Original subtitles

RADIO HOST: And it's seven minutes now past the hour.

Our number across the country is 1-800-449-GLKN,

locally, 664-8255.

I'm David Masters, this is Radioactive Talk,

on the Talk Radio.

Our guests on this particular program

are Rick and Yvonne

and they've devoted their lives,

along with a number of other people on the planet,

to awaken the rest of us up,

uh, to some very important truths as they see it.

One of the important truths

is the end of civilization as we know it.

Is this correct?

Get right up on the mic.

We feel very strongly

that this is the end times

that was prophesized by in the Bible.

DAVID: That is a known fact one of the messages that you bring.

That-- and this is part of our message, yes.

DAVID: Let me ask you this,

how do you know you're not hypnotized?

Or deceased? Or brainwashed?

Do I look hypnotized?

Do I look brainwashed?

- Yeah. - All right.

[laughing]

But then again, so do I.

MAN: No, I think you do-- you-- you have, uh,

a particular look on your face

of a person who is in a hypnotic trance.

Well, when you mention being brainwashed,

I think we-- we thought about that too.

Over-- you know, over some time

and we feel that, in a lot of ways,

we hope we are.

[music]

[rain pattering]

SAWYER: Ti and Do gave us the tools

to brainwash ourselves.

Literally wash out our humanness

from our brains.

And that's the same thing that was meant by Baptism.

There was washing your humanness out of you

and starting fresh, like a new creature.

Like the butterfly,

the beginning of the butterfly.

DO: The mind that you had as a human,

is aborted and the soul that was given to you

is filled with next level information,

next level mind,

and a new creature is born.

Brainwashing is one of the controversial terms

in this field.

And-- and there are some academics

who want us to think that it doesn't exist.

But as someone who brainwashed people,

I can guarantee you that it does exist.

JANJA: One of the myths about cults

is that they're all religious.

And, in fact, there's many kinds of cults.

I myself was in a political cult.

The Democratic Workers Party.

We were a very strict Marxist-Leninist organization.

I thought that I was going to

help bringing back social change.

After about the sixth year I got very disillusioned.

I didn't stay out of any kind of loyalty to the leader,

I didn't stay even

out of any loyalty to the belief system

at that point.

I stayed because I was scared,

and I couldn't figure out how to leave.

So I was in for about 10 and a half years,

People do go through a very deep

psychological change that is brought about

by the indoctrination methods in the group.

And the group really believed

that they were training for this trip to outer space.

They said: "We want to be part of a crew.

A crew which acts as a whole."

And they looked at Star Trek and said: "That's it."

PICCARD: Captain's log, stardate 41153.7.

Our destination is planet Deneb IV,

beyond which lies the great unexplored mass of the galaxy.

We watched several approved TV programs.

Star Trek was one of them.

It was about expanding

our potential into space travel.

Which was analogous to what we were doing.

MAN: Initiate docking procedures.

Maneuvering thrusters only.

...for as a benefit of the overall collective.

We do are on a quest to better ourselves.

Evolving toward a state of perfection.

Who are you?

I am the Borg.

DATA: The Borg have a collective consciousness,

there are no individuals.

SAWYER: Do said that's like depicting the Next Level.

The members of the Borg.

I thought: "Ooh."

That's-- that's kind of, like, uncomfortable,

A cog in wheel is a very significant item,

when you are in our Father's Kingdom

serving as a member of a crew.

[robotic voice] We are the Borg, resistance is futile.

FRANK: In the group

we obviously didn't go out and get haircuts

at the barber shop.

So we would cut each other's hair.

I was a hair cutter at one point,

I cut hair, you know?

WOMAN: Oh!

Well, next time you come in you'll be cutting my hair.

[laughing]

Within the first couple of years,

after Ti passed,

we were gathered in the main room,

Do is taking questions,

and I raised my hand

To make an observation

because it was in the morning, my...

my voice was a little bit...

huskier.

Hence, we're moving into a world that is genderless,

we are doing everything we can do

to not identify with a gender.

But I was...

humiliated.

I felt this smoldering anger

come up in me.

