm:
The moment alot of us have been waiting for, Dr Benjamin Zeller has submitted his answers from the AMA a few weeks ago! This will be a mega post will everyone’s question that was submitted along with his response. I once again would like to thank Ben for working us into his busy schedule enough to make this happen.
strawberry_margarita:
I would just ask him to tell us something that hasn’t already been said. Even if it’s something small or trivial, or an anecdote.
Ben Zeller:
A few times a year I receive emails or phone calls from people who hear one of my interviews about Heaven’s Gate and it jogs their memory about something they experienced. I just spoke a few weeks ago with someone who met members of the group in Fall 1975 in New Mexico, and shared his experience. That was the time when Bo and Peep were not traveling with the group, but this gentleman (who was a traveling hippie musician back then) met several of the members. The group really was disorganized. People were looking for the Two, no one knew where there were. He told me about how one member had spiritually intuited that they saw the Two pass by on the highway, which led everyone else to get even more excited and hopeful for their arrival. The members all piled in a car and drove around looking for the Two. He described not just confusion (which I knew) but a sort of exciting sense of mystery. That makes sense. People like to feel like they are part of something big.
He left after a few days, so didn’t know if the people he met ever found the Two. But I strongly suspect they did. Based on what he said, I believe he met Wndody and possibly Lggody as well.
Sawyer:
First I want to address this idea that the group initially was “disorganized”. My first hand experience doesn’t support that at all. In fact I can show it was thoroughly organized especially considering it was spontaneously generated starting in April of 1975 and considering TI and DO, then becoming BO and Peep had no desire to even have students until a couple dozen asked if they could follow them after the private meetings at Joan Culpeppers house in North Hollywood.
But before I tell some of that story again, which I believe most of which I wrote about in my blogpost on sawyerhg.wordpress.com under the title “sawyer’s story,” I will refer to what this person who barely was part of the group experienced. When TI and DO split us up in Chicago because our numbers had grown too big to try to hide in camping areas, also considering that the national news had broke calling TI and DO felons who they thought could have been abducting people with this strange promise of a ride on a UFO. Some family members were afraid they would all be led to suicide then, even though it was hardly a concern. That is evidenced in the book UFO Missionaries Extraordinary. Plus the group had been infiltrated by Rob Balch and David Taylor who simply wanted to write their university thesis on the group. If TI and DO were to take on students they had even the contrary desire of keepings complete non believers in what they were saying out of the group as all they could do was cause unnecessary trouble. After all, the FBI was already looking to question TI and DO, telling some of the 6 students who were traveling with TI and DO they wanted to question them to see if our group had some link to the huge rash of cattle mutilations that had been happening at that time that was documented by Linda Howe in the book she later wrote.
Even from the start TI and DO didn’t hold all the meetings. In Stanford around August of 1975 those 6 students gave the meeting and TI and DO shortly after held two back to back meetings at Canada College. There were about 6 meetings in the Colorado meeting, mostly given by students and then the serious from those meetings were allowed to attend a meeting at Arapahoe Community College that TI and DO spoke at. I was there. Then they planned on doing the same type of program in Chicago but like I said the news broke and they were really on the run though they did nothing wrong at all.
So when we continued to hold meetings to include in Sante Fe, NM in early October of 1975 and then at Prescott, AZ, the groups were very well organized with a group coordinator assigned by TI and DO and a system of leaving and retrieving messages through Holiday Inn’s, that largely consisted of leaving a pay phone number and time and day to be at a pay phone that could receive calls for the group coordinators to get instructions and reports about each of the 5 or so groups in circulation then. It was an exquisit communication system and would work for the next 8 months while the group grew and shrunk holding meetings all over the U.S. until TI and DO called it quits and instructed the groups to finish what they had already set up. The group I had been reassigned to did our last meeting in Fayatteville, AR around June of 1976, which by the way was, depending on how one counts the start date very close if not exactly the 1260 days of Prophecy by the Two Witnesses in Revelation 11. Niether TI nor DO would ever give another public meeting after that. In 1994 all the meetings were completely done with student speakers, which included me.
So what happened to people who joined in 1975-1976 from a meeting that TI and DO didn’t speak at. Well I don’t know exactly as I was not a group coordinator. However I was camping on Mt. Diablo in California with the group TI and DO assigned me to be with in early November of 1975 and there were some new potential students there and I don’t know if TI and DO ever showed up there because after a handful of days camping there after the Berkley meeting that Jwnody spoke at I chose on my own to travel to the east coast. Jnnody was at that campground as well with the group she had been assigned group coordinator of. However, before I left for the Boston area where I met others in my group and some of the new potential students who had also traveled there, I spent a number of nights around a campfire with potential new students asking me and others that had been with TI and DO questions. And among them were certain ones who were agitated, some who were strictly curiosity seekers or new agers who wanted to catch a ride on a UFO which a true seeker wouldn’t have cared about, knowing that the UFO was at best transportation. If one was going to college would they make a big deal about the bus they were going to take to college. That may seem absurd but the fact is, this was just that real to me and others. Any that didn’t want to tow the very difficult line of outgrowing any desire to remain in the human condition soon dropped out of even minimal studentship. I have direct experience with two that may have been in that category, one of which was a troublemaker who was in Boston giving Jnnody and myself and others who were taking the brunt of the responsabilities for holding the Worchester, MA meeting trouble. He didn’t like any of the agreements we were making on how to poster the Boston area. At one point I got angry at him and told him to leave if wasn’t going to add to our efforts instead of competing with us. The name he used at the time was Lightborn and I don’t know what became of him but he remained difficult for the entire time I was with him in the group we had become that was not in touch with TI and DO, though I suspect Jnnody was. So sure, for some it was disorganized and confusing but hey, that’s the human kingdom and especially in the start of this group, we were bombarded by negativity galore and that continues to today.
Sawyer:
Where Ben Says, “He described not just confusion (which I knew) but a sort of exciting sense of mystery. That makes sense. People like to feel like they are part of something big.”
I bet I could poll anyone that joined with TI and DO and wouldn’t find any of them joining to feel like they are part of something big. I know that was the futherest thing on my mind. Even ask individuals who have come to believe in TI and DO’s teachings since 1997. My partner Cathy tells the story of seeing the story on the news and thinking it was kind of insane, what they did but then something about it caused her to wonder what all those people were doing over 20 years, what did they believe and what were they doing the whole time. So she heard about the Beyond Human video tapes on the heavensgatedatabase youtube channel and started watching them and felt like she believed everything DO was saying though she knew she didn’t understand it all. I think Alexander expressed the same kind of viewpoint when he was on our livestream the other day. When I joined I could have cared less to be a part of anything let alone “something” as if we were like Hillary Clinton who said in her book, on the back cover, “I just wanted to run something”. When I read that, it made no sense to me, “run something” – that sounds like an ego trip to me. Being apart of something (anything?) big sounds similar to that as if the person has nothing in their life so they will latch onto “something” when given the chance. I’m expressing this because what Ben said here as well as confirming this person’s sense of there being “confusion” in the group does seem to be echoed with a number of pundits in media. Maybe they are quoting Ben.
Also is it about following an exciting mystery? Not to me it wasn’t. In fact to become a follower of TI and DO’s teachings now isn’t at all an exciting mystery. We know exactly what we will be accused of, like our lives are so bad that we needed to believe in something or that we are naive and easily led by some charasmatic leader or we were weak minded and brainswashed. The data, the facts don’t back any of that up at all, yet the media pundits say it over and over and over, so what happens, many people believe it because they respect the so called professionals are intellectually astute.
StuBlad:
Hi Dr Zeller, As part of your research on Heaven’s Gate, were you ever given access to any materials that weren’t available to the public? For example, confidential police reports, crime scene photos that we haven’t seen, autopsy reports, etc? The reason I ask is, is there anything you can recall from such things that would be of interest to those who are interested in this story? At least, how it ended.
Ben Zeller:
Mrc and Srf showed me some of the materials that they had taken from the storage facility, and they showed me the financial ledgers that are not available to the general public. I wrote about them a bit in my book. But really almost everything I have from the end of the group has been made public. I requested it through the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI, and the equivalent laws in California.
I do recall a conversation I had with a journalist who had interviewed one of the members of the sheriff’s department in San Diego. The sheriff’s deputy’s last name was Scully, and he joked with the FBI agents (when they showed up) that they probably knew his sister who worked with Special Agent Mulder. The FBI guys either didn’t get the joke or didn’t think it was funny, and the deputy was sort of bummed. As an X-Files fan, I found it amusing.
Sawyer:
I’d like to know what materials Mrc and Srf (Mark and Sarah) showed Ben or if he doesn’t feel to be specific, why? Did Mark and Sarah make him swear not to reveal what they showed him? That’s not a far fetched idea as when the sent one audio tape to some I was told they included some instruction that they could only keep this for personal use.
chickenugett:
Dr. Zeller, Most discussions of the group understandably end with their mass suicide in 1997. However, not only are there ex-members that retained the group’s belief system left behind, but also recent adoptees that were never a part of the group. What are your thoughts on the future of the belief system (especially in light of the recent legal battle between the TELAH foundation and other believers), and what can this phenomena say about the propagation and evolution of religious movements after the death of it’s first adherents more broadly?
Ben Zeller:
The precedent is there. I just ran across an interview with a self-described new member of the Class, someone who converted through encountering Sawyer.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ-WRpqVe34&t=110s)
I haven’t listened to the entire interview yet, but this new member seems to have really understood and come to accept the teachings of Ti and Do. A lot of what Heaven’s Gate taught makes sense to people within a certain spiritual worldview. They see it as an evolution of what they already know or suspect. There will continue to be a small number of people for whom it appeals as long as either the website remains up, Sawyer keeps actively sharing his ideas and experiences, and/or Crlody keep posting on his blog. The big question is that lawsuit. The fact that ex-members are suing each other shows how powerful this is, and why it still has the hold it does.
You ask a really interesting question about the propagation of new religious movements after the death of their founders or first adherents. We don’t have really good data, but the assumption many scholars have is that most groups are short-lived and don’t survive the loss of their founders. A lot of small guru movements, channeling groups, and small Christian sects seem to come and go. But there are clear exceptions. Any new religious movement that is well organized seems to survive, especially if they have printed or digital materials or some lingering members who care about the group. These movements are probably more resilient than we give them credit for. It also gets into what sociologist of religion Max Weber called the “routinization of charisma” – is there some way that the founder’s charisma can be maintained after they are out of the picture? That can be in a sacred text, a new leader, an organization, etc. Some new religions have done that really well, like the Mormons in the 19th century or the Scientologists in the 20th century.
