If you know anything about cults, then you know that, inevitably, their denial of reality catches up with them in spectacular fashion. Heaven’s Gate started out innocently enough back in the 1970s. The hippies were convinced that they’d eventually ascend on board an alien UFO and transform into immortal beings with godlike powers. Members eagerly signed up because, after all, there wasn’t a whole lot of downside risk involved. In the worst-case scenario, if the “prophecy” was wrong, your life would continue as normal. Maybe you’d have to leave your family for a bit, but otherwise, no big deal. In the best-case scenario, you become omnipotent. Seemed like a win-win.
Fast-forward a few decades, and Heaven’s Gate changed the terms of the bargain a little bit. By the 90s, in order to get the godlike powers, you needed to take your own life. So it was a slight revision in the contractual arrangement. But a lot of Heaven’s Gate members went along with it anyway. They had bought into the nonsense they’d been fed. They were in too deep. They had sunk costs. They weren’t about to turn back at the last minute, as the Hale-Bopp Comet approached. So they took the drugs, died, and that was that. The cult of Heaven’s Gate was no more.
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