The religion blocks one from realizing God in truth because religion is based on myth whereas Spirituality is based on the truth.+

Religion is regarded as sacred and real by the common people, by the wise as false, and by the politicians as useful. Religion injects false belief as reality and makes hallucinate with its dogmas.

Religion is always successful in brainwashing its followers with its imaginary ideas of ‘what happens after death, which nobody can deny. And also, if any religious head claims that he has seen God by intuition~ the religious believers never disprove it? The onus of proof is on those who make an assertion. Religionists and mystics are required to prove; the burden to disprove is not on their critics. Why have there been so many conflicting religions, or so many divisions and subdivisions of religion, if it is true?
Religion blocks one from realizing God in truth because religion is based on myth whereas Spirituality is based on the truth.
God in truth is not based on your inherited blind faith or belief. The Religions are based on personal God whereas Sage Sankara’s Supreme Brahman (God) is impersonal, Nirguna (without Gunas or attributes), Nirakara (formless), Nirvisesha (without special characteristics), immutable, eternal, and Akarta (non-agent). God is above all needs and desires. God is always the Witnessing Subject. God can never become an object as God is beyond the reach of the senses. God is non-dual, one without a second. God has no other beside it. God is destitute of difference, either external or internal. God cannot be described because the description implies a distinction. God cannot be distinguished from any other than God. In God, there is not a distinction between substance and attribute. Sat-Chit-Ananda constituted the very essence or Svarupa of God, and not just God's attributes. The Nirguna Brahman of Sage Sankara is impersonal.

The Soul, the Self is unborn and undifferentiated consciousness is God in truth.

The Vedas confirm God is Atman (Spirit), the Self.

Yajurveda – chapter- 32: ~ God is Supreme Spirit has no ‘Pratima’ (idol) or material shape. God cannot be seen directly by anyone. God pervades all beings and all directions. Thus, Idolatry does not find any support from the Vedas.

Vedas itself says: May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman? Thus, to know the real God Self-realization is necessary. Self-realization is God-realization. Self-realization itself is real worship.

Rig Veda: ~ The Atman is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman, the Self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5)

Religion makes it complicated to realize the God in truth hidden by the ignorance obscures from human vision.

Sage Sankara: ~VC- ‘Reality can be realized only with the eye of understanding, not just by a scholar. What the moon is like must be seen with one's own eyes. How can others do it for you?"~Vivekachoodamani

The PURANAS, including Vishnu Purana and Siva Purana, is based on a false idea of personal God because the writers have thought of Him as a glorified man and woman.

The translations made till now of Indian philosophical works have represented religion and mythology, not philosophy. The greatest pundits do not understand it, for they do not understand science. What has this mythological teaching done for India? Look at its state today. Look at the conversions. Imagining that God has ashes on his forehead or blazing like the sun-- that is all poetry and depends only on faith.

The Saiva Siddhanta sect is a dualistic, unphilosophical religion like Ramanuja's sect.

Why did not Ramanuja and Madhva write commentaries on the Upanishads (as Sankara did to establish Brahman) but stop, content with writing a commentary on Vyasa Sutras, and culling some paras only from the Upanishads with convenient vagueness to establish their God and Theology?

Indians are more religious than other people. The six systems of Indian Philosophy are really six systems of Indian speculation. For there is only one Truth.

The ancient Hindu tenet borrowed by theosophists of universe appearing and dissolving, days and nights of Brahma, entering into pralaya, etc. is intended for mediocre intellects who cannot rise to the truth. It is a convenient fable representing the philosophic truth that the whole universe dissolves in your mind in deep sleep, thus entering pralaya, and rises again the next morning, i.e. it is all imagination, idea. The Brahma-God has nothing to do with it.

That is why Swami Vivekananda said:~

THE MASSES IN INDIA CRY TO SIXTY MILLION GODS AND STILL DIE LIKE DOGS. WHERE ARE THESE GODS?

