I would advice young people to judge a cult by the extent to which selfless service to others is part of their doctrine.  You can't prevent people from being naive (especially young people), but at least if the cult that they get involved in has a committment to helping people (that's helping rather than changing), they will at least be doing a bit of good while they come to their senses.

That's a strange and fatalistic pov.  With that attitude, you may as well tell people to give up, surrender, and bury their heads in the sand, but if they do get caught up in a cult, it's okay if charities are involved.

You can't judge a cult by their selfless service to others because cults (especially ones with one a living cult leader) are notorious for cooking their books and lying about the charities they supposedly support.  I've studied a lot of cults.  The way they operate so similarly, it seems they use the same procedural manual, if not the same script.   How do you propose that these young people get the truth out of the cults to make that judgment about their so-called "good works?"  The fact is that most of a cult's money ends up in the coffers of the cult leader. That's fraud.  Why? Because the purpose of cults is to enrich a cult leader. Period.   

Rather than try to define what it is about a cult that is inherently bad, or try to distinguish religions from cults, we should rather look at what are the positive attributes of people coming together for idealist purposes, what behaviours and social structures are likely to enhance the satisfaction of members and benefit society, and what are likely to be damaging and unproductive.

I suppose it's better to just float through life, not doing anything to help others understand how you got in the cult you were in, being "positive," about it, while rationalizing along the way.  Let me get this straight.  Instead of figuring out why cults are inheritentlly bad for people you'd go the other route and look at all the positive things that being a premie did for you, recommend someone join Rawat's cult to look for those traits and possibilities to improve Rawat's cult to inhance current members' satisfaction???

There are no positive attributes in being in a destructive cult. The only person who has any power in a destructive cult is the cult leader.  

If Rawat had used a substantial part of his wealth and the premies energies to alieviate human misery in some sort of practical way - however small - then the fact that he's a charlatan would not matter. (Might even have been able to put the years wasted in the cult on my resume.)

It will always matter if Rawat or any other cult leader is a charlatan.  But, maybe you're just feeling hurt right now and not thinking clearly about this.  Yeah. I know how much it hurts to have been in a cult for many years.  That's why I try to give the best advice to others about Rawat specifically, and cult leaders in general.  There was nothing you could have done to make Maharaji change and be different.  That's another reason that cults are so bad.