And then, after that,

I gradually developed this severe

inability to speak like--

like I have still

'cause there's always this push-pull,

always this suppression.

I wrote a note to Do,

telling him I'm feeling

I can't be in the group anymore.

He came to talk to me and said:

"You are throwing away

"your opportunity to graduate.

"You haven't done anything

"to displease me.

There's no reason for you to leave."

And I kept returning to this, gut knowing,

and saying: "I'm sorry, I have no choice."

A couple days after I arrived in Calgary,

Erika called me on the phone.

And, of course,

there would've been somebody else

on the extension.

Check partner.

I don't know if she would've wanted to say anything

but she had her check partner in the extension.

That was the last time I spoke to her.

JANJA: This is a thing people don't understand

about leaving cult,

you're-- you're leaving your whole world.

And you don't know what's out there

and you've been fed a bunch of bull

about what's gonna happen to you.

In Heaven's Gate you weren't this person.

So you really had nothing to go back to.

And so, to me,

that's a far deeper type of indoctrination.

Steve Hassan is a world renowned cult expert.

He himself was recruited into a cult at 19 years of age.

Now, he's written a book called

Combatting Cult Mind Control.

[applause]

Steve, what's going on here?

People can be systematically broken down,

indoctrinated, through controlling information,

controlling their behavior, controlling their thoughts,

controlling their emotions,

and made into obedient, dependent slaves,

or clones, of the cult leader.

In my work counseling people who have left cults,

you know, physically leaving the cult

doesn't get it out of your head.

Specially if you've been in it for years.

People tend to blame the members,

they did not appreciate

the robust amount of social psychological

destructive mind control techniques

that were systematically applied.

They made people cut off from their family and friends.

They made people be in couples.

So they had no privacy.

They changed their names.

They changed their clothing.

They change their diet.

It's classic mind control, in my opinion,

to create a new pseudo-identity

that was obedient.

NARRATOR: The experiment of Solomon Asch

examines behavior under the pressure

of social forces.

STEVEN: In my practice,

when I'm doing interventions with people,

I show videos of the Asch Conformity Study.

MAN: The experiment you'll be taking part in today,

involves the perception of lengths of lines.

You're to look at the line on the left,

and determine which of the three lines on the right

is equal to it in length.

STEVE: And everybody was in on the experiment

except the person in seat six.

And they start giving the correct answer

for two rounds

and then they all start giving the wrong answer.

MAN: Two.

MAN 2: Two.

MAN 3: Two.

Two.

Uh, two.

NARRATOR: The subject denies the evidence

of his own eyes and yields to group influence.

And this experiment has been done

over and over again for decades

and the answer universally is

two thirds of everyone who does this experiment

starts giving the wrong answer.

One.

They must be right,

they're four of them and one of me.

Uh, one.

We all wanna think that we're independent,

and we would never agree.

But the science, the social science says,

we're programmed to fit into groups,

we're gonna start adapting

to the people in our environment

in order to fit in.

MAN: Hi.

WOMAN: We're good you're here.

JANJA: When you're in a cult,

specially for any length of time,

you're in what I call a self-sealing system.

This is a social system

that's closed in on itself.

Your free will is under the will

of the leader and the group.

So, you're only doing what you need to do

to stay in the good graces of the group.

What ended up happening

was there's these idle threats,

from my point of view,

of fear, that if you missed the boat,

you may not get another chance.

MAN: Come on.

JANJA: Peer pressure

is so important in these groups, right?

So you can see,

you know, SRRODY doing it,

so that you know that you should be at least

as dedicated as SRRODY.

So you are often comparing yourself

to the people who looked like they're more devoted,

so you can be ridding yourself

of all these human characteristics

that are in this...

body that you happen to be living in.

DO: I'm afraid that here I need to get a little personal,

sex is the strongest drug,

there's not a drug, there's not a morphine

or anything that is produced by

chemicals or plants of this world,

as strong as that drug.

It's something we have to go through the withdrawal of,

we have to overcome.

Just looking at a female,

would inflame the-- the--, you know,

the hormones in my body.

