You said:

"People leave cults when they are getting stronger in themselves as people. ... People leave, mostly, I think, not because they are miserable as premies, but because they catch a glimpse of a possible life outside the cult that isn't hell, they want to grow and they realize that whatever it is they are doing isn't working for them."

Although people leave for many reasons, my belief is that some people eventually get back to the original urge of wanting to be happy, that urge that in the beginning allowed them to believe in the myth that perfection can be experienced on planet earth: that somehow it is possible to get back to that safe womb, or find "daddy" or be "saved" from the pain and suffering. The group experience of feeling "high" that was a common goal from my generation of "hippies" was easy to transfer to M and the premies, back then. I believed the myth that  the experience I was feeling in me as being becaues of a "gift." Although M always said it was always in me, he promised a way to have control over accessing it. I believed the myth even after slowly finding it was like an addiction to want to go to an event to get a "fix" of the more powerful experience thru the group "high" or the pumped up darshan "high." So it wasn't until that thing in me woke up and said, wait a minute, this treadmill I am not on is not really bringing me true happiness, that I had the courage to make changes in my external reality and step outside the mythology.

I wanted to be happy again and no longer believed that M was the only way. Removing myself from the proximity of "the community" helped me to get a clearer view of myself in the mirror of every day people and I saw I needed to work on myself. It took several years to, as you say, get stronger in myself as a person, and then, as if waking from a dream, look back and see I could step out of that previous myth...a 30 year myth. There are many mixed feelings still, some of being pissed that I did not recognize it sooner, some of relief that I eventually did, some of acceptance that the experience of going thru that phase, even though it was over half my life, was a very important part of evolving toward seeing truth and reality more clearly. There is always joy in liberation, as well as reflection on why I chose to be in prison. Being an optimist by nature makes it a bit easier for me than it may have been for some others. Everyones journey is unique and worthy of respect.

 These recent intellectual-type discussions of the process of the journey in and out of cults is, I find, making me see similarities  to journeys in and out of addictions, abusive relationships, and much more. Always liberating once having the courage to walk away and difficult in the pain of the self-examination that is necessary to heal and move on.