The solution to cults is simple: to learn about them.

People are in cults always from some emotional reason. Never from logic or evidence. But there are two kinds of reasons. One is a reaction against what they experienced in the past by people that they trusted. Another reason is benefit they get like community  and certainty in life.

Therefore logic is useless against cults. And not all groups are the same. The yeshiva Shar Yashuv that I went to had some things that one might considered sort of cultish but it was in fact a great yeshiva because it was devoted to straight Torah. 

You could see this in the great yeshiva Chaim Berlin also. Still to attain the degree of excellence that these places strive for in Torah, a certain amount of discipline is necessary.


To some degree what I think about cults is simple: to learn about them. Information provides a great perspective. It might not take one out of the cult he or she is in at the time but it provides a way of limiting the bad effects. However there is only so much of this kind of thing I can stand reading. Still for myself it was helpful to do research into the problems. It gave me perceptive on my own set of problems. 

Also there is nothing quite like experience to show you the difference between the public image and the actual reality behind the facade.
The best cure is to make straight yeshivas like the Mir and Shar Yashuv. And if not a full yeshiva then at least to have a local Beit Midrash devoted to straight Torah and Musar that excludes rigorously all cults and any and all books or writings associated with the Jewish cults. To exclude what the Gra excluded.
However I should mention that there is no reason to hate cult members. Rather the best thing is to pray for their good, that they should merit to repent and to be save from all the kelipot that have taken over their mind's and to merit to be true tzadikim and Tzadikot  and to merit to all the good in all the world.

Dr. Zimbardo of the famous Zimbardo experiment

Dr. Zimbardo:  "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. As basic human values are being strained, distorted and lost in our rapidly evolving culture, illusions and promissory notes are too readily believed and bought--without reality validation or credit checks."

You can see here why learning straight Torah is important. If one does not know what the Torah says he can fall for any one of the demonic Jewish cults that are out there. If one's time is limited, I suggest at least learning Shimshon Refael Hirsh's Horev or Rav Kook's books which give a good introduction to Torah. [Rav Kook's books are usually considered more deep than Rav Hirsh.]

the religious world.

I was thinking about problems in the religious world. The main thing that bothers me is the fraud aspect. That is, there is little that is upfront and honest. They make a song and dance in order to get money from secular Jews. They also try to make secular Jews to be religious, and yet treat them like dirt when they join. The whole problem seems to be aggravated in Israel when the religious try to undermine the State, and yet demand the State pays for their life style. 
There is more to it than that. I have expressed some of the problems in terms of the fact that most of the religious world is made up of cults that make a show of Torah, but are really demonic cults.  So there are a few problems that got me to thinking the religious world really is very far from Torah, and perhaps could considered as a real kelipa and a Dark force of evil. [See L.M. in his reference to Torah from the Dark Side which is what I think is the root of the problem with these cults.] 

This however should not be  considered as a critique on the authentic great yeshivas that learn Torah for its own sake along the lines of the Gra and Reb Israel Salanter and Rav Shach. And of course there are the Bnei Akiva places that combine Torah with work and serving in the IDF that I think are very great places. 

Groups that have a core essence that is from the Dark Side].Since in the cults there is not simple plain human decency you know there is no holiness either.

I claim the world of the religious is a cult. That is: it consists of many cults, but none of them actually keep Torah at all except for a a few Litvak yeshivas and their surrounding communities. 
[Some or more are better than others.]


The way to see this is thus in the following way.

The dinge an sich [areas of Torah value] is not subject to human reason. When reason enters into these areas it ends up contradicted in  itself and falling into inconsistencies.
Instead of  Torah value being complicated, the truth is it is not complicated at all. It is entirely simple. Right and wrong is obvious, and mental gymnastics only serve to make evil seem good.But you can tell what is a cult [that is what groups have a core essence that is from the Dark Side]. The sign is simple. Evil while perhaps in its essence is hard to discern, but it has certain invariable characteristics. They lie, they cheat, they scam. They use keep Torah as camouflage and a cloak to hide their true demonic essence. We find that to recognize this can be hard. Even King David had no idea that he had sinned until Natan the prophet revealed it to him. We may not have Natan the Prophet, but we have had people that warned us of our sins, the Gra, Reb Israel Salanter, Rav Shach. But instead of listening we turned our backs on their warning. During the time of the prophets, idolatry was a lot more simple. One knew what serving God meant, or serving an idol. But now the power of idolatry has been sublimated within cults. One can on the surface perfectly kosher to all appearance, and yet have a demonic core as we see today in the religious world. Since in the cults there is not simple plain human decency you know there is no holiness either.  

