I watched Wild Wild Country and remember the cult being in Vancouver Canada 1980's. I worked in publishing and did some lay-out work for their newsletter. They use hot women dressed in red silk to get young men with money to join. Wearing red clothes and wooden beads wasn't my thing, I would roll my eyes when I'd see them hippy guys all in red. But wow the women in red silk, what a lure.
When I lived in England early '70s Hara Krishna was on the go and saw friends get heavy into that.
It is a powerful thing to commit to a dream, an ideal.
Brahma Kumaris are know for breaking up families. There cult practices say that end of the world coming soon, give your money to us we will make good use of your money. Their followers are mostly hypnotized. Beware of this Indian cult . They make use of foreigners for free publicity, Showing that even foreigners are part of our organisation.
Another excellent example of a classical yoga cult/sect with all the trick, bells, whistles and red flags all over the place: The atman, misa, natha, tara, etc yoga tantra cult. It's as if they read all the books about cults and put all the cult tricks into practice...
Sahaja Yoga as taught by Mrs. Shrivastava basically allows the autonomous nervous system to regulate the sympathetic and parasympathetic parts of the nervous system, free from the burden of ego and insatiable desires.
In her own words, she never started out to be worshipped but felt it might help after a lot of people said they wanted to worship her and she understood that doing so would help a lot of people , perhaps enough to right the wrongs that human beings have done.
She learned about SY from direct experience, growing up in a simple and innocent society that understood yoga experientially, as a product of living dharmicaly. The Vedas simply support attitudes and ways of living that are experienced naturally by dharmic people.
Her motivation was to try to remedy the cause of the unrest that followed partition, having dedicated her life to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, and subsequently seeing his inadequacies.
The 'cool breeze' may not be scientifically substantiated, but it is a direct visceral experience of thousands of people, who at the time are completely thoughtless but fully present and conscious of their connection to everything around them due to 'vibrations', which are nothing more than the interaction of the electromagnetic field given off by everything, as percieved by the nervous system ( Neuroception ).
The Sahasrara co-relates to the little dip in the skull that was soft as a foetus right up to soon after birth, which was positioned close to the vagus nerve in the womb, making the developing foetus receptive to the Mother's autonomous nervous system and all she was feeling.
The nervous system records everything we experience, from birth to death, hence it is receptive to whatever resembles past experiences. Hence the effectiveness of 'surrendering' to the divine as Mother, the mother principle being that which is most closely related to our perception of Self (Atma ), in the sense that the nurturing action of the vagus nerve is best connected to by identifying with motherhood.
That is what brings the sensation of bliss and peace in the heart in a way that can be most effectively built upon in one's effort to become dharmic and correct the societal ills that come from that part of human nature that is insecure and leads to all the ills and excesses in human behaviour.
Worshipping deific archetypes from them on nurtures different aspects of one's physiology so as to tyne one's consciousness into one's perception of being part and parcel of the whole, especially in terms of human relationships as everyone's physiology functions the same way when it is free from the delusions of mentalnand emotional excess.
Sadly, yes, mad people come into sy, because they have felt these things and have felt relief as a consequence, but they are unable to master it and fall foul of their ego and insecurities, then going on to become fanatics and cause harm.
But that can be forgiven too given the pervasiveness of madness in society, much of which is accepted as normal, even celebrated and enforced, and the fact that so many do go on to 'clear out' completely and fully understand their oneness with the divine.
Everything is one with the divine. Any attempt at yogic practice is actually an attempt to become fully aware of that fact. The only achievement is the ability to realise and accept that one does not exist as a consequence of their thoughts or emotions, and that to be fully aware of one's self they have to be conscious while in Nirvichara.
Yoga is a state of being, not something one can do.
But yes, it is a path full of hazards if one does not know one's Self, that part of one's consciousness that exists at all times but gets clouded by emotion and ego, both of which are subject to delusion.
Conscipusness of the Self / Atman only remains when if one can viscerally feel one's existence in the absence of thought and emotion.
Feelings precede emotions and thoughts, and havit, insecurity, ego, lust, greed, hatred, etc influence our interpretation of our visceral felt sense.
