Editing Heaven's Gate (religious group) (section)

== Belief system ==
Scholars disagree over whether the theology of Heaven's Gate is fundamentally either [[New Age]] or [[Christian theology|Christian]] in nature. Benjamin Zeller has argued that the theology of Heaven's Gate was primarily rooted in [[Evangelicalism]] but it also had New Age elements.{{Sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=71}} Scholars have described the [[theology]] of Heaven's Gate as a mixture of [[Millenarianism|Christian millenarianism]], [[New Age]], and [[ufology]], and as such it has been mainly characterized as a [[UFO religion]].{{sfn|Chryssides|2021|pp=369–374}}

The group adopted the [[ancient astronaut]] hypothesis, which was prominent at the time of the group's formation due to the then-recent publication of works like [[Erich von Däniken]]'s ''[[Chariots of the Gods?]]''.<ref name=":8">{{Cite journal |last=Zeller |first=Benjamin E. |author-link=Benjamin E. Zeller  |date=2010-11-01 |title=Extraterrestrial Biblical Hermeneutics and the Making of Heaven's Gate |journal=[[Nova Religio]] |language=en |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=34–60 |doi=10.1525/nr.2010.14.2.34 |issn=1092-6690}}</ref> The term "ancient astronauts" is used to refer to various forms of the concept that extraterrestrials visited Earth in the distant past.{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=16}} Applewhite and Nettles took part of this concept and taught it as the belief that "aliens planted the seeds of current humanity millions of years ago, and have to come to reap the harvest of their work in the form of spiritually evolved individuals who will join the ranks of flying saucer crews. Only a select few members of humanity will be chosen to advance to this [[transhuman]] state. The rest will be left to wallow in the spiritually poisoned atmosphere of a corrupt world."{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=17}} Only individuals who joined Heaven's Gate, followed Applewhite and Nettle's belief system, and made the sacrifices required by membership would be allowed to escape human suffering.

Paralleling the beliefs of ancient astronaut theorists like Däniken, Heaven's Gate [[Hermeneutics|interpreted the Bible]] as recording events of extraterrestrial contact.<ref name=":8" />

Initially, recruits had been told that they would be biologically and chemically transformed into extraterrestrial beings and would be transported aboard a spacecraft, which would come to Earth and take them to heaven – the "Next Level". When Bonnie Lou Nettles (Ti) died of cancer in 1985, the group's doctrine was confounded because Nettles was "chosen" by the Next Level to be a messenger on Earth, yet her body had died instead of leaving physically to outer space. Their belief system was then revised to include the leaving of consciousness from the body as equivalent to leaving the Earth in a spacecraft.{{Sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=213}}

The group declared that it was against [[suicide]], because in its own context, to commit suicide is "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered", and the members of the group also believed that their human bodies were only "vehicles" which were meant to help them on their journey. Therefore, by committing suicide, they would not allow their consciousness to leave their human bodies and join the next level; they would remain alive rather than participate in the group suicide because suicide was considered the suicide of their consciousness. In conversations, when they referred to a person or a person's body, they routinely used the word "vehicle".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zeller |first=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin E. Zeller  |date=2014-11-16 |title=Anatomy of a mass suicide: The dark, twisted story behind a UFO death cult |url=https://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/anatomy_of_a_mass_suicide_the_dark_twisted_story_behind_a_ufo_death_cult/ |access-date=2021-04-26 |work=[[Salon.com|Salon]] |language=en-US |archive-date=April 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426172127/https://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/anatomy_of_a_mass_suicide_the_dark_twisted_story_behind_a_ufo_death_cult/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The members of the group adopted names which consisted of three letters followed by the suffix ''-ody'' to signify themselves as "children of the Next Level". This is mentioned in Applewhite's final video, ''Do's Final Exit'', filmed March 19–20, 1997, just days prior to the suicides.

