That's pretty much my experience as well.  The cult was presented as a very small choice to get a very big payoff, with no downsides, only upsides.  Remember "try it you'll like it?"  Remember, "this knowledge is so simple and easy?" 

What is despicable about a cult, and particularly the Rawat cult, is that, like you said, the demand to devote and surrender your life came from Rawat later, along with all kinds of induced fear about what would happen to you if you left, or if you listened to your own thoughts.   Rawat did nothing to ever encourage or enable someone to make an objective analysis of the experience or of following him.  He just presented it as the absolute.  Of course, you had the choice not to believe him, but he did everything to prevent you from making it.

Now, yes, it was my decision to receive knowledge, but it was done with false information and advertising.  Then, what Rawat did later made making an independent, informed choice, difficult ,if not impossible.

That's what a cult is about.  It's about mind control.  It's about trying to keep you from thinking.  And to some extent, that works for some segement of people, for varying periods of time.

So you need a lot of astericks and footnotes after a statement such as "it was my choice."  Well, yes, and no.   It just isn't that simple.