The Mind Benders

Magical thinking infiltrates as many acts and events are accredited to supernatural and ritual, such as prayer or sacrifice. Evolutionary, social, and cognitive psychology can explain some of the behaviors and behaviors of cult members. There is a possibility to investigate why members join cults, why they are easily influenced, and why they stay. Cult leaders use their personality and charisma to attract followers. Succeeding a pyramidal sort pattern, earlier members in cults will attract newer ones, building the cult framework. Cults are experts on who to target, time and again directing on people who have recently undergone a personal or professional loss or moved and are vulnerable. With the influence of both the charismatic leader and forms of persuasion, the cult member has trouble making formal judgment and decisions. They have trouble processing or deciding actions to take. Let’s see things in a different way such as the power of situational and communal influences and the consequences of a leader using such influences to devastatingly manipulate others' behavior.

Hawkes Bay Incident

1983 when 38 Shias from a village in Chakwal Tehsil were directed to the Arabian Sea led by Nasreen Fatima. Nasreen Fatima claimed to have direct contact with the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi. She was supported intensely by her father. Naseem Fatima claimed that Mahdi told her to go to the Arabian Sea, where its waters would part and allow her and her followers to walk to Basra and finally to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala both in Iraq minus to pay for the journey. Nasreen Fatima claimed that Mahdi told her to locate women and children in locked trunks for the journey. However, most pilgrims who took part drowned, including Fatima herself.

The Burari Deaths

The renowned show on Netflix, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths, was based on real-life occurrences, in 2018, in Burari, Delhi. Where 11 members of the same family were found dead in their home, blindfolded, gagged, and hands tied behind their backs. Some handwritten notes were also found in the house, which highlighted that the family was into spiritual/mystical practices. After the death of the head of the family, the family accepted Lalit as their leader. Lalit would talk and act like his father, he also used to instruct and guide the family, as his father would do, by journaling. Just a few days before the mass suicide, in the last note of the diary, instructed by the said-to-be deceased father’s spirit, to hand themselves as a ritual to lead a better life. Through this, they can lead a righteous and pure life.

Shrine Mass Killings

No different than the incidents quoted above, in 2017, twenty people were intoxicated, tortured and then murdered with clubs and knives at a Pakistani Sufi shrine. The dead included six women. The killings were professionally carried out by the shrine's upholder. To cleanse them, the custodian used to beat and torture his followers. A primary investigation showed that the custodian of the shrine had many devotees who would visit the shrine just to get tortured in the name of religious cleansing. The custodian Waheed would visit the shrine twice a week from Lahore, and his followers would willingly submit to beating and torturing with a red-hot iron rod. After being arrested the custodian, Waheed, told police that he killed the people because they tried to kill him in the past, and again they were there to kill him.

Numerous incidents took place in history if we start digging into it but keeping in view these three incidents, the only question which I am sure ascends in the minds of uncountable readers/individuals would be WHY? Why do they even follow this path of absolute insanity? Why Nasreen Fatima was not questioned on presenting the idea of getting locked in the trunks, and waiting for waters to part to let her and her followers pass? Why wasn’t the custodian of the shrine asked how torturing and beating could cleanse one's soul? Why Lalit wasn’t questioned by not even a single member of the family how this precarious ritual could lead to a righteous life? A person may follow a cult leader because of limited decision space. Cults seek to control their members in every respect; these can be seen from personal relations and family to financial assets and living arrangements (Lalich, 2017).    

Emotional comfort is central to the charm of cults. Persuasion is a form of social influence that involves changing other’s thoughts, or behaviors by applying rational and/or emotional arguments to convince them to adopt a certain position or view (Cialdini, 2017).

These three cases mentioned above are some examples of cults. When beliefs are influenced and abused by leaders, it results in massive destruction of humanity. The cult leaders use mind control techniques by manipulating them emotionally, usually by inducing fear or guilt to gain the loyalty of their followers. They consciously or unconsciously convince the followers to self-incriminate, they succeeded in persuading their devotees. Persuasion is seen as a power tactic to get cult members to participate in behaviors they otherwise would not. Some methods of cult influence include techniques of compelled persuasion involving guilt, shame, or fear. (Lalich, 2017) Nasreen Fatima, Lalit and Waheed successfully distorted the perception of their followers by abusing them emotionally and inducing fear, loss, and fault and were able to gain their followers' obedience and loyalty, to the extent that not even the adolescents interrogated their irrationality.

Cult leaders use the power of the crowd influence in controlling others' behavior, brainpower, thoughts, and emotions. This includes inaugurating inflexible rules and guidelines, withholding or misrepresenting information, using hypnotic trances, and generating guilt and fear among followers. The followers believe the leaders and engage in rituals with the intention of accomplishing an extensive set of desired outcomes, from plummeting their anxiety, relieving their grief to accomplishment in competitions. Cult members then make decisions followed by literature and forced rationality. Lastly, practices of influence like obedience, conformity, and submission keeps the followers in the cult and psychologically ceases them from leaving.

Cult members behave in ways that are in conflict to or against survival. Endangerments, injury, illness, harm, grievance or even death do not generate emotional responses. They will behave in far-reaching and undesirable ways that may hinder revision.

This is one variance that discrete cults from other groups is Deindividualization. Cults act as a collective. There is no difference of separate personality, emotions, or thoughts, seen in cult members. They adopt identical behaviors that they tend to become de-individualized and lose self-awareness. The bigger the cult, the greater the facility of changing mindsets and swaying emotions (Darley & Latane, 1968). The cult may also control the members by using psychological tactics like brainwashing. The followers with time start to get inclined by the brain frequency which is shared by the cult leader, which could lead to a rare condition, known as a shared psychotic disorder is a rare disorder regarded as by sharing a delusion among two or more people in a close relationship. The inducer (primary) with a psychotic disorder with delusional influences, another nonpsychotic individual or more (induced, secondary) based on a delusional belief. Amongst these psychological holds are several forms of social influence which are correlated with the natural need and drive for belonging that humans possess. These forms of social influence somewhat overlap in definition but have distinct differences and play a major role in being submissive to the cult leader.

This is how I tried to reason the obedience of the cult members, do share your opinions and understanding on the subject matter.