WEBVTT - Bonus Episode: Ben Zeller 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:04.600 Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio in gren and 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:09.520 Mild from Aaron Manky. For the best experience, listen with headphones. 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.439 This is the second of two interviews I did while 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:23.200 researching Heaven's Gate for season three of Strange Arrivals. In 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.799 the end, I did not include Heaven's Gate in the 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.120 main episodes of season three for a variety of reasons, 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.000 but wanted people to be able to hear these interviews. 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.479 The first one dropped last week. You can listen to 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:40.239 them in either order. This is an interview with Ben Zeller, 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.640 who is a professor of religious studies at Lake Forest 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:45.040 College in Illinois. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.120 My name is Ben Zeller. I'm a professor of religious 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.240 studies at lake Forest College outside of Chicago, Illinois. 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:58.600 Could you talk about apple White and Nettle's backgrounds, both, 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:01.800 you know, religiously and otherwise. 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.200 Marshall Hurt Applewhite, who is the leader of Heaven's Gate 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:08.080 at the end, but only one of the two co 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:12.160 founders at the beginning, came from a pretty conventional Christian background. 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.880 His father was a Presbyterian minister, and apple White was 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:20.119 raised basically in the church, so for him, Christianity was 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.000 just sort of the assumed background. He went to college. 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.280 He actually considered becoming a minister himself, and he started 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:29.560 at seminary, so he actually has some training as a 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:34.720 Christian minister. He left seminary because he felt drawn into 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:39.119 music as a career. It's sometimes hypothesized he also left 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.319 because he realized that he was bisexual. We don't have 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:45.039 any hard evidence of that, but it's certainly plausible that 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:47.760 a closeted bisexual would have not felt comfortable in a 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.760 Presbyterian seminary at the time. Either way, he leaves seminary, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.560 but he sticks with it long enough to really pick 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.120 up the details of Christian theology. Even at the very 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.760 very end of Heaven's Gate, he talks about questions about 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.920 predestination and election, which are Christian theological terms which make 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.920 sense within the particular denomination he was trained in. So 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.120 you can see he sort of never left it behind 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:11.960 and he brings that Christianity with him. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:12.720 Interesting. 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:17.560 Bonnie lue Nettle's, by contrast, was raised a Baptist but 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:22.440 was not particularly drawn into the tradition. A childhood friend 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.320 said an interview much later that she only went because 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.320 the family went, so she was sort of your typical 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.000 once a week at most, maybe once a month attendant 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.320 in keeping with sord of broader society. She was in Texas, 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.600 so she was Southern Baptist and nothing surprising there. As 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:39.400 an adult, she became deeply interested in alternative spiritualities. She 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:44.720 briefly joined the Theosophical Society. She was interested in spiritualism, interested 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:49.280 in channeling, and she was far more religiously eclectic than 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:50.440 her than apple White was. 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.079 How did they run into each other? How did they meet? 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.680 There are different stories for how he how apple White 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:01.880 and Bonnie Lune Nettles met. The only commonality that we 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.360 know for certain based on what they said, what their 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:05.880 friends said, but their family said as they met in 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:10.040 the hospital. The reasons that Nettles was in the hospital, 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:12.679 that's pretty clear. She was working there. Why Appley was 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.160 in the hospital, there's a couple of different answers. He 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.800 says he was visiting a friend. One of his family 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:20.560 members said that he was suffering heart palpitations and was 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.959 in there for treatment, And much later on after the 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:26.400 Heaven's Gate suicide, there's the claim that he was a 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.760 mental patient. We can dismiss that last one because Nettles 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:31.840 was not a psychiatric nurse, so there's no chance they 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:32.840 would have met in a psyche hospital. 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:34.760 She wasn't working in much. She was working i think 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.200 in obgy in rotation at the time, so not likely 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.160 that he was in for that. I've always assumed, because 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.119 we have sort of the two different stories, that yes, 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.400 he was in for heart palpitations, but then he went 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:48.480 to visit a friend afterwards. That's always sort of assumed 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.240 that they're both corrected. It makes sense either way. He 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.680 ends up running into Nettle's in the hospital, and at 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.360 this point in his life, Marshall Hurf apple White feels 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.840 like he's at a moment of transition. He's been experiencing 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.600 these sort of spiritual encounters. He has these, he sort 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.960 of hears these voices and feels this religious, spiritual calling. 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:10.760 He thinks like he has some sort of fate is 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:12.520 calling him to do something. He doesn't know what though, 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:14.840 but he feels like he's at this sudden moment of transition. 