Sawyer:
Re: Ben’s writing, “There will continue to be a small number of people for whom it appeals as long as either the website remains up, Sawyer keeps actively sharing his ideas and experiences, and/or Crlody keep posting on his blog.”
As Cathy and Alexander and a number of others I know could testify, they didn’t become interested in the Story because of the Heaven’s Gate Website, nor my expressing my ideas and experiences, nor from Crlody’s blog posts. None of these have any great following. The elephant in that room is that they chose to exit in such a way that insured their foes would continue to broadcast the story while taking every opportunity to slant it away from their very robustly revealing even sensible teachings and “Good” behaviors and ways that all the religious leaders if they believed in what their founders taught would be challenged to hold in high esteem. This is a proven fact, that with each documentary more people have been interested to learn more about what TI and DO taught. At this point there is no telling whether that amount of people interested will grow. For example we put on four public meetings so far. Considering the tiny bit of advertising they were each well attended, but in particular the last two in Savannah and Cincinnati each sold out 100 tickets and that was with like 4-5 days of very limited advertising. One person at the last meeting said to me they became interested to hear what I had to say because they noted that the media seems to be going overboard to paint the story as pure evil.
TI and DO knew in 1982, heard in a number of audio tapes that there would be a significant “drama” in their exit. This is the way the Next Level runs their earth “garden”. When Jesus left he left with a great drama the lower forces jumped in right away to begin the distortion and dilution of what Jesus said by creating the Saul turning into Paul the believer scenario, though it took time for the lower forces to seek to really squash the truth of what was taught by Jesus and/or twist it, in fact evident most when the political church started with Constantine and Paul’s Epistles became it’s foundation rather than focusing on all the things Jesus said.
You all might also make note of the way the Catholic church, not only sought to make Peter the foundation of their church because of that little thing Jesus said when Peter correctly answered a question. Jesus was saying what Peter realized was the “foundation” of his believers (church) not the person of Peter. Then they put Mary on a pedestal as well when Mary at best was a student and they made her into a “goddess” like was done before and even tried to link her to the Revelation 12 “Woman”.
Where Ben says, “The big question is that lawsuit. The fact that ex-members are suing each other shows how powerful this is, and why it still has the hold it does.”
Correction – ex-members are not suing each other. I and Crlody and even Cathy are being sued by Mark and Sarah. It’s part of my defense and the defense of the other defendants to counter sue. If we hadn’t counter sued when we provided our “answer” to their complaint we would most likley lose that ability to counter sue. Plus if we hadn’t counter sued then even if all their complaint was thrown out and they didn’t get any of the compensation they are asking for that amounts to millions of dollars, we wouldn’t be able to have a claim on receiving the audio tapes they still have that they never gave to Jhnody, about 100 of them. Plus this defenses has cost me thousands even though Cathy and I have done everything pro se and they should be responsible for the debts I had to incur because of their actions against me/us.
Simultaneously, the church sought to restrict what manuscripts they were going to share with the public, having various councils to decide what was part of the “canon” and what was not. Then when the dead sea scrolls were found and the Nag Hammadi library they sought to hide them from people and/or claim they were not authentic and probably are still hiding parts of them.
Is it coincidence that Mark and Sarah are persecuting me and and Crlody (and even including Cathy) using the U.S. laws to decide that only they can choose who gets what information that was left behind by DO as gifts meant to be for all who were inclined to want and disseminate their information they left behind which there is a huge amount of proof DO, TI and Crew wanted. Is it the same minds seeking to now hide the audio tapes, especially the ones where DO tells the truth about why they were both sent out of the part of the Class where DO resided, where any student was required by their own choices to abide by all the procedures or leave.
Kingdom_of_heaven (Alexander’s) Response to what Ben Zeller said:
Hello, I am the new believer, Alexander, pictured/mentioned above. I wanted to clarify that I am not “a new member of the Class”. The Class is gone (not on earth), and there is no new group/class yet – as there are no Older Members incarnate that anyone is aware of. Also, I believed prior to meeting Sawyer. That just made me become actively involved. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed the interview. I am available for contact at beyonddeathrecordings@gmail.com
Warmasterwinter:
Hi Dr Zeller. If the Heavens gate cult did not die from mass suicide in 1997, do you belive it would still be around today? And if so, what changes could you forsee them introducing to survive in the modern world?
Ben Zeller:
I think they would be, and probably still would be waiting for the UFO. Applewhite may have already passed by now, but they had the precedent of Nettles’s passing. They understood Nettles’s death as Ti’s Next Level mind burning up her human body, and presumably would have felt the same about Do. I would conjecture they would still be living in a quasi-monastic manner. Community was important to them.
However, they conceptualized themselves as a class. That’s what they called themselves, after all, The Class. With both teachers gone, what would they do? I think they would have seen their continued presence on Earth as a sort of “internship” – one last set of experiences to have, to learn how to overcome, before going to (or returning to) The Evolutionary Level Above Human. They would need to adjust their theology. When Ti was on Earth, she channeled the Next Level. After she left, Do received communication from Ti, or at least sensations of communication (he never claimed, as far as I know, to be an actual channel). Would a member have stepped up and become the next channel? Would they all have? Or would they have believed the lines of communication are closed? Or a mix of all of them. Most of the ex-members believe communication is closed, but Sawyer implies some continued connection through dream states or other visionary experiences. So a continuing Heaven’s Gate might look a lot like a bunch of Sawyers. They also might look like modern day Shakers. The Shakers, also a celibate order, survived for hundreds of years after their founder died and after their “era of manifestation” in the 19th century ended and they no longer received spiritual messages. Last I checked, the Shakers were down to three members in Maine.
Sawyer:
Re: what was asked Ben about what might have happened if the Heaven’s Gate cult did not die in 1997.
I beg to differ with Ben saying that any “theology” would have changed had both Older Members left their vehicles before the Class Members. That’s not an opinion. In fact in 1978 TI and DO posed the question, “what if we both left before you all,” to which the only point I recall from that was when they said, not to get on a UFO unless it felt right and they said we would know it was from them. Given the audio tapes from 1996 and 1997, the students would have spent their remaining years disseminating TI and DO’s Information. In fact that’s exactly what they instructed those who believed in them who became or continued to believe in them after they exited. It was even described as a needed task to perform to show the Next Level we were willing to Stand in Their Defense of TI and DO as from the Creators Kingdom who created the earth and all it’s life forms and would have to maintain that stand and accept the consequences until they exited their human vehicle and that we needed our human vehicles to take advantage of performing that service and to further gain strength by controlling our vehicles in all the many ways.
I don’t know where Ben read or heard that TI “channeled the Next Level”. In fact, I’d bet I could find an audio tapes that says they don’t “channel”. Case in point would be audio 250B referring to Shirly McClains “channeling” in the movie “out on a limb” and others. In fact it was an example of what not to do because for a human to become a channel means they are inviting another entity, space alien and/or disincarnate or some type of thought stream to take over their vehicle. Next Level Students need to be in their vehicles all the time and be the only one in their vehicle. Older Members don’t take over one’s vehicle.
If you examine the tape log of all the audio tapes we have available since Mark and Sarah have not won their lawsuit to stop anyone from having them, you will see the use of the word channel as to tuning into the Next Level’s channel like on a radio dial. Or one will see it talked about as “channeling Next Level Love”.
But “Channeling” is what space alien souls and/or discarnates do through some humans, even many humans that many humans don’t even know is happening. In other words human vehicles are like “time shared” computer systems, shared by multiple discarnates we invite to use our vehicles by seeking this or that talent or skill or career, that in doing so attracts discarnates and/or space alien souls to literally use our vehicle. So what we are is the “chooser” of what to think, say and do. That’s how a mind is built. The Next Level Members, students need to rid themselves of those “Influences” to build the strength of will to keep them out of our vehicles and if we do so satisfactorily before we leave these vehicles the Next Level will advance us to our next more appropriate station of growth in the Next Level or at the least put our Souls “on ice” (not literally) but saved for a further time to finish our overcoming.
When TI and DO were both incarnate working together they individually received communication from TI’s Older Member, so they could be one another’s check partner as they also knew the lower forces would pretend to be their Older Members. They had to work hard to “feel” their Older Member’s Mind and learned how to recognize it. DO knew that TI was his Older Member so he still looked to TI’s lead on any subject or new instructions but as can be seen in many audio tapes DO is operating with TI as a partnership. After TI left DO then recognized when TI was communicating with him and when she was not and it was a continued struggle to be sure of what he was receiving as he still knew he could be misled by the lower forces. DO said the Next Level uses radio waves to communicate with human vehicles who are asking. He said that humans haven’t been given the intelligence from the Next Level to know how to receive and/or transmit that band of radio waves. I have experienced a little bit of recognition of when the Next Level seems to be giving me some communication but it’s not ever new information I can be sure is from them so I never state that it is because the only way we can know it’s from them is by seeing/hearing their thoughts in person and/or in writing and/or in audio and video tapes. However, even then, circumstances can change what they might say to new situations though most things they said and left behind won’t change thought there can always be a better understanding of the things they left behind that they said.
No students left behind step up to become a channel. I don’t know why Ben is admitting that DO never claimed to be a channel and then talks about TI being a channel and that students left behind when/if they both left becoming or stepping up to become a channel. That’s all a bunch of confusion and misinformation and I hope Ben reads this and uses better terms that can be shown to have come from TI and DO instead of grabbing on to the distortions of the new ager pseudo spiritualists who are acting as channels and claiming their are elevated by doing so.
I never claimed that my dreams were definitive communications from them. I personally feel some were them giving me answers to certain questions I asked of DO after they left. TI and DO taught that the Next Level uses dreams at times with humans to help them with the next days lessons. That is for any human. That doesn’t elevate someone to have dreams like that. In fact perhaps it shows that they needed that help where others who don’t have such dreams might not need that help. I had various premonitions and was given to see Spirits a number of times but I don’t make a big deal of them and feel I was allowed to see such things so I could communicate with other humans who have had such experiences from a place of experience of my own. I always believed Spirits were real, discarnates. But now I believe I’ve seen them. However that time of seeing spirits/discarnates or even some might have been Souls who were among the fallen angels, the Space Aliens has been long passed and I haven’t seen anything for many years. In fact of the dreams I’ve recently had with DO and/or classmates in them, I think most are being provided by the space alien or discarnates to try to act like it’s DO and/or Crew members when it’s a facsimile of them and it’s pretty clearly not them because of the vast difference from the dreams I had long ago that I feel were them.
