"Creating a Pawn
A second characteristic of totalistic environments is mystical manipulation or planned spontaneity. This is a systematic process through which the leadership can create in cult members what I call the psychology of the pawn. The process is managed so that it appears to arise spontaneously; to its objects it rarely feels like manipulation. Religious techniques such as fasting, chanting, and limited sleep are used. Manipulation may take on a special intense quality in a cult for which a particular "chosen" human being is the only source of salvation. The person of the leader may attract members to the cult, but can also be a source of disillusionment. If members of the Unification Church, for example, come to believe that Sun Myung Moon, its founder, is associated with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, they may lose their faith.
Mystical manipulation may also legitimate deception of outsiders, as in the "heavenly deception" of the Unification Church and analogous practices in other cult environments. Anyone who has not seen the light and therefore lives in the realm of evil can be justifiably deceived for a higher purpose. For instance, collectors of funds may be advised to deny their affiliation with a cult that has a dubious public reputation."
http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_articl ... mation.htm"MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (Planned spontaneity)
Extensive personal manipulation
Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated
Totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative
The "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)
The individual then develops the psychology of the pawn, and participates actively in the manipulation of others
The leader who becomes the center of the mystical manipulation (or the person in whose name it is done) can be sometimes more real than an abstract god and therefore attractive to cult members
Legitimizes the deception used to recruit new members and/or raise funds, and the deception used on the "outside world"
http://www.icsahome.com/infoserv_articl ... reform.htm Let's start with extensive personal manipulation. DavidPablo is duped into going to AARC for advice on joining AA or NA. Suddenly, he is diagnosed as a level 4 addict, strip-searched, deloused, held incommunicado, and begins a stay in AARC that lasts months. He is told that he has a disease that is chronic and that he is likely to die from this diseas, unless of course he adheres to the ways of AARC. He is give the AA book, and in DavidPablo's own words, it is all that he is allowed to read. Within a matter of days, DavidPablo's spouse appears in Open Meeting, and lo and behold, DavidPablo's parents have put her in AARC.
Here is how DavidPablo describes this period: "Every time I thought I had a plan, everything changed, and I was thrown back into confusion."
" I was also bone tired, and hadn't slept in 48 hrs. I was a wreck."
