Flight From Reality : Mass suicide victims chose death over hope for this life

Some things seem beyond belief. Flying saucers, many would say, or out-of-body experiences. But in fact there are no limits on belief, and there is no more startling evidence of that than the 39 bodies found in repose, most of them under purple shrouds, at a fine home in gracious Rancho Santa Fe. Many of these men and women, most in their 40s, had coins and $5 bills in their pockets. Apparently they believed they were going somewhere other than the San Diego County morgue to which they were taken in refrigerated trucks.

The television networks broadcast a videotape mailed out by the group in which a woman talks, seated somewhere out of doors. She seems calm. “Maybe they’re crazy, for all I know,” she muses to the camera. “But I don’t have any choice but to go for it, because I’ve been on this planet for 31 years and there’s nothing here for me.” Where was she going? Did she get there? We’ll never know. But she apparently believed that she had a shot at another life if she willingly left this one.

Police and journalists will reconstruct the 39 lives in the days ahead. The operative words are already in play. Mass suicide. Cult. The worst since Jonestown.

The dead had consumed a lethal potion. Evidence indicates they believed that ending this life was to be the first step in an incredible voyage to a UFO trailing behind the comet Hale-Bopp.

So what are we to believe? That this was insanity, group psychosis? Many of the dead had been computer wonks. Perhaps there’s a message here about detachment from life. We may learn from this; for now there is only shock.

But we should know this: Those of us who inhabit this planet, no matter how difficult our lives might become, rarely arrive at such a point. If hope does fail, we should reach out. There are hands to pull us back.