Heaven's Gate (religious group)

Heaven's Gate
Type	New religious movement
Classification	UFO religion
Orientation	Christian millenarianism, New Age, Ufology
Scripture	Bible
Leaders	Bonnie Nettles (1974–1985) Marshall Applewhite (1974–1997)
Region	United States
Headquarters	Manzano, New Mexico (1995–1996) San Diego, California (1996–1997)
Founder	Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles
Origin	1974
Members	39 (pre-1997); 2? (post-1997)
Other name(s)	Human Individual Metamorphosis, Total Overcomers Anonymous
Official website	www.heavensgate.com

Heaven's Gate was an American new religious movement known primarily for the mass suicides committed by its members in 1997. Commonly designated a cult, it was founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985), known within the movement as Do and Ti. Nettles and Applewhite first met in 1972 and went on a journey of spiritual discovery, identifying themselves as the two witnesses of Revelation, attracting a following of several hundred people in the mid-1970s. In 1976, a core group of a few dozen members stopped recruiting and instituted a monastic lifestyle.

Scholars have described the theology of Heaven's Gate as a mixture of Christian millenarianism, New Age, and ufology, and has been characterized as a UFO religion. The central belief of the group was that followers could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrial beings by rejecting their human nature, and they would ascend to heaven, referred to as the "Next Level" or "The Evolutionary Level Above Human". The death of Nettles from cancer in 1985 challenged the group's views on ascension; while they originally believed that they would ascend to heaven while alive aboard a UFO, they came to believe that the body was merely a "container" or "vehicle" for the soul and that their consciousness would be transferred to "Next Level bodies" upon death.

On March 26, 1997, deputies of the San Diego County Sheriff's Office discovered the bodies of the 39 active members of the group, including Applewhite, in a house in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. They had participated in a coordinated series of ritual suicides, coinciding with the closest approach of Comet Hale–Bopp. Just before the mass suicide, the group's website was updated with the message: "Hale–Bopp brings closure to Heaven's Gate ...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."^[1]