Cults share many of the same characteristics.

Human nature being what it is, and the dark side being what it is, it is no wonder that cults share many of the same characteristics. It is like when you put chemicals together the result is  the same.
Some of the similar characteristics:They are anti simple human decency supposedly in the name of some higher morality. There is a  sanctimonious sense of supreme virtue for one cult or sect and despising outsiders, and a charismatic leaders that gets all the perks and benefits. Babbling nonsense prolific writings of meaningless babble or supposed prophecy.
The main things are antinomianism [loosening of the restrictions of the Torah while at the same time hypocritically claiming to be adhering to the Torah. The other is the exaggerated spirituality with trances and contact with supposedly spirits of tzadikim which are really demons, since the Torah itself tells us לא תדרוש אל המתים "Do not seek the dead"]


But I should mention that not everything that seems like a cult is bad. Even if it has many cult aspects it might be doing good or be a lot better that groups that seem a lot more respectable. As a rule the groups that make the most effort to seem normal and respectable are in fact the most demon possessed.
You can be in a great yeshiva like I was in Shar Yashuv and think that there are better more respectable places and really be mistaken. I mean Shar Yashuv was in fact a yeshiva for beginners. It had and I think still has no reputation. Still in the higher classes [that is beginning from year two until yer four] it is Ivy league. Same with the Mir in NY. Those two places were probably the best I ever saw, and yet their reputation is not very high. People would rather go to Brisk or the Mir in Israel. I can't see why. The only place in Israel I think is really great is Ponovitch.

The yeshivas in Jerusalem think they are best because of their address. But they are all delusional. The only really great yeshivas in Jerusalem are Merkaz HaRav of Rav Kook and the Yeshivat HaGra of Rav Eliyahu Zilverman.

Moses, Kant, Hegel, Gra, Israel Salanter, Rav Shach, Tosphot, Rambam.

To build up a good  approach it would be required to provide and intellectual basis. Leftism was a kind of trampling of Biblical Values. Or subverting Biblical values to serve its purpose by means of useful idiots.  However the  Right has just as much claim to intellectual virtue through a different array of patron saints. 

That is-- the left had a list of patron saints. Freud, Marx, Russeou.  Some people were absorbed into the Left like  Nietzsche, though he was not a leftist at all.

My suggestion is to emphasize a whole different set of patron saints. Moses, Hegel, Kant, Gra, Israel Salanter, Rav Shach, Tosphot, Rambam, the Ari (Isaac Luria). [The Rambam, the Ari and Hegel are very Neo-Platonic so it is easy to fit them into one system.]



As for the last three the basic idea is that there is no reason to think that one could be put into a room with the Oral and Written Law of Moses and come up on my own the basic approach of Torah. If I understand the importance of learning Torah as a value in itself and of working to attain good character traits and if learning Torah in depth, then I owe a debt of gratitude to these individual who worked this out and showed the way. 

What you need from each of the above thinkers is this: The Gra for learning Torah; Rav Shach and Tosphot for showing the depth of Torah; Kant for the limitation of reason and knowledge that is known but not through  physical senses nor through reason. [One could have  used the Rambam for that also.]
The Rambam for Torah Law, and learning Physics and Metaphysics. The Ari and Hegel for Metaphysics. John Locke for freedom and private property. The last one you could have gotten from the Two Talmuds but for some reason most people miss the message there. They think the welfare state and Socialism which is organized theft is kosher. Reb Israel Salanter one needs for good character plus fear of God.  


The Gra has a whole school of disciples  that are worthwhile to learn:  the commentaries on the page of the Yerushalim Talmud, the Nefeh HaChaim, the Netziv, etc. The Nefesh HaChaim is important  from many angles. One of the points he brings out is that intention to unite one's soul to the soul of a tzadik righteous person is idolatry.
[Rav Kook the founder or religious Zionism already incorporated Hegel into his ideas as is well known. ]

religious people -- it is not a good idea that they should have political power.

From what I can see from religious people it is in fact not a good idea that they should have political power. The very thing that makes them religious makes them susceptible to numinous value from the Dark Side without knowing it. They might be very aware of Numinious value from the realm of Holiness, but as a rule they can't tell when the Dark Side seeps into them.