And he would just constantly tried to find techniques

that would eliminate that desire.

We had a procedure

that if you had a nocturnal emission,

they had wash clothes set aside in the bath chambers

so you can clean up before you went back to bed.

And I didn't want to use them,

because I didn't want to expose

that I had a nocturnal emission.

I did feel guilty about it.

And then they made it into a sign out.

So that they would know who had a nocturnal emission.

Having to admit to it and the same around it,

the defeated feeling,

like, you know, almost had to go back to square one,

uh, was enough for me

and, I think I can speak for everybody,

to keep them in check.

And this is, uh, Dick Joslyn.

He had been recruited in Los Angeles in 1975.

He's obviously a very attractive guy,

and he became one of Do's helpers

after Ti died.

One of the core members of the group.

Do, of course, was gay,

and Dick Joslyn was gay,

and one day Do called him aside

and said,

"I hate to tell you this,

"but my vehicle is becoming attracted to your vehicle

"and so I got to relieve you of your responsibility

of being one of my helpers."

And Dick was absolutely devastated.

Marshall Applewhite didn't like his homosexuality.

So he created a myth around that piece he didn't like.

He came to a conclusion about his body

that it was abhorrent.

SAWYER: Do held a meeting

and he said that he had a nocturnal emission

and he was investigating having himself castrated.

Will any of you have reservations

of having the same procedure done?

And I didn't have any reservations.

I was committed to being celibate

for the rest of my life.

If-- if your eye offend you, block it out.

It's the same idea,

if something is so offensive to you

that your control is threatened by it

then why shouldn't you dispose of it

if you have that option to do it.

Not that I have ever talked to anyone

into taking that action.

JANJA: And I think Do was greatly influenced

by some of the stronger members at that point

who fed him some of the more extreme ideas.

And that's not unusual in a group.

It kind of took control of him.

I think, in a sense,

he was also a victim.

I was told that, for example,

the castrations, uh, was not his idea.

And was, actually SRRODY's idea,

who was one of the more gung ho members.

DO: SRRODY is the clown of the class, or--

All right, I shouldn't say that.

I'm teasing him, as I always do.

SRRODY was always a go getter.

You know, his Irish vehicle.

And he was very quick.

He would run to go do things,

there was a task

and people would criticize him for running.

DO: Never shy of energy,

you always have to tone him down.

We keep saying, "Down, SRRODY."

Had this thought,

SRRODY was gonna beat me to the punch

of having this castration experience.

In my mind, it was like-- giving proof to the Next Level

that I was all the way in.

This is terribly human.

It was, like, competitive.

Do said,

"We've set up a sterile room

"and we're gonna proceed doing the castrations

that you all have convinced me that you wanted."

He made a sign, and the sing said "Mexico".

And he put that above the door.

So that if we ever were questioned by authorities,

we could honestly say that we went to Mexico to do it.

LVVODY and JNNODY were there.

And LVVODY was gonna perform the procedure

'cause she is the nurse

and she had worked for orchidectomist

and individual that removed testicles.

Do said, "Who's gonna go first?"

And so he flipped the coin,

and SRRODY won the toss,

so he got to choose who would go first,

and he wanted to go first.

LVVODY cut the testicle sack open,

and I almost fainted.

So I was done, but then,

SRRODY's testicle sack started to get bigger.

And, uh...

You know...

getting a little iffy.

And SRRODY started to moan.

And Do said that...

he did a terrible thing.

[sniffles]

He-- he went too far, he said.

He said, "I went too far

"to allow this to happen

and you need to take me to the police."

And LVVODY and JNNODY and I said,

"No way.

We'll take care of it."

We didn't want to go to a hospital

'cause we were afraid that

something would be seen as, uh,

illegal.

And we didn't want that to get back to Do.

And so we ended up calling a priest.

Seeing if they had any experience with anybody that

chose to be castrated.

And the priest didn't know what we were talking about.

He wasn't any worse,

but he wasn't any better either.

It was just, what can we do to, you know,

uh, to fix this.

We decided to bring him to a hospital.

SRRODY stayed there overnight for observation.

