Marshall Applewhite - Nettles' Death

Nettles' Death

In 1983, Nettles had an eye surgically removed as a result of cancer diagnosed several years earlier. She lived for two more years, dying in 1985. Applewhite told their followers that she had traveled to the Next Level because she had too much energy to remain on Earth, abandoning her body to make the journey. His attempt to explain her death in the terms of the group's doctrine was successful, preventing the departure of all but one member. Applewhite, however, became very depressed. He stated that Nettles still communicated with him, but he suffered from a crisis of faith. His students supported him during this time, greatly encouraging him. He then organized a ceremony in which he symbolically married his followers; Lalich views this as an attempt to ensure unity. Applewhite told his followers that he had been left behind by Nettles because he still had more to learn—he felt that she occupied a higher spiritual role than he did. He began identifying her as "the Father" and often referred to her with male pronouns.

Applewhite began to emphasize a strict hierarchy, teaching that his students needed his guidance, as he needed the guidance of the Next Level. Zeller notes that this ensured that there would be no possibility of the group's continuing if Applewhite were to die. A relationship with Applewhite was said to be the only way to salvation; he encouraged his followers to see him as Christ. Zeller states that the group's previous focus on individual choice was replaced with an emphasis on Applewhite's role as a mediator. Applewhite maintained some aspects of their scientific teachings, but, in the 1980s, the group became more like a religion in its focus on faith and submission to authority.

After Nettles' death, Applewhite also altered his view of ascension: previously, he had taught that the group would physically ascend from the Earth and that death caused reincarnation, but her death forced him to allow that the ascension could be spiritual. He then concluded that her spirit had traveled to a spaceship and received a new body and that he and his followers would do the same. In his view, the Biblical heaven was actually a planet on which highly evolved beings dwelt, and physical bodies were required to ascend there. Applewhite believed that once they reached the Next Level, they would facilitate evolution on other planets. He emphasized that Jesus, whom he believed was an extraterrestrial, came to Earth, was killed, and bodily rose from the dead before being transported onto a spaceship. According to Applewhite's doctrine, Jesus was a gateway to heaven but had found humanity unready to ascend when he first came to the Earth. Applewhite believed that there was an opportunity for humans to reach the Next Level every two millennia, and the early 1990s would be the first opportunity to reach the Kingdom of Heaven since the time of Jesus. Zeller notes that his beliefs were based on the Christian Bible but were interpreted through the lens of belief in alien contact with humanity.

Applewhite taught that he was a walk-in, a concept that had gained popularity in the New Age movement during the late 1970s. Walk-ins were said to be higher beings who took control of adult bodies to teach humanity. This concept informed Applewhite's view of resurrection: he believed that his group's souls were to be transported to a spaceship, where they would enter other bodies. Applewhite abandoned the metaphor of a butterfly in favor of describing the body as a mere container, a vehicle that souls could enter and exit. This dualism may have been the product of the Christology that Applewhite learned as a young man; Lewis writes that the group's teachings had "Christian elements were basically grafted on to a New Age matrix." In a profile of the group for Newsweek, Kenneth Woodward compares his dualism to that of ancient Christian Gnosticism, although Peters notes that his theology departs from Gnosticism by privileging the physical world.

In the wake of Nettles' death, Applewhite became increasingly paranoid, fearing a conspiracy against his group. One member who joined in the mid-1980s recalled that Applewhite avoided new converts, worrying that they were infiltrators. He feared a government raid on their home and spoke highly of the Jewish defenders of Masada in ancient Israel who showed total resistance to the Roman Empire. Increasingly, he began to discuss the Apocalypse, comparing the Earth to an overgrown garden that was to be recycled or rebooted and humanity to a failed experiment. In accordance with the garden metaphor, he stated that the Earth would be "spaded under". Woodward notes that Applewhite's teaching about the Earth's recycling is similar to the cyclical perspective of time found in Buddhism. Applewhite also utilized New Age concepts, but he differed from that movement by predicting that apocalyptic, rather than utopian, changes would soon occur on Earth. He contended that most humans had been brainwashed by Lucifer, but that his followers could break free of this control. He specifically cited sexual urges as the work of Lucifer. In addition, he stated that there were evil extraterrestrials, whom he referred to as "Luciferians", that sought to thwart his mission. He argued that many prominent moral teachers and advocates of political correctness were actually Luciferians. This theme emerged in 1988, possibly in response to the lurid alien abduction stories that were proliferating at the time.