This is a bit off-topic but for some reason, your post reminded me of an
event that happened to me in the late 1970s concerning phobia induction.

According to Steven Hassan, a fear is supposed to protect us from real danger
and a phobia exists when a person wrongly believes they are in danger. Inducing
phobias is a universal mind-control tool used by cults to exert undue
influence. A typical cult-induced phobia is the fear of being unable to lead a
happy and successful life outside the cult.

So, cults deliberately install phobias to control their members. Such
phobias can be so deeply implanted that cult members may not know they exist.
Being educated in a cult’s beliefs and loaded language as well as phobias
particular to the group, is critical to exiting a cult.

So here is the event. I remember Joe Anctil coming to our local ashram in the mid to late 1970s
and warning us not to “jump off Maharaji’s boat into a shark-infested ocean”.
This was a deliberately installed phobia designed to keep us in the cult. I
remember being genuinely taken aback by Anctil’s statement and forcing myself
to say, “What sharks, what ocean?” For the first time in my life as a premie, I
felt I was being deliberately f*cked with and that there was something underhanded
and malicious going on.