Knowing this, stand up and fight! Not one step back, that is the idea. ... Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the sphere! Let the whole world stand against us! Death means only a change of garment. What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards. ... Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the gods in the world. Has misery ceased? The masses in India cry to sixty million gods and still die like dogs. Where are these gods? ... The gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. ... This bending the knee to superstitions, this selling yourself to your own mind does not befit you, my soul. You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. ... Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are the entire world. Who can help you? - Swami Vivekananda (Delivered In San Francisco, on May 28, 1900) The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Gita II

Advaitic Orthodoxy misinterpreted Sage Sankara and presented only the religious side of his teaching as the highest doctrine. Thus, people are misled.  Orthodoxy is based on rituals and mythical Gods and Karma. Advaitic wisdom of Sage  Sankara is nothing to with Advaitic orthodoxy.

Let Advaitic wisdom annihilate ignorance (I) and reveal Soul, the Self God in truth.  Let your ears become deaf to the untruth propagated by the religion as a reality; enable you to realize the truth hidden by the ignorance (I).  Let your eyes become blind to illusion to receive the Soul as the Self as it is in the midst of the dualistic illusion.

All the orthodox ideas were rejected by Sage Sankara. There is no need to indulge in rituals, to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman. There is no need to study philosophy, to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman then why do you indulge in studying philosophy.

Sage Sankara pokes fun at ascetics and points out that all their austerities do not cause desires to go (Altar Flowers" Page 205, v.2 P.207 v.4)

Sage Sankara pointed out those rituals could in no way bring about wisdom, much less moksha.

Sage Sankara says the rewards of the rituals are not a matter of direct realization. Advaitic wisdom is based on personal realization.

The orthodox Advaitin believes that rituals alone would lead one to higher levels of attainment. Further, the deities would reward only those entitled to perform the rituals alone. The entitlement involved the caste, creed, and other parameters.

The scriptural authority and value of rituals are part of the Advaitic orthodoxy, which is meant for ignorant people.

The Advaitic wisdom of Sage Sankara is nothing to do with religion, caste, rituals, worships, yoga, and other practices. Therefore an obvious disparity between Sage  Sankara‘s path of Gnana and the path of Karma. 

The path of Gnana is meant for the advanced seeker of truth and the path of Karma is meant for the ignorant populace.

Even Sage Sankara appears and tells the orthodox people the path of orthodoxy is the path of ignorance they will not be able to drop their inherited samskara or conditioning, which they think is the only way to reach heaven and reap a happy life in the next life.

As regards the rituals, Sage  Sankara says, the person who performs rituals and aspires for rewards will view himself in terms of the caste into which he is born, his age, the stage of his life, his standing in society, etc. In addition, he is required to perform rituals all through his life. However, the Self has none of those attributes or tags. Hence, the person who superimposes all those attributes on the changeless, eternal Self and identifies the ‘Self’ with the body is confusing one for the other; and is, therefore, an ignorant person. The scriptures dealing with rituals, rewards, etc. are therefore addressed to an ignorant person.-  (11- Adhyasa Bhashya)

First Mundaka - Chapter 2 (10) - Ignorant fools, regarding sacrifices and humanitarian works as the highest, do not know any higher good. Having enjoyed their reward on the heights of heaven, gained by good works, they still remain in ignorance of the Atman the real God.

As a person, one performs rituals throughout his life.  The person who performs rituals and aspires for rewards will view the world in which he exists as a reality. However, the Soul, the Self unborn eternal hidden by the world in which he exists.  From the standpoint of the Soul, the world in which he exists is merely an illusion.

The scriptures dealing with rituals, rewards, etc. are therefore addressed to an ignorant person.

First Mundaka - Chapter 2 (9) - Children, immersed in ignorance in various ways, flatter themselves, saying: We have accomplished life's purpose, because, these performers of karma do not know the Truth owing to their attachment, they fall from heaven, misery-stricken when the fruit of their work is exhausted.

First Mundaka - Chapter 2 (8) - Fools, dwelling in darkness, but wise in their own conceit and puffed up with vain scholarship, wander about, being afflicted by many ills, like blind men led by the blind.

Ish Upanishad declares: - Those people who have neglected the attainment of Self-knowledge and have thus committed suicide 10/11/12

The religious orthodox people who have neglected the attainment of Self-knowledge and have thus committed suicide, as it were, are doomed to enter those worlds after death.

This is a condemnation of people who do not try to attain Self-knowledge. They are, in a real sense, committing suicide, for what can be worse than being a slave to sense enjoyment, completely oblivious of the real purpose of life, which is to be one’s, own master?:~Santthosh Kumaar