That’s rather insulting to say “So a continuing Heaven’s Gate might look a lot like a bunch of Sawyers. They also might look like modern day Shakers.” I’m not really insulted. That’s also ridiculous and I’ve never ever given anyone any indication that I am a model believer. Even if I were, it would be way off track for anyone to look to me as a Teacher. DO and TI are our only Teachers and whether they are incarnate or not, that’s the way it is. I am not needed at all, not one iota by the Next Level. If I was not here there would be others who would fulfill any tasks I have or can perform. It’s for me that I have service the same as any true believer in TI and DO has if they want it and seek to be in TI and DO’s service.
And to compare with the Shakers is again way off any realistic understanding about all that TI and DO represented to us. For instance they like all religionists are living in the past in many ways. Celibacy has it’s value. There doesn’t need to be propagation on this planet at all according to TI and DO. The Next Level could make new vehicles for Student Souls to have to learn to take over should everyone cease propagating. I was reminded of that in audio tape 15 that I just listened to today that Cathy instigated our listening to and I remembered that meeting.
RidingWithDonQuixote:
Hi Dr. Zeller, I was wondering what your thoughts are on Janja Lalich ‘s concept of “bounded Choice” and how it relates to Heaven’s Gate? Thanks
Ben Zeller:
I think her model is circular and not particularly helpful. The way she defines bounded choice it can be applied to every religious group I am aware of, and many non-religious ones too, as she herself describes using the example of a political-social movement of which she had been a member. So if everyone’ choices are bounded, then what distinguishes the groups Lalich wants to call cults? From what I can tell, it is entirely subjective. The choices need to look extreme to her. But “extreme” is subjective, by definition. Is believing your group’s founder rose from the dead extreme? Is rejecting mainstream medicine to practice faith healing extreme? Or shunning one’s children if they don’t join your religion? Or requiring women to cover their heads or men to have beards, or for that matter performing your rituals naked? Or men to get circumcised, or remain celibate, or practice polygamy, or refusing to fight in a war, or forcing people to fight in a war? I’ve got no way to say whose religion is more or less bounded than anyone else’s, given how much religions have varied over time and across cultures. So bounded choice doesn’t offer a way for me to understand how or why the members of Heaven’s Gate’s choices were bounded, since it requires a subjective judgement that they are a cult before I am able to use the model.
Lalich engaged in very limited archival and historical work on Heaven’s Gate. She’s not a scholar of Heaven’s Gate. She is a professional anti-cultist for whom Heaven’s Gate is simply an example of a broader category, “cult,” that she wishes to combat. I don’t see a lot of attention in her work to what the members actually say about themselves, their own experiences, or their religious/spiritual journeys.
ProfessorSlendercat:
Dr. Zeller, It seems like Heaven’s Gate shares similarities with many religions of past and present in terms of theology with the concept of reincarnation, separating the mind from the body, and many more. It seems like Ti was very into learning about such concepts before her time in HIM. What shared characteristics/theological models do you see the most in both Heaven’s Gate and in other similar groups as well? • Dave
Ben Zeller:
Definitely, Ti had encountered these ideas before meeting Do. We know that Ti had been a Theosophist. The core idea of Theosophy is that people spiritually evolve over many lifetimes, i.e. reincarnation. Theosophists were inspired by Buddhism and Hinduism, and the founders (Blavatsky and Olcott) spent time in Asia, so there is indirect influence from those ideas in Heaven’s Gate. Most of the UFO religions of the 20th century were inspired at somewhat from Theosophy, especially through the “I AM” offshoot that focused on Ascended Masters from outer space who helped humans develop spiritually. The first major contactee religion, founded by George Adamski in the 1950s, was explicitly Theosophical. So it’s not surprising to find theosophical ideas like reincarnation in Heaven’s Gate. We also find it in the broader New Age movement, which also is influenced by Theosophical and Asian ideas. And we know Ti and Do were moving in New Age circles, or at least what we could call New Age now (alternative healing practices, energy work, meditation, spiritual practices involving yoga, etc.).
What’s so interesting is they take all that and then read it into the Bible and a basically Christian apocalyptic message about the end of the world!
Sawyer:
re: Ben saying, “What’s so interesting is they take all that and then read it into the Bible and a basically Christian apocalyptic message about the end of the world!”
Anyone who reads their bible, to include the words of Jesus knows he was claiming to have existed before he was Jesus. Plus people were always looking for the return of the messiah. Even most Buddhists, when one Buddha dies are looking for that same entity to return. The meaning of the word “incarnation” is “in the flesh”, thus reincarnation means “in the flesh again”. Since all the major religions were first stimulated by the Next Level Above Human, aka The Kingdom of God, The Kingdom of Heaven or in modern more accurate terms, The Kingdom Level Above Human or Kingdom of Space, the literal Heavens (elevated areas above the earth), according to TI and DO but became religions because the Lower forces, Lucifer and his associated “fallen angels”, aka Satan (Adversaries), the Devil (great deceiver) and other names, when a Next Level Representative exited their incarnation stepped in to distort and dilute the truth into a religion that then developed it’s own dogma that no longer resembled what the original Members of the Next Level taught. They still have the teachings in their holy books but they don’t know how to understand them so they focus instead on almost totally irrelevant parts of it like the way Christians became focused on Pauls Epistles that hardly at all taught what Jesus said because Paul didn’t know what Jesus said unless he heard part of it from the disciples who got it directly. And since even those disciples didn’t understand much of what he said the result is a religion that teaches nothing that Jesus taught.
Meditation is in the new and old testaments. It’s called Prayer, like the Our Father. If someone really wants to see how most everything taught by TI and DO is in the New and Old Testaments, I suggest reading my book. It’s available to read for free on my blog. Here is the address to the index file as it’s very long: https://sawyerhg.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/index-to-sawyers-book-posts-ti-and-do-the-father-and-jesus-heavens-gate-ufo-two-witnesses/
Yes TI and DO studied all the religous and spiritual materials they could find as they criss crossed the U.S. in 1973 because they both individually knew that they had each, their Souls, their advanced parts of their Mind had come from the Kingdom in the Heavens to bring updates to the Bible and to fulfill prophecy. They didn’t know what prophecy they were hear to fulfill until they came upon Revelation 11 Two Witnesses. They had a hard time accepting that. One can read about that time in ’88 Update – The UFO Two and Their Crew which is in the Heaven’s Gate Book and found on the Heaven’s Gate web site and can be downloaded for free from there.
They never taught out of the Bible. No reading chapter and verse. Only one time did we bring bibles to a meeting. That was when DO called the meeting that TI didn’t attend though she was still in her vehicle, which was rare for him to do. He said open your bibles, the few we had to Revelation 12:1 and said the “woman” was talking about TI and the Dragon was talking about Lucifer. He didn’t explain much more than that. I then went to that chapter when I started writing my book and saw how every verse can literally be talking about TI and DO and Crew.
However, DO did address a handful of things from the Revelation in the Beyond Human – The Last Call video series. We did do some study of the bible as an option starting in the late 1980’s when DO was getting signals that we might go public again and was examining what we would say, using what kinds of terms – religious and/or generic to approach which people. He ended up addressing both religionist Christians and Atheists in his posting to the world wide web in 1995 seen in the Heaven’s Gate Book as well.
I got off the statement Ben made but like I was trying to say, TI and DO didn’t “read” anything “into the bible”. It’s all there and I can prove it but the question is who is willing to look at it that most real way instead of always translating and interpreting what Jesus said and did in “spiritual (mental) ways” and/or only looking mostly at the parables and/or not seeing what Jesus said in context – making some of what he meant as literal into figures and visa versa.
KevinDLasagna: Wish I had a question, just wanna drop in to say thanks for sharing your knowledge on this group and subject. I’ve always felt that Dr. Zeller has had one of the more nuanced and compassionate responses to this group and their ultimate fate
Thanks! I know I’ve said this before in other interviews, but I see my work on Heaven’s Gate as an attempt to speak for the basic humanity of these folks. I realize of course that they didn’t see themselves as human, and in fact wanted to not be human, but from my perspective as an outsider to the group I cannot help but want to understand them as fully human, living through all the same sort of turmoil, joys, problems, happiness, and confusion as the rest of us.
Sawyer:
re: Ben saying he sought to “understand [the group] as fully human.
I understand that, but as one of them whole heartedly, though having failed to make the grade they made, I believe I can say that there was no confusion among group members that we all had human vehicles, so no lack of dealing with all the things humans deal with and enjoy, etc. However, what we also knew was that there were things about humans we did not identify with. I know this is the case with many. I bet Ben is included in that. For instance the wars are characterisitic of some humans to wage and support. Abusing people, manipulating people, deceiving people, judgementalism, hording wealth, not wanting to help people, being selfish, gossip, seeking vengence and jealously are all additional characteristics of many even most humans. The reason some of us know this, even though we haven’t necessarily conquered those behaviours and ways is because we also have Above and Beyond Human Mind that has taught us and we’ve learned from experience was true, that those behaviors and ways were primitive. There are many more. We all have ancestors who experienced these behaviors and also some have ancestors who were literally witnesses to the times when Older Members came to the earth to teach a Class. I would suggest that the greater challenge is not to see the human characteristics in the Class members but the characteristics they developed that were taught by TI and DO and are evident throughout the audio tapes as proof. And this is a big part of why Mark and Sarah have been conned to try to hide those tapes as the lower forces don’t want anyone to really know the in depth evidence of what TI and DO and Crew were all about. They were about pure Goodness.
Those lower forces bombard all of us so there is no shame in dealing with their thoughts. But if we don’t choose to see the handwriting on the wall of who TI and DO were representing, over and over and over, well then eventually we each decide our own fate of never rising out of our humanness. This was designed to work this way so that people would have to really want to learn the truth and choose to apply it.
hale__bopp:
Hello Dr. Zeller, I wanted to ask if you knew of it had any information about Srrody specifically to share. As well, do you know if there are any relics from any of the group’s businesses such as Think Link?
