Why do people join cults? What do the believers get out of it?

As a young man, I came of age in 1960, and spent the next ten years in college. A hippie, dodging the draft, and wandering through various cults. I studied English, philosophy and art. I was a seeker of the truth. I was at Millbrook with Timothy Leary. I was with a Gurdjieff cult. Arica. Scientology. My mother was a Christian Scientist her whole life, and I went to Sunday School for a decade. I did EST. And I hung around the Siddha Yoga cult at South Fallsburg for a couple of years. And AA. AA is a cult too. And I did a lot of "counseling," and marriage counseling, and "therapy." I ended up with the Tao te Ching.

I ended up believing that the reason some people get caught up in cults is that they have low self esteem. But I have a somewhat different definition for self esteem. I believe that self esteem is a feeling, an emotion. High self esteem is a feeling that you know what is going on here. Plenty of people know what is going on in their particular little sphere, but they feel totally out of it with regards to their relationships with other people, and their place in the world. You can't tell a person that they should feel cozy in the world, but it is easy to make a person feel cozy, at home, one of the family. All cults provide this feeling for their devotees. Plus, you get the promise of the love and paradise that the guru is the living example of. You get to share the power if you do your tasks well, with devotion.

Why do people fall for it? They fall for it just like a woman, whose mother was beaten, abused, and humiliated, ends up marrying an abuser. One day we discover ourselves wondering, watching ourselves. Maybe feeling like a pretender. Pretending to be a law student say, while you really just long to sit at the big table in the cafeteria and laugh with the "in crowd." Whatever, few people really feel comfortable and cozy, and feel like they really know what is going on. Cults easily fill this anxious void for people. And they become quickly addicted to not feeling the pain that comes with being confused about not knowing what's going on here. Cults give you, give one, a society that loves you. A mission and duty, a daily duty. Many devotees quickly attain some sort of exalted status, and that buzz, for a person, who was feeling separated two years ago, but now is highly informed, and busy busy with their Sadhana is really addicting