Heaven Help Us

Last Friday, I was riding through central New Jersey, seated in a minivan next to my 8-year-old cousin, Andrew. He had just recently begun to enjoy reading, and was curious about the newspaper in my hands. Andrew was drawn to the image of an alien accompanying the lead story of the day: the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. He then began to read aloud what they had left on their web page: "As was promised--the keys to Heaven's Gate are here again in Ti and Do as they were in Jesus and His Father 2000 yrs. ago." I tried to explain what these people had believed, based on what I had read in the paper that morning.

From the rear seat, his 14-year-old brother chimed in. "You know, Andrew, that these people are totally crazy, right?" And from the front seat, my aunt made a disapproving sound and suggested that we "read something more cheery." But before I could turn to the sports pages, Andrew had posed a question society at large has been too self-confident to consider: "What if they are right?" came his innocent voice.

In case you were blissly biking across Europe last week or adrift on a Carnival cruise through the Caribbean, a mass suicide took place Wednesday in a mansion in posh Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., a San Diego suburb.

Twenty-one females and 18 males, ranging from ages 26 to 72, took their lives using a combination of alcohol and barbiturates. The dead hailed from various states, occupations and ethnic backgrounds, yet each was dressed in black and had a buzz cut. Each died with a $5 bill and several quarters in their pockets, beside a suitcase packed with clothes for their voyage. Moreover, many of the males had been castrated well-before their deaths.

The dead belonged to the Heaven's Gate cult, details about which soon surfaced from a video suicide note the group had made and a Website documenting the group's beliefs (accessible at http://pathfinder.com/@@4mMj9gYAd Z9*V0S3/news/heavensgate/).

Cult members had worked as Web page designers prior to their death, but they focused their eyes on another world--a "level above human" attainable only by suicide. "The final act of metamorphosis or separation from the human kingdom is the 'disconnect' or separation from the human physical container or body," they wrote. "We will rendezvous in the 'clouds' (a giant mothership) for our briefing and journey to the Kingdom of the Literal Heavens." Members believed that the Hale-Bopp comet, which visited Earth last week for the first time in 2,400 years, was a "marker" that the mothership had come to free them from the "Human Evolutionary Level." This was the time to die.

The group's theology--a combination of Christianity and science fiction, with elements of Hinduism mixed in--was the work of 66-year-old Marshall Herff Applewhite, one of the 39 dead. The son of a minister, Applewhite taught music at several universities in the 1960's, marrying and having two children. He was dismissed in 1971, reportedly after a sexual liaison with a male student, and he sought therapy for a "cure" for his homosexuality. Applewhite then met a nurse and astrologer, Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles, who led him to believe that the pair were aliens incarnated on earth.

Assuming the names Bo and Peep, the two traveled the country seeking converts. Then, after a period of hiding followed by Nettles' death from cancer, Applewhite resurfaced in 1992 and began the multimedia publicity campaign that would attract the followers with whom he died.

The suicide of Heaven's Gate has captivated American attention and raised an important set of issues in the media. Newspapers have filled pages with the history of the cult, the historic significance of comets in human affairs and the comparison of this event with other mass suicides.

The suicide has united society in a brief moment of concern. What could have led people to leave their homes, jobs and families to live their lives in an isolated community, awaiting a "mothership"? What role did the Internet play in the growth of the cult? Who, if anyone, is to be held responsible for the loss of life?

But on top of uniting in concern, society has also displayed condescension and disrespect toward the dead. On Friday, a New Jersey tabloid's cover read simply, "Internuts." The front page of Friday's Boston Herald featured a photo of Applewhite and the headline "Lunartic."

The Boston Globe, meanwhile, offered justification for how people ended up as suicide victims, spotlighting personal problems that presumably might have led one to join a cult. About 45-year-old Alan Bowers, the Globe wrote, "Friends said he had never recovered from the pain of his wife's leaving him, or from his brother's death." Just below, a headline about a local member of the cult read "Mass. native joined cult after sad childhood"; the article painted her life as a virtual trail of tears, beginning with her father leaving the household when she was four.

The press has openly alleged that followers of Applewhite were driven to insanity; subtly, it has pushed a message of intolerance toward obscure faiths of all stripes. In an editorial last Saturday titled "Gateway to Madness," The New York Times called Applewhite's beliefs "ad hoc mumbo jumbo" and his believers "wounded, foolish followers."

The Times then attempted to draw a distinction between wrongheaded cults and acceptable mainstream faiths: "The crucial safety break in most theologies is that the believer himself cannot choose the moment of ascension. Only the central deity can do that." America may retain a Judeo-Christian tradition, but the claim that only religions who bestow ultimate power on a "central deity" are legitimate reveals no respect for faiths that have no such deity, or that empower people to seize control of their existence on earth.

The Times finds fault with Heaven's Gate for assuming "Godlike power" and determining that suicide was the way to the heavens. But provided that the rights of others are not infringed upon, and provided that suicide is chosen not out of despair but out of a firm commitment to a theological belief, society cannot fairly decry the choices made by Heaven's Gate.

In fact, in a section of their website titled "Our Position Against Suicide," the cult anticipates the popular reactyion to a mass suicide. It makes clear that for them, "suicide" would be staying on Earth when the chance for salvation had come.

Of course, the easiest way to dismiss the Heaven's Gate cult is to write them off as brainwashed lunatics. But given the anecdotal evidence, it seems that many members of Heaven's Gate were not simply weak and deluded souls.

Was the man from a prominent Connecticut family who often, openly discussed his membership in the cult with his family a "wounded, foolish follower"? Or the professor's son who told his mother he could not see himself fitting in with traditional society, and felt at home with Heaven's Gate? Or the mother from Cincinatti, who spotted Applewhite's writings on the Internet and felt compelled to leave her three boys and newborn twin girls to join the group? For their sake, if not for all 39 of the dead, we should stifle a bit of our condescension and maintain the humility that should infuse any discussion of faith.

Actress Nichelle Nichols, whose brother Thomas ended his life at Rancho Santa Fe at the age of 59, made the case for respect and tolerance eloquently: "My brother was highly intelligent and a beautifully gentle man," she told CNN. "He made his choices and we respect those choices." With Hale-Bopp streaking through the sky, bound for realms nearly unfathomable to the human mind, let us hope society respects the spiritual choices we make for ourselves as well.

Geoffrey C. Upton '99 is a Crimson editor and lives in Leverett House.