Identifiers of a spiritual-religious cult

Tell-tale signs of a cult are:-

1) Rigorous control of information about agendas and decisions made within a cadre of leaders acting under the top cult figure. Concealment from the public of facts and documents [especially anything potentially negative] concerning what is decided and by whom. Suppression of all contact with the media by anyone who is not vetted and authorised. (The Sathya Sai Organization is just like this!)

2) No leaders will respond to any form of complaint, critical queries or requests for information beyond the positive propaganda that all cults circulate about themselves, whether they come…
a) from within – on pain of censure and – if persistent – total exclusion. or outside
b)  from the public, who are usually either ignored or attacked, often both at once. (The Sathya Sai Org. is a top-down one-way system. It is a self-contained, secretive association.)

3) Utter rejection of those who leave the movement, reject the cult figure or voice any negative opinions about these.  Exclusion often followed by concerted and sustained personal defamatory attacks on dissidents and critics, often combined with planned character assassination and sometimes yet worse.

4) Refusal to hear a word against the main cult figure – the personality who heads the cult and both gives it its goals and regulates its running, however directly or otherwise. The cult of personality almost always has authoritarian, not to say totalitarian, features.

These are merely a few of the easily recognisable features of a indoctrinating cult.
Read more as to what a cult consists in here