I was wired, I mean, it was like,

people say that when they're

in a big crime scene or something is like surreal.

That's what I was experiencing.

I was... surreal about this.

And JNNODY and I went to the pier

and we threw the testicles in there.

[splashing]

I don't know if that was necessary or not,

but we didn't want any evidence.

And Do at that point said,

that, um,

he didn't want to continue with the castrations

and I know I was disappointed.

But then, they found some doctors

that would do the procedure.

And Do was also castrated.

Eventually, they were,

depending on which source you look to,

between seven and nine men within the group

who had been castrated.

But most of the men were not interested

in having the surgery done.

KELLY: My father had issue

with how they castrated themselves

to overcome their sexuality.

That was something really couldn't identify with doing.

And he-- he just left.

And then my mom came back.

They had a way of relating to each other

since they've both been in the cult.

And that became very isolating to them.

So I knew there was a possibility

for them to rejoin the cult.

They didn't say when,

it was just a matter of time.

I living in this constant state of limbo.

This was a group where people were free to come and go.

There were many people who left of their own free will,

including some who were told to leave

because they weren't following the rules.

DO: This little classroom dwindled to 50

and then dwindled down to couple dozen.

BENJAMIN: Starting in 1991,

the group engaged in a media onslaught,

trying to reach out to new members.

Part because the group had really shrunk,

but it's also because for many members

and leaders of the group,

they thought they were approaching the end.

Not just the end of the group

but the potential for the end of the world.

Now the end of the age,

I'm afraid I feel is right upon us.

It's gonna come...

and I-- I don't want to sound like a prophet,

but my gut says, and everything else that I know,

points to that it's going to come

before the turn of the century.

BENJAMIN: This was a time

that was rife with end-of-the-world fears.

And there were a lot of new religious movements

in the 1990s

that looked to the year 2000

and a few years before and after that,

as a moment at which the world was going to end.

This is the countdown to the coming of Christ, folks.

We don't know the day and the hour in Matthew 24:36,

but Jesus said, you'll know when it's near.

CHUCK: And as far as our departure,

we don't really know whether we're gonna depart

with that end or whether our departure

will be before or somewhere in between

or anything like that.

And that for 16 years

we haven't shared this truth.

And now, all of a sudden, we're getting instruction

to give it out

more clearly.

And this is what you're witnessing tonight.

BENJAMIN: They began a satellite television series

called "Beyond Human."

They paid for 14 hours of time.

Where were we?

Remind me of our question again.

Um, how do I identify which god?

BENJAMIN: They took out an ad in USA Today,

a national newspaper.

SAWYER: It was, uh, third on the page, I believe,

and it cost $30,000.

They put a PO box there,

and we got people who would correspond with us.

And we started responding to the correspondence.

They created several VHS tapes

which they mailed around to anyone who wanted copy.

From this they were able to reconnect

with several ex members,

some new members joined,

and then, of course, they went back on the road.

♪ ♪

Here we go.

Sometimes use an analogy of Star Trek,

most everybody hopefully have seen

some kind of Star Trek show.

DENISE: You know, we've been in seclusion for 18 years

and our description of this material

is probably lacking,

and if you can help us know where your areas are

that we've left unclear then we can help fill 'em in.

♪ I had to praise you ♪

♪ ♪

♪ I had to praise you like I should ♪

HOST: Members are not often intellectually deprived,

sociologically deprived,

but often times very intelligent people.

What would make an intelligent person then,

essentially, give up their life to somebody else.

Well, as a former cult member,

and a licensed mental health counselor

who's been working for 20 years,

I can tell you that I've counseled, literally,

thousands of people who are very bright, educated.

And, essentially,

they're ignorant about cult tactics,

the cults use deception, manipulation,

hypnosis, behavior modification to get people in.

And they're also situationally vulnerable.

I've had a hundred or more cases

where people described

a vulnerable moment in their life

when they were approached.

Death of a loved one, illness,

uh, moving to a new city, state or country,

losing a job...

Where the person goes,

"God, tell me what I'm supposed to be doing with my life."

And then, knock, knock,

"Can we study the Bible with you?"