Ben Zeller:
I am sure there are relics out there. Every once in a while I come across something on eBay where a seller claims it was in the house in Rancho Santa Fe. I’m not really a collector myself, but I know this stuff is out there. Someone probably has a bunch of their stuff from the businesses, maybe even without knowing about it.
Srrody was a pretty important member of Heaven’s Gate. His birthname was Steven McCarter, and he joined in February 1976, which was a month before Ti declared the harvest closed. He was a student at the University of North Carolina when he joined, and he went by Surry in the group before they received their “ody” names. He was into computer programming. He was the first member to be castrated, and Sawyer recounts that the idea came from the two of them. Sawyer has talked a lot about that, so I won’t repeat it here (it is in the podcast, for example). There is disagreement over whether it was Srrody’s idea initially, but there is agreement he was the first to undergo the procedure, and no reason to doubt Sawyer’s account.
Srrody wrote a lot. He wrote an Earth exit statement, and contributed to the Heaven’s Gate anthology, the “purple book.” He believed in conspiracy theories, and defended himself and other members of the Class from the charge of being brainwashed. He also appears in Alxody’s Christmas home video that Alxody gave to his mother Nancy Brown. In the video he seems like a happy guy who had found a loving community. This is either heartening or depressing, depending on your outlook.
Sawyer:
I know this is Ben’s interview so I won’t try to answer the questions to him but my intention here is to respond to what Ben said when I feel certain things he said may not give what I believe is an accurate enough picture.
For instance, I understand that Ben has done some research re: Srrody and has this opinion about him, but saying “Srrody was a pretty important member of Heaven’s Gate”, I believe Srrody, if he were hear that told to the public would like for them to also hear his perspective, which I will attempt to express. I would say that Srrody was no more or less important than any of his Classmates. In fact, “self” is never in the picture for any Member of the Next Level. The best they can be is to be a link in the chain of Mind to the Chief of Chiefs, the way TI and DO described the most experienced Older Member of the Next Level, someone who DO said we wouldn’t understand more about where he came from until we were Members of the Next Level because our human brains aren’t capable of understanding much about him. However, Members of the Next Level are not the same. Some have more significant tasks than others have but it is not they who measure themselves or others – that’s a waste of time. Their Older Members have that kind of overview and give tasks to the younger members according to what they feel is productive for the crew of any laboratory which would also be a growth opportunity for that person as well.
I believe I heard from DO that TI stood up at the Manhattan, Kansas meeting, she and DO were giving, on April 21, 1976, when they were being heckled, and said, “the harvest is closed”. Later she and DO informed the Group coordinators of the 5 or 6 groups who were traveling around the country holding public meetings to finish up holding the meetings they had started. In the Group I became a part of, after roaming the US for several months apart from any Group, we finished the Fayetteville, AR meeting sometime in early to mid June and received instructions from TI and DO to gather in the Veedavou rustic camping area in the Medicine Bow National Forest east of Laramie, WY that began in earnest the “overcoming Classroom”. TI and DO never gave a public meeting again together or by themselves. In 1994 Students gave all the meetings though that was a type of “2nd rapture” – “catching away” from the world, Souls catching vehicles to complete their overcoming by rising out of human behaviors and ways.
I believe Ben’s saying re: Srrody’s castration, that, “Sawyer recounts that the idea came from the two of them” was not realizing that what I reported in that regard was taken out of context. I often say alot, even too much at times and what get’s remembered is only partly accurate.
It was DO who instigated the idea of having the castration (removal of testicles) in around 1989 when he wanted to have the procedure himself. Lvvody was an RN before she joined and had worked for doctors as her out-of-craft task (in the world) over the years. At that time, she worked as a doctors nurse in a private practice as I understand it, who performed orchiectomies, the removal of testicles mostly due to cancer. So Lvvody knew the procedure and new what tools and supplies to gather to perform the surgery.
DO said in a meeting Lvvody was gathering the needed items. He also told the entire Class if I recall correctly, that he had had a nocturnal emission and that he hadn’t done anything to allow or encourage it. A couple days later DO had a meeting with just the students who had male vehicles and he went into detail what the procedure entailed. He was bringing it up in case he got instructions to allow some students to have the same procedure. I remember writing a note to him saying I would like the procedure. He didn’t tell us we needed to have it or if we’d be making a poor choice if we didn’t want the procedure. Some in male vehicles didn’t even have a problem with their sexuality so they certainly wouldn’t need a procedure. A few days later, DO arranged for about a dozen students to come to his quarters, a nearby house to where we lived. His Helpers, Lvvody and Jnnody were there as well. In that little meeting he explained that he felt he might allow male vehicles to have that procedure. He said the same equivilent procedure for female vehicles was too invasive. He asked if any of us had a reservation of having that procedure. All I recall was Hvvody saying he had a reservation about having the procedure. That began conflict in Hvvody’s mind and that weighted on him heavy and because of that left the Class shortly after. I had no reservation about having the procedure and expressed that to DO in a note. A short time later, DO said he had no instructions from TI to allow a student to have that procedure. I had been asking him to have the procedure and at one point DO said there were two other students who were asking. DO told me at that point he had no instruction to proceed. So the entire subject was put on hold for even several years.
Then one day DO called Srrody and I to the phone and gave us instructions to come to his craft. We didn’t know why until we got there nad saw a sterile room had been organized out of a clean office space in the warehouse they lived in at that time. We didn’t know why but when we got there saw the sterile room and learned he was going to allow both of us to have the procedure. Prkody, (Michael F.) the third student who had been asking DO to allow him to have the procedure shortly left the Class but I’m not sure why.
So yes, Srrody had been asking DO to allow him to have the procedure and I had also made that clear that if he got instruction I’d still want the procedure.
This story plus more details of what took place, I put in the document, Sawyer’s Story on my blog at: sawyerhg.wordpress.com.
re: Ben’s saying about Srrody that “He believed in conspiracy theories” I find quite presumptuous. I don’t think Srrody was any more prone to jumping to conclusions that I am. There are some such theories that seem obvious to me that they are probably real and others not.
Yes, Srrody was a visibly expressive “happy guy” – happy to be a student of TI and DO’s. In general he was never really heavy in his demeanor.
davpostk:
Greetings, How important do you think the group’s specific theology played in the recruitment of new members? Did their exact message matter as much as what else the group offered, such as a sense of community and bettering oneself? Thank you.
Ben Zeller:
Excellent question. Both and neither, depending on the person. Some people joined because they were looking for explanations of Biblical prophecy, or of UFO sightings, or other specific theological ideas, and they found Ti and Do’s ideas convincing. Others just thought Ti and Do were far out, and joined for that reason. But plenty were just looking for spiritual fulfillment and community and a sense of truth and meaning. It was probably a mix for most people. There were a few head scratchers of people who joined in the 1970s who had not been part of any new or alternative religions, but most were spiritual seekers for whom joining a group like this offered a new way to transform themselves.
You have to remember that during that time it was a lot tougher to find a community if you were into alternative spirituality. Today we have the Internet and social media. Back then, they had bookstores, and co-ops, and head shops, and the very first New Age stores and retreat centers. There was a whole alternative spiritual ecosystem just forming, and Heaven’s Gate was part of that.
Sawyer:
Even if it were true that, as Ben said, “Some people joined because they were looking for explanations of Biblical prophecy, or of UFO sightings, or other specific theological ideas, and they found Ti and Do’s ideas convincing,” they probably never showed up at the next meeting. For instance during the 1975 meetings there were plenty of curiosity seekers who stayed after the meeting to ask questions and some were ready to join. For most they were told to meet us in the next city where we planned to hold a meeting. Some were told to be at a certain pay phone at a certain time and an existing member would be sure to call them and if they were still serious about joining would be told to travel to that next city. Anyone in 1975-6 and 1994 that wanted to join was given the task of tying up the loose ends of their lives and doing so quickly, like within 3 days (though for some it was more) and were instructed to “not leave a mess”. In other words, ask the Next Level or highest source in the universe in the literal deeps space heavens where space aliens can’t go, for help and try to listen for what feels right to do. There was to be no abandoning of children. If someone was serious and asked the Next Level for help in whatever their terms were, they would be given solutions to all problems. That happened in many circumstances I personally know about. For instance when Sngody joined part of my group in 1976 went to her hotel or condo or townhouse and she was there with her two teenage daughters. They knew exactly what their mom wanted to do. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for them and it wasn’t easy for Sngody either, but it seemed evident that Sngody had raised her children knowing that some day she wanted to go off to join a monestary. In Ron and Judy’s case, the two personal friends I had in Newport, OR made arrangements with Judy’s X who was the biological father of the two young children, Jenny and Noah a the time aged 4 and 1 if I recall. However, the media reported they were abandoned and in a sense that was true but not any more than what happens to many children when a marriage with kids breaks up. As it turned out Judy only stayed in the group a month or so and Ron not much longer.
My point is that “joining” wasn’t absolute by any means. In fact TI and DO wrote a letter that I think can be found entitled, “Prospective Candidate Letter” given to those we met at meetings. Even if someone was allowed to join, though they didn’t know it, it was on a trial basis. That was especially evidenced when TI and DO separated 19 students who had made it to the Wyoming camp in the summer of 1976 and then told the larger group of about 80 of which I was a part that you, “made the first cut”. Ti and DO didn’t think they were ready to give their all yet they still stayed in touch with them for years but some of them returned to the world and some remained together even renting a place together when we moved into houses around 1980. TI and DO lost touch with them and in about 1982 one of them, Drrody ran into Nrrody or Sngody where they worked at the Amarillo Hospital and he was allowed to rejoin. Otherwise no one could find us and by June of 1976 we weren’t looking for new members. I remember when Jssody left around 1980 right after a UFO that TI anticipated picking us up didn’t show up. As I understood it she was with us mostly to see or board a UFO.
