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.