♪ ♪

JASON: I first met up with the class

in July of 1994 in Madison, Wisconsin,

after I dropped out of college.

I didn't really have a whole lot at that point.

A really close friend of mine

brought home a flyer for the meeting.

Immediately we both were fascinated by it

and said "We have to do this."

He was talking about how there are

beings here right now from another level of existence

doing their last circuit around,

gathering up individuals.

As I was at the meeting, it was just

a deep sense of recognition.

I-- I knew who they were

and I knew what they were saying.

DEB: For my brother,

I think he was, in colloquial terms,

ripe for the picking.

He'd had an attempted suicide once before the cult,

and someone had left the copy of the USA Today

in the breakroom at work and he picked it up.

The cult had placed a full page ad

making comments like the Earth is about to be recycled,

this is your last opportunity...

And he was drawn to that.

He was looking for a place to belong.

People that he felt he could align with.

WOMAN: Hey, Gail, are you ready?

- For what? - The big day?

To entertain you? [laughing]

She had just broken off with a boyfriend of four, five years.

And the store wasn't going well.

I think that was a trigger,

because a couple of months later

we got one of these recruitment flyers

for this group.

Talking about UFOs and all that.

Then we knew we were in trouble.

ALICE: When she called home,

I said, "Hi, Gail, what are you doing?"

And she said, "Did you get my flyer?"

And we said yes, and she said,

well, that's what I'm doing, what do you think of it?

Oh, when you're coming home?

Oh, no, Gail, you've got to come.

So, what kind of group are you with?

Oh, really?

Yeah?

Do you have an address or a phone number

where I can get a hold of you if you need be?

Well, keep in contact, baby,

because I love you so much and I miss you awfully.

And, uh, we figured, all right, all right,

someday she'll realize this is not for her

and she'll walk out.

BENJAMIN: While they were able to attract,

uh, some new members,

the attempts of the members of Heaven's Gate and Do

to reach out, really met widely with rejection.

RADIO HOST: There must be some thing, some experience

some knowledge, some truth

some something that has given you to know

what you say you know.

And I'm only asking you what is it.

What makes you different?

Besides the fact that you recognize truth or--

[laughing]

Any questions?

[laughing]

[indistinct chattering]

WOMAN: You are plugged into a tree, literally!

You see?

WOMAN: I said, "Look, there's JWNODY plugged into a tree!"

MAN: Here we have JWNODY with this,

and we understand that you have something you'd like to share?

Well, yes, this is for our clients.

And you may ask who are our clients.

We have a little business that we call Higher Source,

from which we earn our income so we can consume

while we are on this planet.

We always were self-supporting,

which a lot of entities that are in our position

might not be.

ROBERT BALCH: At the time, there weren't that many people

who were heavily into computers,

as far as going out and making money.

One of the early members, RKKODY, Chuck Humphrey,

we actually had a computer shop.

Um, it was probably one of the very first computer shops

way back in the 70s.

He introduced people to computers,

a lot were self-taught.

JASON: There was a core group

who were, uh, computer people

and so they had the kind of nine to five jobby jobs

and they would-- they would leave the warehouse every day.

FRANK: About half the group worked outside the class,

to bring in funds after the trust fund ran out.

SAWYER: We had pretty good tasks at that point,

working, you know, professional jobs in computers.

SRRODY was a great Assembly programmer,

and C programmer, you know, I couldn't...

really get with it, like to that degree of technicalities.

ROBERT: They did have some really great people

and they tried to put their message out on the Internet.

BENJAMIN: They did look the Internet

as a way to reach out

and connect with people.

[modem hissing]

They began uploading content to the website

Bu they were greeted with, affectively, cyber bullying.

I think the best example of this are Do's Usenet postings.

Usenet is an online bulletin board system

where you can post really almost anything.

And it's organized by topic.

Do posted to, uh, topics

associated with artificial intelligence,

with science fiction, with Christianity,

And he posted a, really, a manifesto,

that he was Jesus that he had come back,

that the world was ending,

the way to leave the Earth was to join with him.