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:17.880 We should note where he's been recently divorced, he's been 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.240 fired from his job. He's sort of at this sudden 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.120 moment of transition in his life. Nettles is also in 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.920 a transition. She is also separated or in the process 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.880 of separating, and when they meet, the story goes and 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.240 we have only their story to go with that. She 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:33.880 said to him, well, let me do your chart. She's 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.800 an astrologer, so she does his chart and she says, actually, yeah, 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.719 you do have a fate. You actually do have a destiny, 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:41.960 but it's tied up with mine. The two of us 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.440 together are bound for a journey, and off they go, 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:47.600 and that's the story of the origin of Heaven's Gate. 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:52.120 Interesting what is sort of the origin of the interest 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:53.040 in UFOs. 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:57.840 Both Nettles and apple White were interested in UFOs even 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.359 before they met. Nettles Is interest in UFOs was bound 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:05.040 up with her sort of neo theosophical interest in channeling. 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:10.240 Traditional theosophy involves sort of receiving information from the beyond, 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:15.119 usually from humans or from spiritually advanced beings a generally 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.039 human that sort of send messages. Neo theosophy sort of 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.640 twentieth century theosophy. These ascended masters they come to be called, 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:27.600 are often considered space aliens or angelic beings or supernatural beings. 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:29.479 Today we would call it new Age. At the time, 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:31.720 it was sort of predates New Age, but within her 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.440 alternative spiritual miliu, it made sense as a channeler that 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:40.080 she would receive wisdom from extraterrestrials as well. We know 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:44.200 that she received contact or claim to receive contact from 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:46.880 deceased humans, so from the spiritual realm, so it would 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.160 have made sense she had looked at extraterrestrials as well. 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.720 But she was also interested in just sort of UFOs 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:53.839 as a phenomenon, so not just sort of the beings 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.320 to communicate with her spiritually, but also the claims about 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.960 sightings and crashes and things like that. Apple White was 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:05.039 a little more conventionally Christian in that way. He was 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.719 open to Nettles's interpretation, but he came into it really 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.560 trying to make sense of the Bible, and he used 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.400 UFOs and space aliens to make sense of the Bible. 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:20.200 But it was really Nettles Bndingland Nettles who brought UFOs 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:21.720 and ufology to him. 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:24.160 This is something I was looking at with other people, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.200 is that there are people who kind of look at 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:30.159 UFOs as being the sort of the spiritual almost like 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:34.560 you know, paranormal type thing, and then there's others who are, 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.919 you know, look at that thing in the sky, they 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:41.279 landed at left marks, and then you know the people 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:43.560 who try and sort of synthesize it or at least 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:46.080 are willing to accept like both aspects of it as 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:50.000 being real. I think it's kind of an interesting step 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:50.920 that they have to take. 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.440 Both Nettles and apple White really did try to harmonize 0:06:55.680 --> 0:07:00.320 that spiritual approach to UFO's neuthology and also then the 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:03.800 more sort of scientific approach. They certainly didn't come out 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:05.880 of that. So basically the same time they were starting 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.600 their work as when like Moufon, like the mutual ufhone 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:12.400 network was starting, although it was the Midwestern ufhone network 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.600 at first, So there were sort of secular scientific UFO 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.720 watchers and those who saw themselves as studying the evidence 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:21.000 on the ground, literally on the ground, right the imprints 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.960 and such. They did not come from that world, but 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.120 they were interested in engaging that, and they were interested 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.040 in speaking to those who had a secular approach to 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:35.280 UFOs because they really did believe that ultimately the UFOs 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:39.000 were real and that the beings who the Bible referred 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:41.200 to as angels and gods and things like that are 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.680 just biological extraterrestrial entities and that all the miracles of 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:50.000 the Bibles are simply UFO technology misunderstood. So they did 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.320 ultimately agree that science and technology and sort of a 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:57.320 secular approach was the way to understand UFOs and upology 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.840 and sightings and such. It's just that they were coming 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:01.640 out out of a religious miliu, and that's what they 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.240 really created as a religion. They really try to have 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:05.679 it both ways, if that makes sense. 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:11.000 What sort of novel ways did they use to integrate 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.880 sort of the reality of UFOs and their view into 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:19.720 sort of the theological and you know, spiritual concerns they 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:21.840 had coming into their partnership. 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:25.360 There's a couple of angles to what they tried to do. 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.040 One is the sort of the Vondonic and Chariots of 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:32.040 the Gods style approach, where they simply looked at ancient material. 