I joined with none of those interests Ben mentioned. I knew this was for me. TI and DO didn’t care about attracting a certain number like most all the other groups do by wanting continued new members. I guess one could say I joined because I was looking for “spiritual fulfillment” as Ben suggests but for me and I bet most it had nothing to do with “wanting community” except perhaps on some subconscious level. I know psychologists like to thrown around all these reasons and yet they also often hate to look at an answer they can’t or don’t want to fathom, that certain vehicles were prepared by the Next Level to be ready to join with the Older Members when they came in the flesh. (incarnate). Before I joined I tried to be a part of other alternative religions. I went to a couple Sufi dances in Oregon. I meditated on the picture of Sri Chin Moy on the request of one of my musical buddies who was a disciple of his. I was reading the Bhagavad Gita and not making a whole lot of sense from it. It was given to me on the street where I often found myself by a Hare Krishna devotee whom I spoke to for a while. I read the book by Parmahansa Yogananda and wanted to be enlightened like he was, though had no idea what that was nor how much work would be required. I participated in several informal meditations but became bored. I stayed with a house full of Jesus freaks for about a week or so and it was a time of regular debate. I thought the new testament, though I respected the words from Jesus, was full of inconsistencies and contradictions. (Perhaps that was found mostly in Paul’s letters). But I didn’t understand what Jesus taught much then.
In 1994 while I was one of the two overseers of a group holding public meetings around the US, we put on a meeting in chicago with two other groups in that area. Some of the footage is available on crlody’s youtube channel. After the meeting a young couple were considering joining us and my partner Chkody and I were interviewing them informally trying to learn what they wanted and then also telling them what we were doing traveling town to town holding these public meetings. When I told him we were out of money so received our needs – food, gasoline and sometimes lodging and posters and a meeting space by asking Churches and anyone and sometimes working odd jobs and that when we got food donations we generally ate what was offered us and that sometimes that meant eating at taco bell and other fast food places, they said they couldn’t do that as they were strict vegans. That ended the talk. I had no desire to have to largely manage a group of new members who were so inflexible about what they ate, as long as the food wasn’t disgusting and didn’t entail dumpster diving to obtain.
So what I’m saying is that “joining” didn’t look like what it looked like in probably any other cult or group becasue TI nor DO were working to get more heads into the group. We did welcome anyone that wanted to go the distance of learning how to overcome all their human addictions.
Sseae:
Hello Dr Zeller, What do you think are the healthy psychological needs that people seek fulfilment of in cults? Thank you
Ben Zeller:
I’m not a psychologist, but I think it boils down to belonging and meaning. We all want to feel like we belong. Some of us are lucky enough to find that in our birth families, or our chosen families, or work, clubs, groups of friends, etc. But everyone has a need for some sense of belonging. (I suppose there are rare exceptions, hermits and such, but even they tend to be parts of religious orders or groups.) We also want meaning in our lives, a sense of purpose or fulfillment or overarching story about our lives. Our capitalist society often reduces that to “what do you do,” i.e. your job. But there are many other ways to find meaning.
Cults put these together, and tend to do so in a radical way, by not only providing a sense of belonging and meaning but by declaring that they offer the only meaningful way to belong. Everything else is marked as inferior, even evil. But it isn’t just groups we label cults that do this. We find it to some extent in most religions, and especially in fundamentalist religions. It is very powerful to say that one belongs to a group which has the absolute truth, and that everyone else is simply deluded and wrong. We see this in politics, fandoms, etc. But it is even more powerful when you say God is on your side. That is one reason I don’t like the language of “cult.” The same sociological and psychological forces at work in new religions are present in many other religions and even outside of religions, but we are just used to it.
Sawyer:
I have to offer another answer to the question from Sseae about what are healthy psychological needs that people seek fulfillment of in cults.
Ben says it’s “belonging and meaning” but then says that’s what “we all want to feel…a sense of belonging…and also meaning in our lives, a sense of purpose…”
Then Ben says, “Cults put these together, and tend to do so in a radical way” as if any cult leader sits around and thinks up the things he/she can think up so that they will attract followers by grasping on to their offering of what it means to belong to something or to have a purpose.
To me that doesn’t at all describe cult leaders and especially not TI and DO but it does seem to describe governments who plan and analyze what to tell people so they will vote for them. Like when George Bush realized that if he played to the Christians, he could probably win and did. It’s called politics – tell the people what they want to hear. It doesn’t matter much if you actually deliver because no matter what you will do what the party leaders and associated government leaders and corporate leaders in bed with government want anyway.
Case in point. Look how much of the public was hoodwinked or didn’t care as long as they could win, when after trying to doctor voting districts and use all kinds of shenanigans to get votes and reduce what opponents get, when they were caught as in the 2000 election in Florida, they got the supreme court of the U.S. to order the supposedly sovereign Florida Supreme Court to change their minds and not recount at least one major county’s votes where there were many irregularities that it was proven later would have resulted in Al Gore winning the presidency and even Al Gore reversed his stance from saying publicly that “every vote would be counted” to throwing in the towel an hour or so later as I watched what was happening.
Then when Bush admin was in power his cronies orchestrated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where Americans killed and mutilated and displaced millions of people on totally falsified pretenses and the Democratic leadership like the Clintons’ went along with it hook line and sinker.
But let’s step back even further to the Vietnam war. The U.S. war machine brought that about and is it any coincidence that those that attracted the most attention to not have that war and to stop it after it began were assassinated, namely JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and even John Lennon and no doubt others and yet that’s all turned out to be called “conspiracy theories”.
So what does this have to do with the formation of cults?
The U.S. became the destination for people all over the world fleeing their tyrannical regimes. Those people had children. In the U.S. people were forced to join the military and all who didn’t want to kill and be killed for their government were killed as traitors. Then when soldiers came home from their wars and saw how they were deceived by the government leaders this made huge impressions on their families. My vehicles dad had regular nightmares because of his horrendous experiences in WWII. He’s be screaming at night every so often, holding onto the bed trembling. My Uncle, my dads brother fought in Korea and knew many who died because they were often treated as canon fodder by the generals, etc. Yet he didn’t know who to blame and was deceived to think it was all the fault of the democrats. When I was going to be drafted to go to Vietnam I prepared to go to Canada. There was no way I would go to kill and be killed and over 55,000 US soldiers died and killed millions. They dropped more bombs on Laos and Cambodia in a few weeks than through all the years of WWII combined.
So what am I doing, trying to give a history lesson? Well perhaps that can be helpful to this question that to me is a part of a number of questions and answers from Ben as to how and why cults form.
It’s because of a deep genetic sense that there is a great deal wrong with many people and leaders in this world. People come into this life and don’t even know how programmed they are to go along with the status quo and the status quo is like a stagnant pool that breeds decay. But is that true or is that just the ranting of a former cult member? Look at the evidence. If someone can’t see it, it’s because they either don’t have that knowing in their genes or they have led a sheltered life or refuse to see it because they don’t want to be seen or to even become one of “them” or because they are programmed to think, by their genes to think the way the world works is normal and normal is good, not having a clue how far from true “good” it is. So when someone comes along that sees through some of the crap, they hear some things that they are curious about so they listen more and sometimes are told by others that person is very special, to be looked up to, has gathered a flock and people are lifted up by it. Now these leaders in development are not Next Level Members though people that flock to them can learn a lot by following them until they start to see things that don’t make sense, don’t seem “good”. Then they should get out and continue to seek if there is someone else that helps them learn more. The problem rises when some get comfortable in a group, with certain leaders and even have their own forms of profit, like being given more responsibilities, even earn money and gain self esteem for themselves. For those, when they begin to hear something that perks up their ears they may feel it’s really interesting but then they can realize that if they continue in the vein they may lose what they gained with the other, so they block it out, even over and over and over. They become deaf to even the truth about the person they saw as their leader and fear changing and having to start all over again in some other vein. Then we see events like Jonestown and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the Solar Temple people and what happened in Kenya and others that show very bad horrific behavior and the so called normal society figures then lump in TI and DO’s Heaven’s Gate group with them though they have nothing in common except that people died, which all humans have in common with one another best I can tell.
Now this hardly relates to “cults”. Cults are labeled as such by the groups that once started when they themselves might have been seen as a minority organization or fringe or just plain contrary to the previous status quo. The word means it’s a “sub-culture” as opposed to a “culture”. Notice how every group that started as a cult still acts in cultish ways. Each major religion. Atheism, the Ye are Gods movement seen as parts of new age spirituality. Space alien worshipper groups. But that’s hardly all of them. Take the military – now that’s one huge culture many support with their lives and their children’s lives. Take the Universities with the same curriculum. If one doesn’t go along with that curriculum they won’t get the degree and won’t get the better job. If they are a teacher in that School and they don’t abide by the curriculum enough they never make it to tenure. Take the medical community. If one strays too far they can lose their license, especially when there is a political and other agenda to what the government is preaching is the only way to act. If one becomes a whistleblower that’s the end of their career so not something many have the guts to do.
None of these groups or the new ones called cults really spontaneously developed because hold onto your hats, they are the product of the Ones we’ve heard about called the Space Aliens who in the records of earth civilizations were led by one person who had the name Lucifer and were written about by Moses and Enoch and others as the “Fallen Angels” – some who once had a barely passing grade to their first year in “college”, hence Next Level Membership and were given very elementary tasks and they botched them up and didn’t want to receive correction from the Next Level Older Members so they gradually lost sight of how far advanced over them and all humans and human equivalents these Older Members were/are. These are the ones who are still among us on earth though very good at hiding but who bombard humans with thoughts to keep them addicted to themselves and substances and sensuality and procreation that keeps depleting their ability to recognize the truth when it is staring them in the face.
The humans who have the most influence over other humans are the ones who these Lower forces most fill with their ideas so that they will become their ambassadors to keep the people distracted from seeking or comprehending what’s real, that there is a purpose to all this and for those that refuse to look for it, perhaps they will get more chances but at some point that will end because we live in a cyclic condition and humans are important to a point, since we need these human vehicles in order to learn lessons through and without gaining strength directing our vehicles we won’t ever qualify to become even beginners in the Next Level.
So I think one of the biggest positives in cults is being willing to embrace new information and learn more of what’s true yet at the same time known when to move on, if one never comes into recognizing the endless growth that an only be had by pursuing TI and DO’s teachings.
Flippin_Heckles:
No questions here. I just wanted to say on behalf of the moderating team and r/ Heavensgate community, thank you for agreeing to do this ??
Ben Zeller:
My pleasure! I stumbled across the r/Heavensgate forum before. I can’t remember if a student told me about it, but I was impressed by the research and dedication your community has to understanding this misunderstood group. I was tempted to pop over and say hello, but I didn’t want to be intrusive. It reminds me of the old Usenet newsgroups I was part of back in the 90s.