Within the group it made sense

to talk about disincarnated space aliens,

it made sense to talk about the Next Level.

These vehicles we occupy or human vehicles,

that we also recognize that the mind

that we are attempting to graft into,

and receive our nourishment from

comes from the Kingdom Level of Heaven.

BENJAMIN: Outside the group it looks like nonsense.

And it was treated as nonsense.

People posted incendiary rude responses,

saying that you are an idiot to believe this,

you must be crazy, are you occultist...

The members of the group began to feel

as if their attempts to reach out had failed

and the sign had come for them to give up on our planet.

It's a very short time

before our departure.

Our thoughts will be of you,

we hope that your thoughts will be...

[voice breaking] of our Father's Kingdom.

Thank you.

They had become, in their words, a class.

And what happens with a class?

They graduate.

And that was the term they used.

They called it a graduation.

They talked about it in a variety of ways,

but they never talked about it as suicide.

There was always the exit,

suicide would be to stay here on this planet.

This world is rotten

And I would rather die in service to my interpretation

of what God is than stay here.

And they didn't always talk about the exit

as something that they would do to themselves.

There was a series of events that demonstrated,

at least to the members of Heaven's Gate,

that there was a war between the US Government

and people who believed and acted differently.

People who loved their God so, in their own way,

that they end up being--

like what happened to Randy Weaver.

Ruby Ridge.

What happened at Waco.

[gunshots firing]

REPORTER: The stand-off's been going on

for about 45 minutes now.

OFFICER: You hear what we're talking about?

REPORTER: Yes, sir.

OFFICER: I gotta take the shot.

- Get the hell off of here. - I'll get off the property,

that's what I'm doing, sir.

[sirens blaring]

REPORTER: The credo of the Branch Davidians cult

was preparing for the end of the world

and it has been said that David Koresh

and his followers have been seeking

some kind of confrontation.

I'm sure every cult in the United States,

like, glued to the TV, during that whole event.

And they're all thinking

"Could this happen to us?"

BENJAMING: So, members of Heaven's Gate

feared the government was going to come and kill them.

However, in a twist,

they actually thought this would be a good thing.

FRANK: Do openly talked with us, as a group,

saying, "Perhaps we could

"buy firearms, learn to use them,

"and be seen as a threat

that would trigger our demise."

And it's like, ah, that doesn't sound very nice,

you know, and half of us would be dead,

and the other half will end up maimed and crippled,

and still stuck here on planet Earth.

And sounds painful

and so they didn't really like that idea.

I mean, I don't care for any of...

the fame or glory of the human role

it's absolutely worthless to me.

I can't wait to get out of here.

I apologize for being so emotional,

But that happens to be the truth,

I want to leave here.

Now, I'm in a vehicle that is already falling apart on me.

I feel that he got to a point

where he didn't know any other way out.

That he had created this--

this enormous belief system

this, um, this structure,

and this people that were

totally, totally committed to him.

Personally.

He was their god.

We had a meeting in the top floor of the warehouse,

where we always had our meetings.

SAWYER: Do had said

he wants to hear from each individual

if they have any reservations about suicide as an exit.

We would be taking a strong barbituric,

and that would, basically, put our vehicles to sleep.

Of the gentlest way he could think about doing it.

There was some tear shed by some individuals,

definitely, who I think had some real difficulties,

with contemplating it.

And I said, wow, that's huge.

I mean, Do even said,

he's only been here two weeks,

you know, and I'm talking about

something incredibly drastic here.

At the same time, I said, well,

if that's something I have to consider down the line,

then that's something I have to consider, you know?

I wasn't saying we are gonna go do this tomorrow.

I said I had no reservations.

I always felt right from the beginning now

I was gonna lose my vehicle.

Even though that's what--

not the way we would do the teaching in the beginning.

BENJAMIN: This is a powerful moment.

This was in mid 1990s,

some of them have been members since 1974.

20 years in a group.

20 years in a group, living, breathing and vibing

the teachings, the doctrines,

the practices of the group

and being asked in that moment,

"What do you think? Do you wanna exit with us?"

After that meeting, five people eventually left.