They believed that "to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet". This meant all members had to give up all human-like characteristics, such as family, friends, gender, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money, and possessions.{{sfn|Balch|Taylor|2002|p=211}} "The Evolutionary Level Above Human" (TELAH) was a "physical, corporeal place",{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=38}} another world in our universe,{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=99}} where residents live in pure bliss and nourish themselves by absorbing pure sunlight.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=102}} At the next level, beings do not engage in sexual intercourse, eating or dying, the things that make humans "mammalian".{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=155}} Heaven's Gate believed that what the Bible calls God is a highly developed [[Extraterrestrial life|extraterrestrial]].{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=95}}

Members of Heaven's Gate believed that evil space aliens{{snd}}Luciferians{{snd}}falsely represented themselves to Earthlings as "God" and conspired to keep humans from developing. As technically advanced humanoids, these aliens have spacecraft, space-time travel, telepathy, and increased longevity.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=104}} They use holograms to fake miracles.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=155}} They are carnal beings with gender, and they stopped training to achieve the Kingdom of God thousands of years ago.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=104}} Heaven's Gate believed that all existing religions on Earth had been corrupted by these aliens.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=182}}

Although these basic beliefs of the group generally stayed consistent over the years, "the details of their ideology were flexible enough to undergo modification over time".{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=16}} There are examples of the group's adding to or slightly changing their beliefs, such as: modifying the way one can enter the Next Level, changing the way they described themselves, placing more importance on the idea of [[Satan]], and adding several other [[New Age]] concepts. One of these concepts was the belief of extraterrestrial [[Walk-in (concept)|walk-in]]s; when the group began, "Applewhite and Nettles taught their followers that they were extraterrestrial beings{{Nbsp}}[...] after the notion of walk-ins became popular within the New Age subculture, the Two changed their tune and began describing themselves as extraterrestrial walk-ins."{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=16}} A walk-in can be defined as "an entity who occupies a body that has been vacated by its original soul". Heaven's Gate came to believe an extraterrestrial walk-in is "a walk-in that is supposedly from another planet".{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=368}}

The concept of walk-ins aided Applewhite and Nettles in personally starting from what they considered to be "clean slates". In this clean slate, they were no longer considered to be the people they had been prior to the start of the group, but had taken on a new life; this concept gave them a way to "erase their human personal histories as the histories of souls who formerly occupied the bodies of Applewhite and Nettles".{{sfn|Lewis|2001|p=368}} Over time, Applewhite revised his identity in the group to encourage the belief that the "walk-in" that was inhabiting his body was the same that had done so to Jesus 2,000 years ago. Similar to [[Nestorianism]], this belief stated that the personage of Jesus and the spirit of Jesus were separable. This meant that Jesus was simply the name of the body of an ordinary man that held no sacred properties, that was taken over by an incorporeal sacred entity to deliver "next level" information.

=== Techniques to enter the next level ===

According to Heaven's Gate, once the individual has perfected himself through the "process", there were four methods to enter or "graduate" to the next level:{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=193}}

# Physical pickup onto a TELAH spacecraft and transfer to a next level body aboard that craft. In this version, what Professor Zeller calls a "UFO" version of the "[[Rapture]]", an alien spacecraft would descend to Earth and collect Applewhite, Nettles, and their followers, and their human bodies would be transformed through biological and chemical processes to perfected beings.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=31}}
# Natural death, accidental death, or death from random violence. Here, the "graduating soul" leaves the human container for a perfected next-level body.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|pp=123–124}}
# Outside persecution that leads to death. After the deaths of the [[Branch Davidians]] in Waco, Texas, and the events involving [[Randy Weaver]] at [[Ruby Ridge]], Applewhite was afraid the American government would murder the members of Heaven's Gate.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|p=184}}
# Willful exit from the body in a dignified manner. Near the end, Applewhite had a revelation that they might have to abandon their human bodies and achieve the next level as Jesus had done.{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|pp=123–124}} This occurred when 39 members died by suicide and "graduated".{{sfn|Zeller|2014a|pp=171–172}}
Animals were said to have souls, and a soul in an animal could enter the next level, a human soul, if it becomes a servant of humans, such as in a [[guide dog]], and "sees itself as a family member in that human family".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Last Chance To Advance Beyond Human |url=https://www.heavensgate.com/misc/lastchnc.htm |access-date=2024-04-05 |website=Heaven's Gate |language=en-US}}</ref>