RidingWithDonQuixote:
How would you describe the relationships between Total Overcomers/Heavens Gate and the 12 Step movement, and where one might be able to get more info on their interactions with groups of this type? It’s no secret that Heaven’s Gate was influenced by at least some of the 12 step groups (e.g., sexaholics anonymous), but finding any specific historical examples of interactions between Heaven’s Gates members/founders and the 12 step groups has proven difficult for me to track down. Thanks again
Ben Zeller:
The time period in 1987 when the Class called themselves the Anonymous Sexaholics Celibate Church is the most direct example of this sort of influence. But from what I can tell, that was mostly a marketing approach, and members were not using 12 Step approaches in their actual practices. The group dropped the Anonymous Sexaholics Celibate Church a year later, in 1988, but the influence continued. They talk about addictions and overcoming addictions in the Total Overcomers Anonymous documents as late as 1993, even thought they had dropped the Sexaholics and adopted the more general “Overcomers” name by then. But obviously, given that they still called themselves Total Overcomers Anonymous, they were still alluding to both recovery programs generally and likely 12 Step programs in particular. So you are right that there was influence that continued, and clearly someone in Heaven’s Gate had run across 12 Step programs at some point. I have not ever seen evidence of who or when, so your guess is as good as mine.
Sawyer:
I don’t know why Ben believes the name of the project “Anonymous Sexaholics Celibate Church” (ASCC) was a “marketing approach” as there was nothing for sale, no market.
As I was there, true we didn’t have a 12 step practice in relationship to that addictive behavior. However, I recall both TI and DO being fond of the Alcoholics Anonymous groups to a point. But TI and Do were not influenced by 12 Step groups teachings, it’s the other way around. TI and DO from their start even evidenced in the first book they began to write in January/February of 1993, entitled, “I can’t believe that but you must” that they thought they threw away but I ended up with by it’s faded yellow paper perhaps the original. In it they talk about overcoming all human behaviors and ways to evolve into a new creature.
I believe there were some students who had come through a 12 step program. But one problem they had with the sexahaulics anonymous group and I believe the sex and love addicts anonymous group in California that Alxody and Jwnody I believe went to visit and spoke to briefly (one of them) was that they insisted on telling their story over and over and over and thus re-stimulating that behavior over and over in doing so. And they didn’t like being told they could actually lick that addiction. Like the thinking that once an addict always an addict isn’t true.
If you search the tape log for keywords I believe you will find audio tapes of TI and/or DO talking about the 12 step programs. Also you will hear DO talk about them in the Beyond Human Video Tape Series and in their Book that is free to read online or download.
AnonymousDictator:
Would you be able to provide any information about how long each member who exited with the class had been a member before the exit? Thanks so much!
Ben Zeller:
This I can do! I am copying directly from Table 2.1 from my book, which was fact checked by Mrcody, Srfody, Rio, Sawyer, Crlody, etc. before I published it.
Name Year of Entrance / Initial Membership Do (Founder) Alxody* 1975 Glnody† 1975 Chkody† 1975 Jnnody† 1975 Jwnody† 1975 Lggody† 1975 Lvvody† 1975 Mllody 1975 Nrrody† 1975 Ollody 1975 Prsody 1975 Slvody† 1975 Snnody 1975 Stlody 1975 Stmody† 1975 Wndody 1975 Anlody† 1976 Brnody† 1976 Dmmody 1976 Drrody† 1976 Dstody 1976 Jmmody† 1976 Smmody† 1976 Sngody 1976 Srrody 1976 Strody 1976 Tllody 1976 Trsody 1976 Evnody 1991 Avnody 1994 Gldody 1994 Leody 1994 Qstody† 1994 Tddody† 1994 Wknody† 1994 Yrsody† 1994 Vrnody 1995 Dvvody 1996 †: contributed to the Heaven’s Gate anthology (“Purple Book”)
Fearless-Ninja-4252
Dr Zeller, Firstly, I would like to thank you for the research and information you have uncovered regarding Heaven’s Gate. I cheekily have more than one question: Why does the media and general public have the perception that Do was a mass murderer, when it has been well established that Ti was the true leader of the group, which brings me to my next question…. It seems to me that Do had truly convinced himself that he and the rest of Heaven’s Gate would ascend to the next level. Do you believe this to be the case, or do you think he is the master manipulator that the media, and Ti’s daughter has made him out to be?
Ben Zeller:
I think Do believed it. We have no way of knowing, but his actions indicated that he believed it. He lived like the rest of the group, he spoke with intention about the group’s theology, he followed the same rules everyone else in the Class did, and he died like the rest of them. If we decide to ignore his actions and words and claim that he did not believe them, then we need to do the same with every other religious leader. What proof is there that the Pope is really Catholic, or the Dalai Lama really Buddhist? Or anyone, really? Declaring that Applewhite was a master manipulator certainly helps Ti’s daughter Terri feel better about her mother’s choices, and for all we know she may be correct, but there is absolutely no evidence to support that position. (Likewise, people opposed to the Pope’s religion or politics do claim that the Pope isn’t a real Catholic, etc.)
However, the idea that Applewhite was a master manipulator and liar is useful if we want to reinforce our perspectives, i.e. the beliefs we have that make us comfortable. What Do did, and what members of Heaven’s Gate did, is irrational to those of us outside the group. But if we believe the members were duped and Applewhite was lying, then that fits what we know about cults and relieves us from having to think too hard about why 39 people thought laying down their human lives to leave the Earth and go to what they believed was the Next Level made sense to them. It is a lot easier to assume everyone whose beliefs and practices are different than ours are crazy, evil, manipulated, or brainwashed. I can see the power in that claim. Maybe they were, who knows? It just doesn’t have any evidence to support it.
Sawyer:
re: Fearless-Ninja-5252’s question, “Why does the media and general public have the perception that Do was a mass murderer, when it has been well established that Ti was the true leader of the group…”
First off, there was no “murder,” not one iota of murder. The media represents mostly the relative elites of the world and are anything but interested in reporting much objectively. Even when there are some who wish to present a more accurate picture of what happened, their editors won’t allow it. I know this as a fact from many and I mean many interviews I’ve had with most all the major media corporations, BBC, CNN, including Larry King, National Geographics channel, CBS 60 Minutes, NBC’s Today Show, Geraldo show, the Heaven’s Gate Podcast that led to the HBO Max Cult of Cults docuseries and the latest and perhaps the worst that you may be referring to, ABC’s 2020 piece (and many others including Vice and Inside Edition. I have given almost all of them like 3 hours of interviews and I gave dozens of concrete, even provable examples of how every student had to prove they wanted to be in the group (and student like myself didn’t even realize how much we had to prove it, because TI and DO, though encouraged us and at times pushed us a little and I mean a little, amounting to telling us in a plain voice that we needed to work harder on getting control of our vehicles to qualify to graduate into performing tasks on board Next Level spacecrafts in the literal outer space heavens). There are 1061 audio tapes that prove this, month by month over about 22 years of which I was present for 19. The ABC people wouldn’t even let me comment on an article they posted on their youtube channel, while before the event they were ever so nice to me. And by the way I am always respectful of people.
They only used what would fit into the story they wanted to tell. TI was not the “true leader” of the group. TI and DO worked as a partnership. They were both the true leaders of the group. I can prove that but the question is who wants to examine the evidence, or just take what the media says and assume they did the research which they hardly do.
It is true that TI at first largely woke up DO to his task. It is true that over some months DO realized on his own that TI was his Older Member in the Next Level, his Heavenly Father. Of course to many people that’s crazy but many people also don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why scientists and historians and anthropologists and archeologists and others worldwide are always updating what they thought they knew while the ones who have the most tail feathers in that then accepted societal views fight tooth and nail to claim new ideas or discoveries are illegitimate or not well founded as they fear losing their status in whatever community of their peers.
The Next Level has no “leaders”. Everyone is crew minded so no one wants to shine more than someone else. There are Older Members who usher into the Next Level Above Human Student members who graduate to become Younger Members. Among Next Level Members there is only those with more experience than others. It is obvious to Younger Members who their Older Members are. They don’t have ranks or wear stripes on their jackets to indicate some rank or how many years they have been Members of the Next Level. Humans do that kind of thing like in the military and as well as having more valuable things to show off.
Sometimes TI did say things as instruction but it was rare. They both received communications from TI’s Older Member at the same time in the same kind of way, so that when they would compare notes on what they were feeling, they would together arrive at what it meant, what to do next, what to bring to the Class next. One can see how they worked together in the audio tapes.
That ABC 2020 so called documentary stimulated a ton of misinformation. They tried to make it sound like DO was suicidal in the 1970’s. they tried to make it look like his homosexuality was the cause and that his human dad was part of it too because his dad didn’t accept his homosexuality. None of that has a bit of truth but again people might not believe me and that’s fine but then do the research that must go way beyond what the media has said as they have got so much wrong over many years so has become a type of brainwashing by repeating the same things over and over.
re: Fearless-Ninja-4252’s second question: “It seems to me that Do had truly convinced himself that he and the rest of Heaven’s Gate would ascend to the next level. Do you believe this to be the case, or do you think he is the master manipulator that the media, and Ti’s daughter has made him out to be?”
DO didn’t convince himself they would be ascending. It was part of his Mind to know that that’s what happens when anyone returns to the Next Level spacecrafts. They either walk on board the craft with their physical body as happened to Enoch and Elijah and Moses and Jesus or if they are leaving their human vehicle behind their Soul (a plasma like physical container that holds Next Level Mind)enters the spacecraft, I presume by floating on board. Both TI and DO brought enough of their Next Level Mind to be pulled into their human vehicle that knew this was the way it worked and then they read about it in the records and it made sense because they were the same people who left those records behind for their use to help the human vehicles brain remember.
Why is it that many people come into this life knowing certain things that others don’t know? Like I knew that the premise of there existing ghosts was real though I hadn’t had any conscious experience in this lifetime until after I left the classroom in the late 1990’s. Why did I know the war in Vietnam was a government conspiracy? Why do I know Humans aren’t going to change the earth’s climate in any significant way unless the Next Level allows them to, like perhaps might happen from a nuclear war and even then might not even make a dent in the climate except to fill the air with nuclear waste. Why did I know long before TI and Do talked about it, that there are people who live on different planets? Why is it that I can play music by myself and/or with others without any written notes to follow but some in symphonies have told me they wouldn’t know where to start? Why do some people pick up languages very quickly while others like me struggle with them. There are thousands of examples of some people just knowing some things others don’t and can do things that others are not yet able without any previous evidence of having been taught those things.