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.640 In this case, the Bible is evidence of ancient aliens 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.320 and astronauts who had visited the Earth, and this was 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:41.040 recorded by primitive humans or comparatively primitive humans and as 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:44.440 religious as opposed to it actually being you know, space aliens, 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:46.640 so that they were part of the vanguard of them. 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.000 And this is the nineteen seventies, so they were ahead 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:51.120 of the curve in terms of that approach. I mean, now, 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:54.640 of course that's pretty you know, pretty standard, sort of 0:08:54.679 --> 0:08:59.560 within one aspect of peupology. What they also did, though, 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:03.240 which was really different from that, is they tried to 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.160 interpret the Bible and particularly the prophetic passages of Revelation 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.000 with reference to this. So not just was it aliens 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:11.959 visited the Earth in the past, but they're going to 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.560 come back, and the Book of Revelation describes how they're 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:17.520 going to come back, and how the end of our 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.079 societies we know it is going to occur, and how 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.080 those who have hopes of leaving our planet are going 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:25.240 to be able to do that. And in particular, they 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:27.840 took the idea of the rapture, which is a Christian 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.439 and Evangelical Christian idea about how the save the elect 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:33.600 will be lifted up off the planet and what will 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.880 go into heaven. Within the traditional Christian idea, it's Jesus 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:38.720 meets them sort of halfway up and sort of lifts 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:40.640 them up into heaven, and everyone else is sort of 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:42.640 left behind and in fact left behind. It there's a 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:44.839 series of books called Left Behind, which were a fictional 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.240 version of this right for them though, it's a UFO 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:50.120 and Jesus is a space alien and it's a tractor being, 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:54.360 and it's not heaven, it's the literal heavens, it's outer space, 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.360 so that that's their interpretation. And they fused this with 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.400 what today we would call a New Age focus on 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:05.280 self transformation and healing and self development. So the initial 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:07.360 idea was that you would go on bodily form onto 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:11.080 the UFO, and you would perfect your bodily being in 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:13.280 your consciousness and you'd sort of elevate yourself to a 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.040 new level of being and sort of raise your vibratory frequency. 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.640 It was very sort of new Age language. They're really 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.080 pulling from Christian biblical prophecy, new Age healing and self transformation, 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:26.160 and the very sort of early upology and sort of 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.120 combining it all in a really fascinating way. I get. 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.240 There's two questions. One is like, who were the people 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.200 who responded to this message and what about the message 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.960 was compelling to them? 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:42.720 Most of the converts, most of the people who either 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.439 attended the meeting. So they had these massive public meetings 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.000 all up and down the West coast from Los Angeles 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.120 up through the Bay Area up through Oregon and Washington. 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.200 Most of the people who attended the meetings and most 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.160 of those who actually joined, were what I would call 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:02.400 spiritual seekers. Those who who stayed and those who left 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.480 generally had tried other spiritual pursuits, and that ranged from 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.720 actual other new religious movements like scientology or transcendental meditation, 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.559 two sort of quasi religious forms of living, like commune. 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:16.800 There was one number who had gone to Israel, Joenika Buotz. 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:20.240 There was a lot of interest in psychedelia, in drug 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.000 use and drug trips, so they'd all tried different things 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:24.720 to sort of, you know, break out of the norm. 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.199 Not all, I should say that there were a few 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.359 who bucked the trend, but by and large, vast majority 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:34.559 were spiritual seekers. Of those who attended their meetings, and 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:37.320 they had these large meetings with fifty sixty, one hundred people, 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:39.520 two hundred people at some of them, they usually wouldn't 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:42.000 get any more a few, you know, a dozen at 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.280 most to join. So this didn't appeal to everyone, but 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.280 for those who did feel attracted to it. What was 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:49.640 generally new was the UFO angle, from the way in 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.640 which it connected to the Biblical prophecy because most of 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.080 the folks who joined were probably already aware of sort 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.520 of the New Age self transformation elements of it. There 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:01.679 were somedividuals who joined for one reason or another who 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:03.600 don't fit that pattern. So there were some people who 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.000 were very, very Christian in orientation, and what really grabbed 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.520 them was that this was a new way to interpret 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.120 the Christian Bible and it made sense to them. There 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.079 were also at least a few examples of people who 0:12:15.120 --> 0:12:17.400 came in really through the UFO angle. What they were 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.439 interested in was making sense of UFO sightings and landings, 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.600 and the religious spiritual stuff was sort of secondary. But 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.240 most of the members were grabbed by sort of initially 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.280 that spiritual seeking. But what kept them in, because most 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.360 people who joined left, their nutrition rate was it was huge. