The MO of a cult introduction is to love bomb the victim and/or to build up tension and then release it cathartically. This is often enhanced by deliberately disturbing food and/or sleep cycles.
The superficial content is not the message. The feelings are the message.
These events are designed to make people leave on a high, so they imprint on the source and keep coming back to it. The high is far more effective than anything that's said, whether or not it makes sense.
The thing is, I went in knowing all this. I knew exactly what they were doing, knew the background of the org, and went anyway to support a couple friends. It still got me right at the end, as I was sitting in my chair thinking how ready I was to go home, within the second to last hour of the 3 day retreat.
I didn't come away thinking better of the event, but I was damn curious about the psychological impacts of group empathy, how the room had almost attained some resonant frequency of emotional harmony and I was swept up in it.
1.) your immune system isn't bogged down by foreign matter, plus
2.) your mind needs to focus to find food in times of scarcity and avoid predators.