There are three sources of Mind each of us has. Genetic, Environmental like from what we accumulate from birth onwards and what we choose to do with it all and how we take charge of our human vehicle, which is a Next Level action.
I was not manipulated in the slightest way by TI or DO. In fact I know from experience that none of them were manipulated. Here is some logic on this score. Is it true that TI and DO did not even want students in 1975 after they had the first meetings in North Hollywood in April. What DO reported in ’88 Update – The UFO Two and Crew in the Heaven’s Gate Book was that they thought their task at that point was to deliver the information they had been receiving since 1972 and then move to the next group or town to do so. TI and DO told us that same story while TI was still in her vehicle and later I was also present there when DO wrote about it.
This was further proven when they stopped “recruiting”, which is unlike any other group I’ve ever heard of. Even Christians think they are somehow doing the Lords work to gain more believers and converts. Mit Romney even told of a requirement for new initiates into the LDS church priest hood that they converted a number of people. This is a common theme in probably all religions and not only those types of organizations but human organizations in general. Look at how governments rally their people to wars. Look at how differing parties use deceit and manipulation galore and justify it all as being better for the country. This is so widespread and hardly ever taught in many of the high schools because even if a teacher began to teach the truth, pretty soon they would lose that job for not sticking to the authorized text books.
I have hundreds of examples that could be proof of what I say that are documented in TI and DO and Crew’s many writings and audio and video tapes but few are willing to look into it. I don’t blame anyone for not believing me but it is a choice to dig into the truth for oneself regardless of what one believes about TI and DO if in fact that’s what someone wants to learn, though of course that’s a difficult task and it’s much easier to just believe what we are told by the media and pundits and even those who have surface studied the Information they left behind and from first hand eye witnesses, like myself and Crlody and Jhnody and Pmmody (Ananda) and others who have largely remained silent but can bring their own experience that there was no “manipulation”. These are all dropouts. How can one claim manipulation without specific evidence? Yet that’s what many in the media do.
Now re: Bens response saying re: the question of whether DO convinced himself He/They would ascend, (though Ben later supports the idea that we can know what he believed), but at first said, “We have no way of knowing”. Would we say this about anyone in history who has written and recorded over a thousand hours of audio tapes and written hundreds of pages of text and made over 15 hours of video tapes? There is no doubt that DO believed all that completed the Process enough through TI’s judgement would ascend with or without their human vehicle (body).
Ben is correct, that DO followed the same rules as students were expected to follow, though there were some very minor exceptions. Some will say TI didn’t because she wrote some letters to her vehicles daughter Terri, but though they encouraged us to write to loved ones as the first task to do when we joined (which I did) and then for some they wrote more at first and then it wasn’t until about 1984 when we made calls to loved ones in the world and then were given instruction to visit with whoever we thought had the most anxiety about our absence from their lives and then thereafter about once or twice a year we would call and/or write and had a second visit in 1986 or so and because of that visit Rthody ended up leaving the group to be with his vehicle’s family.
I don’t agree with Ben’s saying that Terri’s “Declaring that Applewhite was a master manipulator certainly helps Ti’s daughter Terri feel better about her mother’s choices,” but how do we know she feels better about her mother (TI’s) choices by calling DO (Applewhite) a master manipulator (if that is exactly what she said but I do recall something of that equivalence).
Where Ben says, “What Do did, and what members of Heaven’s Gate did, is irrational to those of us outside the group,” I just want to let it be known that there are quite a number of people who don’t see DO and/or the Members of the group as “irrational”.
I respect that Ben has at least taken a somewhat objective position, to the degree perhaps he is capable. I admit this would not be easy if our roles were reversed.
Re: their exit method choice. It’s documented in the Heaven’s Gate Book, in their document, “Our Position Against Suicide” that they each were willing to lose their vehicles they way they had planned (for nearly 3 years), that is if TI didn’t pick them up with their vehicles which they always preferred to happen. They knew they could each die by accident or from a disease or from some horrendous person who hated them or randomly killed them. So they preferred to name the time and place and method that DO had decided upon for himself. This is not an opinion. It’s all in their documents and audio tapes.
Murderalaska’s Art Bell question:
Ben Zeller:
I cover this in the last chapter of my book, but yes: I think it is clear that Chuck Shramek’s call to Art Bell’s show on November 14, 1996, and the Hale-Bopp Companion webpage that Shramek created were the source of Heaven’s Gate’s beliefs about the comet’s supposed UFO companion. Courtney Brown’s call to Art Bell on November 15, 1996, was also influential, since Brown claimed to have used remote viewing (effectively astral projection) to confirm the presence of massive UFO. Members of Heaven’s Gate would have accepted this as a valid spiritual technology, and given credence to Shramek’s and Brown’s claims.
Sawyer:
re: Murderalaska’s Art Bell question:
I don’t think that is correct saying Shramed and Art Bell and/or Courtney Bells call to Art Bell’s show were the source or an influence of Heaven’s Gate beliefs about the comet’s UFO companion for several reasons.
I agree in part that the media that started re: what ended up being called the Hale Bopp Comet influenced them to buy a telescope again to see what they could see. TI and DO always considered clues about what might be next for them from observation of the news and such. That’s the way their undercover task worked. Their Souls were sent undercover, looking like ordinary humans and they awakened those vehicles they actually tagged for use in the 1920’s and 1930’s at the time of their vehicle’s births. In 1975 they talked about how they rented the car using DO’s old credit card on Christmas day 1973 when Comet Khoutek was coming to perihelion, if I recall correctly. They took the names Jason and Shelly West about the time that Comet West came close to earth in 1977 or so and split into 4 pieces. Those two and Hale Bopp were all considered to be “Great Comets”. So to think about comets was not at all stimulated by these shows.
As they said on their Heaven’s Gate website, “Whether Hale-Bopp has a “companion” or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at “Heaven’s Gate.” The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the “Kingdom of Heaven”) has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp’s approach is the “marker” we’ve been waiting for — the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to “Their World” — in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion — “graduation” from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave “this world” and go with Ti’s crew.
If you study the material on this website you will hopefully understand our joy and what our purpose here on Earth has been. You may even find your “boarding pass” to leave with us during this brief “window.”
The reason the presence of a Companion object was “irrelevant” was because they always knew TI could come in with a spacecraft and crew to pick them up no matter where they were with or without any comets or other signs of that happening. However, they also always felt their exit would be dramatic. This method of exiting was talked about in audio tapes while TI was still in her vehicle a number of times.
Several times TI and/or DO felt it was a time to prepare and wait for that spacecraft to come. The first time was in November of 1980 while camping at Cave Without a Name in Boerne, Texas. The second time was in about 1989 when we traveled a little south of Albuquerque, NM and the third time if I recall correctly was southwest of Phoenix, AZ after we fasted on water for 13 days, in case it would work better to have no food in our vehicles systems. At the time I thought we might leave our vehicles.
I also remember in the 1990’s that we bought a telescope and would watch the heavens and additionally around that time or a year or two later, first heard from NASA, perhaps on the Art Bell show as we did listen to it sometimes, about an object being spotted outside the orbit of Pluto that seemed to change directions and speed. I don’t know whether that ended up being the Hale Bopp Comet or not.
II. Comment and Sawyer’s Response:
Fearless-Ninja-4252 saying to Sawyer…
“You left the group in 1994, so why do you think you are able to judge what Ti and Do wanted to happen to the audio tapes, better than Mark and Sarah are.”
Sawyer:
I am not claiming to be better able to judge what TI and DO wanted to happen to the audio tapes than Mark and Sarah are. They have the same ability to examine everything TI and DO said about the audio tapes and come to the conclusion that TI and DO express many, many times, how they wanted ANYONE who wanted to hear them have that ability. In audio tape 149, TI and/or DO bring this fact up at least 3 different times saying that. I have many additional clips of TI and DO stating that intention.
In my opinion Mark and Sarah have terrible judgement. After all they are suing three of the biggest disseminators of TI and DO’s information besides what they have done by maintaining the website and sending some video tapes out and giving a few interviews and while they are at it spreading misinformation about TI and DO while appearing to support them. They told Cathy, my partner who believed in TI and DO before I met her, in an email that “there is nothing to do” (paraphrased). According to TI and DO and Crew there is lots to do. They seems to be shifting TI and DO’s teachings into a new age religion. I thought I was seeing this and then I heard DO say it in an audio tapes from 1987 or so about them.
This is my opinion I know and I know I may be wrong but in part, even perhaps the biggest part, it seems Mark and Sarah don’t want people to hear what DO said about them in about a dozen of the audio tapes because they have been lying to the media and to others about why they were sent out of the group and it surfaces both their Influences (discarnates and/or space alien Soul (boogers) who the Next Level designed to work against them to help them build strength of Mind by combating, the same for all of us.
Mark even verified some of this in the Bardo Methodology Interview he gave where he blamed DO for listening to certain classmates re: the “mrcody problem” (labeled as “I could be wrong”) and the fact that Mark didn’t want to embrace that lesson step and then Sarah sided with him, her Influence even trying to get him out of the Class and that her influence even tried to use her vehicle to get me to not join in the first place (since Sarah was my partner in the world before we joined).
When I heard DO saying this at the time in that meeting it went way over my head. Then when I heard it again recently it still went over my head. I didn’t understand it, but then I thought about how Sarah, I felt was coming onto me when we first left to travel to the destination of Colorado National Monument. Yes we had been a couple but our relationship was on the rocks for quite a while that rarely included sexuality mostly because she didn’t want it. Yet after we decided to join with TI and DO, then she wants relations with me? When two people live together for about 5 years, together day and night one knows when the other isn’t interested and that was almost always the case with her.
Maybe I misinterpreted that, but then there were other times while in the Classroom she was acting strange. Like she would rub up against me when we were on lab duty together in the Juice lab. She seemed to be cozying up to me on our airplane trip together to visit our vehicles families during the second visit in 1986 or 1987. I thought I was imagining things and don’t recall reporting these things.