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:38.800 The people who stuck around found that combination somehow appealing, 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:40.840 and it was never a large number of people. There 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.920 were never more than fifty sixty seventy people at most, 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:46.360 even early on, and of course it ends with with 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.400 approximately forty, but even at its peak it was no 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.440 more than twice that size, So this was never a 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:56.480 mass appeal. But for some people that combination New Age 0:12:56.480 --> 0:13:01.040 self transformation, biblical prophecy and making ends out of UFO 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.520 settings and sort of broader uphology for some people that 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:05.720 was very appealing. 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.240 Was this sort of set up beliefs. Was it fairly 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:13.319 static over time or were there changes as they members 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.439 came and when and they sort of you know, apple 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.640 white nettles sort of thought things over or had revelations 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:21.120 or whatever. 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.560 The central beliefs both were consistent and radically changing the 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.560 entire time. So this is really what's quite fascinating about them. 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.160 On the one hand, it's totally consistent from beginning to end. 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.360 The point of the group that we come to call 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:35.679 Heaven's Gate, and it hit other names too, was human 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.640 individual metamorphosis things. From beginning to end, their goal was 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:41.920 to get off the planet. It was to leave Earth 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.959 and ascend to a higher level of being, a higher 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.000 level of existence what they come to call the next 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.280 level or the evolutionary level above human on a UFO. 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.640 So from beginning to end, that's consistent. The details changed 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.640 over time, and the huge massive change was whether they 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:02.520 would go on bodily form. Initially they told their followers 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:04.520 at these sort of not even their fowers at these 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.240 mass meetings they said publicly, you don't have to die. 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:10.319 What we're offering is a trip to get onto the 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:12.360 UFO and to go to heaven in your bodily form. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.520 There is no death required. You're gonna transform your body 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.160 like a caterpillar into a butterfly. Cataflars don't die to 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:23.040 become butterflies, they transform, And that was the metaphor they use. 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.200 The other metaphor they use was graduation. Students don't die 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.000 to graduate. They graduate and it's in their bodies. So 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.560 these were their metaphors. So you will graduate like a student, 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:35.200 or you will transform like a caterpillar and go into 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:37.600 the next level, and you will then be a perfected 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.680 extraterrestrial being. You're gonna live forever and never get sick, 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.320 never need to eat. You're not going to be suffer 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:46.320 sort of the frailties at the flesh, and you get 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:48.520 to take care of the universe. You're gonna sail around 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:52.640 in UFOs and manage the universe and manage planets. By 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.760 the end, that transition was no longer bodily, it was 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:58.520 your soul. Will go on and do that. You're gonna 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:00.840 get a new body and going to leave the frail, 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.440 broken human body behind, and that that is a radical transition. 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.000 There are other changes over time too, their particular biblical 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.640 interpretations change things like that, but that's the big one. 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:12.000 Everything else follows from there. 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:17.440 My conversation with ben Zellar will continue after the break. 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:40.960 My sense is that Nettle's death is like a major 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.640 kind of turning point in the trajectory of the group. 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.520 My interpretation is that when Nettles died, that's when that 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:53.120 transition occurs. That's when they go from understanding and believing 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:55.840 and assuming they're all going to go in bodily form 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.480 unto the UFO two. And then she dies and her 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.160 body doesn't go anywhere. UFO comes to pick it up, 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.000 and she know, nothing hatches out of her. You know, 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.520 there's not you know, it's not like alien right, So 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.720 there's no evidence that she, in any meaningful way, in 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.560 any bodily way, is going into the next level. So 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.520 they come to adapt and to adopt this idea of 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:19.160 the soul. And they don't call it the soul, they 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:23.800 call it the other things. But it's basically the consciousness. 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.280 It's an upload process. They use computer terminology. It's an 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.360 upload the consciousness. But whatever it is that that is 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:34.480 body Lunettle's leaves her human body and returns to utter space. 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:37.280 And in her case it's a return because they understand 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:39.200 her as having come from the next level, from outer 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.040 space to begin with, and from there then that expands 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:43.920 and that becomes the way eventually for all of them. 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.360 There are ex members I should note who can test 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:51.600 me on this who disagree with this argument, who say, no, 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.680 this was not the moment of transition. It was much later, 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.080 and there was not sort of a theological problem at 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.160 the moment of her death. But I would never dispute 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.960 those who were there. I understand, you know, their particular experiences. 