The great thing about being in a cult is a)having everything taken care of so you can experience ‘the back seat home’ and b) being the cult leader with all the perks of power and status that implies.
Unfortunately in a non-transparent, ie. real, cult those things are mutually exclusive. Though the cult leader may get all the kudos, the women acolytes, the Rolls Royces he is also burdened by his followers. He has to give them stuff to do. He has to feed them and house them. It’s a big worry. One thing the cult leader NEVER experiences is the ‘back seat home’. This is taken from the superb book by Arthur Deikman “the wrong way home”- essential reading for anyone interested in The Cult- in essence the ‘back seat home’ describes that wonderful feeling you had as a child, when, after a long day out with your mum and dad you’re driving home and it’s dark and you’re falling half in and out of sleep on the back seat but its all warm and cosy and you don’t need to worry because the adults are TAKING YOU HOME. You even look out of the window and muse at what mysterious things could be out there but it all doesn’t matter because everything inside is warm and cosy. That’s the feeling cults offer their members. You’re wanted. You’re understood. You’re one of the family. Your life has meaning. And this continues- unless you start to question things or show some independence of thought, ie. grow up. Then the ‘back seat home’ is withdrawn. Cults use exclusion to bring their members into line- and it works. And the greater the sense of ‘us and them’ that has been created, the greater the sense of the leader being inviolable and the one source of ‘secrets’ the more that exclusion, or threat of it, works.