Including Sawyer.

I left in September of '94.

Not long after that.

But not for that reason.

I was invested in just being in the program,

being, uh, with my teachers.

The people that I recognize

that I believed were from outer space

and from Next Level

and that created the planet.

I was given so much.

I was overseer of a crew.

Yeah, tomorrow is gonna be, uh, a zillion people...

It's a little bit of an exaggeration for the camera.

I was looked up to by some of the students.

They kind of told me that.

So when I-- when I fell,

I think a number of people were pretty shocked.

We refer to our lifestyle as a monastic lifestyle.

On a sense, like a monastery.

I was holding meetings where I was the primary speaker,

Telling people that we had to give up

all sexuality and everything

to become a member of the next level.

And yet I was the hypocrite.

I remember turning on MTV one time

and, boy, did that inflame me.

You know, just seeing women dancing around, you know,

half-clad, you know.

I was off the wagon!

I was...

occasionally masturbating,

I would have a thought

and the thought was so powerful I couldn't--

I couldn't hold back.

I didn't know how-- I didn't even--

have the desire to ask for help.

It was that intense.

But I was like, you know, like two people,

I was like a schizophrenic person in-- in a sense.

Well, see, I-- I didn't recognize...

that I was breaking those procedures,

it was leading up to something.

So I was in the house where we were living,

and I was walking up the staircase,

and Do was walking down,

and he said,

"You've been distant."

And, um...

Sorry, it's just--

That, uh, he was--

Well, I told him what I was doing.

And, uh...

Do, he said,

"So, you already you have

"the potential to become a really good member

"of the Next Level

and I don't want to throw you away."

Because I wasn't influencing anyone else

to get involved with sensuality.

He was willing to help me with it

while I stay in the classroom.

But, then, it didn't change me.

I kept on giving in to masturbation.

And I told Do, "I feel like I need to leave the group."

And so he got me a plane ticket and gave me $600.

You know, it's-- it's--

It's really, uh...

I'm really kind of a pitiful person, really.

But, then again, you know, I'm not the judge of myself.

And, uh, maybe I was doing the best I could.

[fire crackling]

Whenever I come home at night,

I look up at the heavens.

People say to me frequently,

"Oh, you were duped."

You know, "Why don't you go on with your life,

instead of, you know, continuing to think about this."

But, uh...

I still believe in all the teachings of Ti and Do.

And, uh,

that if I continue to grow

then I will...

potentially pass through the Heaven's Gate.

The birth canal.

It's gotta be a UFO, everything is.

Well, this comet is amazing because it's very bright

even to the naked eye.

You really don't need a telescope.

Oh, yes, I can, yeah.

REPORTER: The Hale-Bopp comet

is making its closest pass to Earth

coming to withing 122 million miles of our planet.

MAN: It's the brightest comet

that's passed through the Solar System since 1577.

REPORTER: Comets, so different from anything else in the sky,

that through history they've inspired and terrified.

People used to go out and kill themselves,

uh, getting scared that the comet will...

you know, blow up or something.

REPORTER: Now, as we get closer to the year 2000

and the end of the millennium,

more and more fringe groups

are spreading Doomsday predictions

of the end of the human species.

RADIO HOST: Chuck Shramek in Houston, Texas,

- Chuck, welcome to the program. - CHUCK: Thanks, Art.

ART: A lot of people have felt

something is going on with Hale-Bopp.

CHUCK: Well, I have too.

Wow.

HOST: And now maybe you got it on film?

CHUCK: Well, I photographed tonight, just showed up.

This is a big thing.

It appears to be several times larger than the Earth.

Maybe about 150,000 miles away from Hale-Bopp.

RADIO HOST: What could it be?

[chuckles] CHUCK: I have no idea.

♪ ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

♪ I saw the sign ♪

♪ And it opened up my eyes ♪

♪ I saw the sign ♪

♪ Life is demanding without understanding ♪

♪ I saw the sign ♪

♪ And it opened up my eyes ♪

♪ I saw the sign ♪

♪ No one's gonna drag you up ♪

♪ To get into the light where you belong ♪♪