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.080 But for my interpretation, this was the pivotal moment. And 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.600 it may have taken a decade until this was publicly 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.600 discussed and until they decided to embrace suicide, which as 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:16.399 we know, that's how it ends in nineteen ninety seven. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.720 But the seeds of that were planted the moment that 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:20.760 Bonnie ln Nettles died. 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:22.040 What year was that. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:26.320 Bonnielin Nettles passed away in June nineteen eighty five. The 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:30.080 rough chnology of the group is that T and do 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.480 of bodylue Nettle's Marshal Herfapawhites meet in nineteen seventy two. 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.360 The group itself begins in seventy four and seventy five 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.680 and seventy six as they're expanding out. That huge moment 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:43.960 of transition is when Nettles passes away, and then in 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:46.240 nineteen eighty seven is when the group ends. So that 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.399 that's your rough chronology. You have it sort of a 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:50.520 ten year period with her and then sort of a 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:52.880 ten year period afterwards, roughly plus or minus a couple 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:53.520 of years. 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.639 There was sort of an acceleration of you know, I 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:00.119 don't know if saying that it was sort of of 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:08.040 performative devotion, but like sort of an intensity of showing 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:14.120 how and I'm particularly talking about castration and you know, abstinence, 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:18.120 like extreme abstinence, I guess. And was that something that 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:23.760 in your view is a result of Nettles passing away 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.360 and Apple Whites trying to kind of deal with it 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:28.679 and keep the group together. I was trying to get 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:29.440 a handle on that. 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.440 In that case, I would disagree. All of those practices 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:37.960 have their roots very early on the group founded was founded. 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:41.239 The basic teaching was you had to move beyond your 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:44.080 human existence. And you had to abandon your human practices 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:48.399 that included sexuality, included drugs, and included attachments to the 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.760 people around you. So you had to sort of give 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:54.480 up all of those those human level addictions and attractions 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:56.920 and ways of being because you were trying to give 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:58.960 up your human way of being. And again they use 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.119 the metaphor they set up, a caterpillar can't be a 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.640 butterfly if it wants to cling to its caterpillar ways, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.000 it has to embrace its new life as a butterfly. 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:08.440 So they taught very early on you had to be abstinent, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.040 you had to give up drugs and alcohol. You had 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:15.840 to give up attachments to loved ones, to your birth family. 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:18.600 You couldn't get too attached to your job. All these 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.159 things go all the way back. They didn't enforce it 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.560 for the first year because they were very poorly run 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:27.240 for the first couple of years. Metals and apple Whites 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.680 had all these ideas, but they took no lead in 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.440 managing the group. So individuals did all sorts of stuff 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.520 and then eventually t and do as they come to 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:37.359 call themselves. Finally, Nettle's Marshall, clap boyd Bow and t 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.960 Andell send people. So eventually T and Do say no, 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:43.560 we have to follow the rules. Understandably, people leave, so 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.800 they lose a bunch of people. Everyone who stays agrees 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:48.359 this is how they want to live their life. They 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.359 want to basically be a monastic and that was again 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:53.800 a term they used. They said were basically monastics. So 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:57.360 they embraced the monastic lifestyle. And after that, well, there 0:19:57.359 --> 0:19:59.800 were some people who left because they couldn't handle that. 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:03.280 The ex member Sawyer, for example, who who was very 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:05.280 explicit about this, and he said he just he couldn't 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.240 handle the abstinence. This is what wasn't him, so he 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:10.520 left for that reason. But there were others who left 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:11.960 for other reasons as well, so that that wasn't the 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:15.520 only reason people left. So that really those extreme practices 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:17.879 we see at the end the castorrations and such, go 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.520 all the way back to the beginning after Te's death. 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:24.359 So the question is was there a sort of a 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.760 hyper focus on apple White and on sort of dedication 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:31.520 to him in the group. We do see the group 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.200 sort of focus narrow. However, I think given that there 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.439 was now one leader instead of two, that simply that 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:40.600 just follow us from if the group hadn't known that 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:41.440 they would have dissolved. 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.760 Yeah, so it's a group dynamic that's not specific to them. 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.120 We have to remember Heaven's Kate, although it eventually died 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.719 in nineteen ninety seven, that the group ended, they were successful, 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.240 so that means they're going to be marked by certain 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:59.080 social characteristics. They did things effectively to keep going. We 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.359 could imagine the world in which after Nettle's died, apple 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:04.560 White was incapable of a leadership of the group, in 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:06.840 which case we wouldn't be having this conversation. They would 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:09.440 have dissolved in the nineteen eighties. It's only because apple 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:14.080