In another of the audio tapes DO verifies what I had heard while in the classroom…
One day Srrody came up to me and said that Sarah had been brushing up against him. We didn’t do any touching in the Class (except on the rare occasion of giving someone who returned from a difficult task a hug, or if we had the task to adjust someone’s back (Stlody had that chiropractor skill), or for a haircut for when we laid hands on Brnody’s legs to try to bring healing to her osteoperosis, which I had instructions to help her with at times (as did others)). We knew that Sarah or visa versa pulled one another into a closet and were feeling one another up. Alxody I recall surfaced it. I think it was when we were in the Amarillo Craft in around 1982 or so.
That seems to be what might be the biggest reason why they are suing me and Crlody (Carlan) and Cathy because we know that truth from hearing it on the audios from DO, but me in particular because I followed their Gizmodo interview years ago where they told the media their version of their leaving “because they had something else they needed to do” (paraphrased) and I pointed out why they were sent out and that embarrassed them. I understand being embarrassed as I was embarrassed when I heard tape 849 where DO talks about my leaving. At first I thought I remembered events better than DO but then as I listened to that tape a time or two again I realized that it was me who remembered events wrong. I was confused. But it’s so freeing to own up to one’s own mistakes and misconceptions. But if we have let Influences build up our ego then denying the truth is like deflating that ego and that can be near unbearable to someone though it doesn’t have to be.
Plus because Mark and Sarah at first were afraid of doing some of the tasks DO gave them to do (especially re: the main tasks of dissemination of TI and DO and Crews Information), they handed over their letters they got from the Class in their packet on March 25, 1997 to Rkkody on March 27th in the early morning. They could have told Rkkody of their content on March 25th when Rkkody said in his manuscript that he called them or on March 26th but didn’t so Rkkody didn’t know about the whereabouts of the audio tapes until the 27th when he and Oscody went to storage and retrieved 484 of the 1061 (according to Mark) audio tapes. The next day San Diego County put their locks on those storage rooms.
Among the many clues to what to do with the audio tapes was this statement where DO and Crew state their intention for some of the content of that specific storage unit where all the audio tapes and other Intellectual Property was stored:
“It is our desire that any items of value that are retrievable by you be divided among those who feel inclined to disseminate our information. Any of the funds you retrieve can be used towards that end and for the living expenses of those involving themselves with this project.”
The “project” is repeatedly expressed as being the dissemination of their Information project. That’s all DO and Crew really cared about happening especially after they exited their human vehicles.
Rkkody told Crlody that when he and Oscody opened the storage room, stacked up front were the boxes of audio tapes. He took some of them. I’m not sure exactly how many were in each box there. I do recall storing the audios in grey plastic boxes, that I think each had a number of slots in a foam insert.
There are many places in the letters that describe the project to disseminate and/or distribute their information. They had sent video’s and the Blue Books, they first put together, to Rkkody and Jhnody and others. The copyright on those books was “common law copyright” – spelling out the right to copy them or parts of them as long as they were unchanged and not added to or taken away from and not for commercial purposes, yet the Kings changed that copyright for their “purple book” (the last edit the DO and Crew gave Oscody (Mark and Sarah as checks) with instructions that he would register the Book with the Library of Congress. Mark and Sarah seemed to have commondeered that task as well. One can see the original copyright on the Heaven’s Gate web page under Book. There were no instructions to copyright anything except as shown for the book yet the Kings copyrighted some audios and video’s and the book and certain images that had been previously copyrighted by their author Olliver Odinwood. I could go on and on with the many lies Mark and Sarah have told the courts and other legal entities. I don’t think any of it was necessary but Mark seemed to have become possessed with doing everything in legal ways. Not saying to do things in an illegal way but one didn’t need to obtain lawyers beyond to get the tapes back from San Diego. Plus when many people have asked them questions they have outright lied in their answers many times and when I pointed it out they denied it.
We have many clips from audio tapes expecting the audio tapes to be heard by anyone who wants them. In Jhnody’s letter and Rkkody’s letter from the Class they stipulated to copy the video tapes and give them to the media and anyone who wants them.
Mark and Sarah King have done a tiny bit of this but would not provide only a few audio tapes to people who asked and though Crlody and I were sending them to people for free for years because Rkkody gave us each cd’s with about 214 audios on them, they still sued us.
There is so much evidence that it’s almost a joke that Mark and Sarah are seeking to be the only people to possess the tapes and not share them with hardly anyone at all and especially not to people that are actually disseminating them.
Additionally, what does it matter what year I left and why I left. We have TI and DO’s many instructions and intention and desire for their information to be provided to people.
Next Fearless-Ninja-4252 says…
“You admit to saying a lot, possibly too much at times, then complain that what you have said has been misinterpreted.”
Sawyer:
By saying too much, what I was saying was that people just get overloaded and sometimes can miss the main points because I provide too much detail for them to digest.
Next Fearless-Ninja-4252 says…
“These things happen to all of us, but it’s not fair to suggest Dr.Zeller or anyone else is lacking in knowledge, or partaking in gossip, when they are going by the words and anecdotes from YOUR mouth.”
Sawyer:
If they are going to quote me out of context then that’s on them not me. I can’t control the interviews I’ve given but people no matter who they are can ask me instead of saying very uninformed things about some alleged new group looking like a bunch of Sawyer’s. That’s a very poor choice of words and has no truth to it. How would you feel if someone said that about you publicly and it had no truth to it. Where is his evidence? Is it because Alexander has long hair and a beard. Well he had that long before he ever heard about me.
Next Fearless-Ninja-4252 says…
“There is no doubt you committed a great deal of your time to Ti and Do, but I have my doubts over how authentic your belief in their teachings is, considering you left because you couldn’t stop yourself from masturbating.”
Sawyer:
Some people love to throw that in my face, that I masturbated. Obviously you haven’t read my full account of what led up to that. It wasn’t at all that simple. And for you to question my authenticity of belief in their teachings seems to me like your form of attacking the messenger because you don’t want to really look at the message. Your criteria for that judgement shows you are ignoring a mountain of TI and DO’s teachings to instead focus on trite differences with the way I’ve grown my hair and whiskers and what clothing I wear. Case in point when you go on to elaborate…
Fearless-Ninja-4252 saying…
“Having human compulsions is natural and perfectly healthy, but if you truly believed the class mentality that individualism should be shed so that you don’t cling to your earthly vehicle, you wouldn’t have made the choice to watch stimulating videos on MTV, to leave the group, lead your own life with long hair and a wife. The rest of group made tough personal sacrifices and had a unified look (men and women all having short hair and wearing the same style of clothing”
Sawyer:
For 18 years I maintained what I thought was excellent control over my vehicles eyes and thoughts of sensuality but I started letting little things slide. The Next Level is trying to help us build our Mind so they give us harder and harder tests. Take a alcoholic who quits drinking. They may be successful for a long time and then someone dies in their family and they feel like they could have done more and they begin to binge again. As long as one is alive one has continued opportunies to rise above all human addictions and there are many forms of addictions that we don’t even know are addictions until we begin to look to those who came from the Next Level and have themselves overcome all human addictions even many times to help Student Souls.
I’ve never been officially married though yes I’ve had a few long term relationships. In the Classroom those can’t continue because we need to give our all. That classroom doesn’t exist as described in the Heaven’s Gate Book. However, all the lesson steps are still there for us to voluntarily (as is always the case) to wean ourselves from all human behaviors and ways and replace them with the behaviors and ways taught by TI and DO, our Teachers.
How one wears their hair can be the same as the choices made by TI and DO and Crew, but that same lesson period is over. As DO says in the Heaven’s Gate Book, what we get into in our humanness doesn’t matter except in how such indulgences could find us ill prepared the next time a Next Level Member has a classroom that we can join.
Clothing choices can matter but it’s the intention that’s important. The things you are mentioning are what Religions focus on instead of the behaviors and ways. In the Heaven’s Gate Book, see the List of Major and Lessor Offenses and the 17 Steps. Those are all of what is the criteria to build our Minds. I’m not claiming to be 100% but it’s never been about giving all or nothing. I don’t deny that there is more that I can give, but all in all DO and TI are my judges not even myself or others in the human kingdom.
I’m not “acting” as an authority. I am expressing TI and DO’s authority. I don’t force it on anyone. I don’t claim you must do what I say. But I am Standing for TI and DO as all who hope to be their Students now or in the future must be willing to do. (See Heaven’s Gate Book).
Next Fearless-Ninja-4252 says…
“I am not criticizing you for being unable to commit to the many restrictions the group placed, but it is unfair to act like an authority on Heaven’s Gate; purely on the basis that you were a member. You might have lived with them in terms of body and physical space, but you didn’t live their experience or share their commitment, so what makes your insight any more valid than Dr.Zeller’s, or anyone else’s?”
You say you are not criticizing me but then are full of criticisms. You don’t know what my commitment was or is to date. Isn’t that a bit foolish to think you can know that? If my criteria for insights are from TI and DO’s Mind, which anyone can have access to check out, then if I am correct in what I say in that regard then those insights are better than Ben Zellers and/or anyone else who hasn’t lived and/or studied the insights that TI and DO gave their students and continue to give to new Students. I respect Ben. I respect you as well. But I get to interject my opinion and the evidence behind my point of view and if that is offensive to someone that they may be wrong in how they saw something, that’s up to them to choose to examine or not.
TI and DO said that we all “need our human vehicles to learn lessons through”.
Plus Individualism isn’t shed it’s actually built through embracing the Mind from the Next Level that came through TI and DO. According to TI and DO humans are time-shared computer systems. Discarnates, (dead humans) latch on to those who can fulfill what they wanted while they had a human vehicle. When one completes the “overcoming of humaness” Next Level astronaut training program then one becomes an individual for the first time since there are no discarnates or space alien souls trying to control our vehicles. We think we are individuals but we are made up of our genes – genetic programming + environmental programming received by those humans and society from the birth of our vehicle. When we take control over our vehicle that begins a Next Level Student and Studentship is in degrees as all our humanness must be replaced to qualify. For instance, the Next Level gave the instruction to the primitives to not kill other humans. Those that believe and abide by that have at least a little Next Level Mind in their Mind but that’s only one early step in the civilization.
It’s all by choices and all in degrees. It’s never been about all or nothing. Listen to audio 334 for that clarity. You as so many seem to sit on some high horse of judgementalism and act as if you understand all that TI and DO taught while are like someone who went to see a movie and got there late so only saw the credits and people’s critique of the movie, so you don’t actually know what was in the movie.
Sawyer Stands for Ti & Do's Heaven's Gate 