alexandra, the link I shared that excerpt from does offer the following. I'm not sure if that specifically addresses your question or not, but perhaps there's more there for you to follow up on.
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There is good reason for cults to be associated primarily with religious-spiritual organizations. Religions are based on the belief in a transcendent; supreme power usually characterized along parental lines: God is all-powerful and all-knowing, meting out rewards and punishments according to how well a person has carried out the commandments He has issued. The doctrines vary, but even in nonmonotheistic Eastern traditions; Heaven and Hell in some form are designated as the consequences of good and bad behavior.

Although mystics are unanimous in defining God as incomprehensible and not of this world, human dependency needs require something more approachable and personal: Even in Buddhism, therefore, whose founder declared that concepts of gods and heaven were an illusion, many followers bow to a Buddha idol to invoke Buddha's protection and blessing. But even more satisfying to the wish for a superparent is an actual human with divine, enlightened, or messianic status. The powerful wish to be guided and protected by a superior being can propel a seeker into the arms of a leader who is given that status by his or her followers. Such a surrender to the fantasy of the perfect parent may be accompanied by a feeling of great joy at "coming home."

Source: Treating Former Members of Cults - Arthur J. Deikman


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The underlying premise to your question seems to be who determines what is valid reality and what is not? I would suggest to a large extent that it is group consensus. It's for this reason that I find what Deikman has to say about cult behavior in "normal" groups to be particularly fascinating.

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