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'. Scholars have described the theology of Heaven's Gate as a mixture of Christian millenarianism, New Age, and ufology, and as such it has been characterized as a UFO religion.
In 1976, a core group of a few dozen members stopped recruiting and instituted a monastic lifestyle. 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. It was founded in 1974 and led by Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985) and Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997), known within the movement as Ti and Do, respectively. Heaven's Gate was an American new religious movement (often described as a cult) whose members committed mass suicide in 1997.
Human Individual Metamorphosis, Total Overcomers Anonymous
