Hi MickCable.  Thanks for sharing your experience.  It got me thinking about power--personal power, abuses of power, and the discussion in more recent times by various luminaries of the human potential movement about the important difference between having "power over" someone, as opposed to having "power with".  It's a simple way to test the efficacy of something in our lives--does it truly help us move forward or not?  Or conversely, are we encouraging another, or merely interfering and controlling?  Since cults very definitely derive their sustenance from the
"power over" mode (you only have to see the millions of references to "agya" and "lila" in this cult's case) to see that it was absolutely NOT beneficial to the individual to even touch it with a barge-pole!  You acted on a good instinct there, and I'm sorry that it cost you your job (definitely an abuse of power there on the part of your boss!), but we all seem to have to learn things.  Isn't it ironic that we got into this thing called "Knowledge" because we wanted to learn something!  It's what's NOT KNOWLEDGE that I have learned most from.   

Good luck in finding and strengthening your personal power.

~Shelagh