I am currently watching louis therouxs weird weekends, sorry I cant spell his surname. anyway I notice that a lot of the “spiritual” methods they use can be explained through simple methods, like breathing excercises which obviousely give you a bit of a rush as your entire body become more oxygenated, and they take this to be some sort of spiritual blessing, I also noticed scream therapy being used but given some sort of divine meaning, obviousely if you scream whilst focusing on your anger as loud as possible it will take a huge weight off your shoulders, also the act of repeatedly screaming loudly itself helps. The add this to bouncing and breathing excercises which would warm up and energise the body. Add to that the singing and chanting which is synonymous with most cults and religions, these also help get more oxygen into the body and increase bloodflow, and people take the high they get as something associated with thier religion as they make them chant or sing things associated with thier religion whilst dancing, the fact is if you sing and chant for 5 hours no matter what you sing or chant and dance you will still get the same effects. If you take scientologies main feature of thinking of things in the past which have hurt you, and keep doing that until it hurts less, it would work as a method of self therapy, if you dont run away from your pain and face it until it stops hurting, that works.
Its on the same lines as chi, people would have you believe its a mystical force, but on the most part its simple techniques which you can use to manipulate your body and space around you. Internal chi is in essence the tensing and loosening of muscles, whilst external chi on the most part is moving in precise ways to manipulate the center of gravity to increase the force produced on a single point.
Another thing that is always ridiculous is the way that they state that you arent meant to worship possessions or individuals etc, yet the leaders always expect to be worshipped by all as though they are a god, surely it would not be right to be worshipped on the level of thier god. Also the fact that christianity have thier 10 base rules, handed down by god, but as you look into the history of christianity you see that they break a lot of these rules in order to spread worldwide, with murder etc being one of the main sins committed.