Only when we are free of those things can we respond to the full receptivity of our nervous system to everything around us in dharmic manner, a manner which relates to the truth of what is happening in the moment.
It takes tappasya, and that can mean distancing one's self from people who aren't really serious about understanding the seriousness of what is required to change the course of events that humanity is in due to the delusion of believing that thoughts and emotions will provide the solution.
The solution will only come when enough people can tune into the absoluteness that underlies the reason we exist and how we are all inextricably connected to all things....something that can be alluded to with thoughts and emotions but which thoughts and emotions themselves are inadequate in so far as providing the solution.
The solution is already there, it always has been, most things exist because they are in harmony with it, but humans are in a part of their evolutionary process where they have to realise that they have overdone the creativity as far as thoughts and emotions go.
Surrendering one's volition to someone who can show the way how to do that and actually become truly normal ( which requires accepting that one exists and thrives only because of forces beyond one's control that one has to humble down to ) is always going to be necessary a) because anyone who can do that for others, be they a somatic therapist or a Yoga teacher (one who teaches someone how to realise the state of Yoga that is central to the existence of all things ) that person is doing it out of love for all humanity, which includes love of themselves, and love is the solution
But true love also corrects by pointing out and condemning inadequacy, even in the most severe manner if necessary.
As far as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi goes, or Mrs. Shrivastava if you prefer, yes, she was tormented by what she saw hapoening around her, from childhood onwards, even what how she saw many of her followers behaving, and she said so.
Many times she tried to pass the baton on, but perhaps none felt the torment of witnessing what is happening in the world enough, or those who felt it were too crippled by it.
It was a huge burden on her to portray herself as she did, but such was her commitment to finding some way of correcting the behaviour she witnessed during and after all the struggle and conviction that went into the freedom movement in India.
And yes, a huge disappointment for her not to see her dream come true.
But she lit a flame that is spreading through the ether, every human being increasing in connection with each other, the more of whom realise that their actions and reactions perpetuate the maya of duality, setting a clear line between those who are intent perpetuating delusion through the dead end cycle of thoughts and emotions ( Bhootvidya ) and those who can see and accept that they are deluded and go beyond mental and emotional assertion to accept that their true Self is and always has been one with the divine.
Realising our full potential as human beings, to enjoy life free of distress, like children, requires wisdom, and the wisdom that is required can only come from getting past duality to what is absolute, and that absolute has to be experienced because it is absolute....what is absolute encompasses everything, and no thoughts or emotions can encompass everything absolutely.
So the experience can only come in Nirvichara.
But Nirvichara is just the beginning of the process. Full embodiment of the experience requires effort to consistently surrender attachment to thoughts and emotions.
Only then can thoughts and emotions be put to use to correct, comfort, and inspire others....but they still have to be let go of in order to have the experience.
Lots of people experience it, some only very briefly, some can feel it off and on if they put in the right effort to detach from worldly things and just be, effortlessly, but that is rare. Some are forced into it by circumstances, conscience, hardship, guilt, shame, some experience it in nature, some through children...but most do not know how to experience it permanently.
It happens effortlessly...any effort is only for letting go to what already exists within each and everyone of us and that is there to bring is into a conscious state of peaceful harmony with each other and the forces of nature.
Shri Mataji employed every angle to get people to see themselves, to confront themselves, as per the yogic tradition, not like the ego pamperers who proliferate in the marketplace today, earning their living off the gullibility of innocent seekers.
And we have all been gullible, it's normal for seekers.
Shri Mataji used my gullibility, out of love, and set me free...just like any good mother would do to distract her child from the delusion of ego, saving the child and preventing it from going on to perpetuate the delusion that keeps humanity spinning around in a cycle FOMO and insatiable wanting, suffering and aggression.
Thank you Shri Mataji, a thousand thousand million billion times, thank you,
Jai Shri Mataji 
I sincerely pray that everyone can one day come their senses and realise that everything we already need for peace to reign in humanity already exists within them, freely available at all times, effortlessly.