Here’s a short and very relevant article by Daniel Shaw, who once was in a cult and has written books on narcissists.

A few highlights:

“The guru is infinitely entitled and grateful to no one; he rewrites history to create a biography that leaves out any trace of his significant misdeeds and failures; he never hesitates to lie for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, and to blame others for his own errors and failures; he is erratic, thin-skinned, belligerent, and constantly involved in attacking and belittling perceived enemies; he persuades followers to see their lives before joining his group as wretched, and he claims exclusive possession of the power to transform follower’s lives in miraculous ways.”

“His delusion of infallible omnipotence, however, is his way of completely denying how profoundly unstable his mind really is.  To sustain the extraordinary level of denial he needs to hold the profoundly distorted, self-serving belief that he is always right and never wrong, greater than all others and far above the law and the truth, he needs followers –- millions of them, if possible -– who join him in his delusion.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-insanity-of-narcissism_us_57b25a19e4b0567d4f12b90b