What's the most positive thing that religion offer?

Refuge Tree

Religion, especially in its more esoteric forms, preserves the collective contemplative wisdom of centuries of spiritual practice, exploration, and inquiry.  This is something I really began to appreciate after a number of years of studying the teachings of Krishnamurti -- during which time I had renounced all my former religious "conditioning" as just so much cultural baggage.  This shedding of custom and conditioning was helpful for me in my growth, and I benefitted from inquiring on my own -- learning to still the mind, watch the flow of thought, and gain insight into certain dimensions of consciousness -- but ironically (at least in a Krishnamurtian context), it was my deepening contemplative experience and insight that allowed me to resonate anew with spiritual literature and to see the wisdom in certain contemplative practices.

We can practice on our own, without looking to anyone or anything else for guidance, and there is certainly value in this.  Particularly if we truly question deeply and openly, not simply adopting a reactive position with regard to religion and society and all "received wisdom" (a position which may be fueled by shadow and narcissism).  An abiding love of knowledge will open again and again onto wonder and appreciation, onto insight and discovery.  But once we truly come to appreciate knowledge, not as yours or mine but in its ownerless, creative, upwelling incandescence, I have found we can return fruitfully to the collective wisdom preserved in our traditions -- approach it, not as mere followers but as dedicated botanists, as lovers of the flowers of consciousness.  The seeds planted then can be tended now and can bloom anew in our soil, perhaps never quite the same as before, but neither utterly losing continuity with the light that called forth the original flower. 

Walking alone, we may find much to admire, much to delight and inform.  But ... we are walking alone, perhaps into territory many other individuals have explored.  We may move unknowingly in circles, or miss rare flowers hidden under the leaves of common plants, or not think to look for water under a stone.  If someone has gone this way before, and can, through her gestures and advice, call my attention to the unimaginable riches of this acre of mind, I will avail myself of her wisdom.  There is no need to "preserve" myself against being compromised by others' perspectives, or to defensively insist on seeing something "for myself" or not at all -- not when that defensive posture and the world outside are equally gestures of the luminous knowledge I seek.

Religious institutions are often cumbersome machines, rolling blindly and destructively over the very garden its founders used to till.  But religions also preserve the tracks of knowledge in time -- tracks which, when followed, may yet lead to the same rare blossoms our ancestors celebrated in ritual and song.  I do not stand apart from Being; I do not need to follow anyone to bring me closer to That from which I have never parted.  But I can grow dull to myself and to the space I inhabit; I can erect defensive barriers and forget I ever did so, never looking beyond.  And here is where religion can speak to me, and to us: in texts and images and oral instructions, in rituals and ways, that illuminate afresh the blossoming mystery of this moment, with an incisive clarity won in the crucible of time.

An Integral View

Tree of Life

In my answer above, I was mainly emphasizing the contemplative streams within the various world religions -- the streams most often tapped by monastics, renunciates, or spiritual specialists.  Admittedly, these contemplative traditions are not representative of the whole of religion.  When I considered what I thought was the "one positive thing" that religion offered us, I thought first of the positive elements I found after I had turned my back on all organized forms of belief and practice:  the rediscovery of some of the symbols of religion, pregnant with new meaning; and very practical contemplative guidance from individuals (I now recognized) who had traveled into similar territory, and who had traveled further than me.  The feeling that arose was one of gratefulness -- not because I had prescriptions which I could blindly follow and not have to think anymore, but because I had access to the voices of dedicated explorers and passionate lovers of Spirit who had wrestled with the same questions I had wrestled with, and who had penetrated deeply into their own natures.  In one sense, we are all alone, and can only see for ourselves or not see at all; but in another, we are not alone.  We can enter into dialogue with humanity, not only now but across time, and we can only be enriched by opening ourselves to the profusion of perspectives that have welled up out of time's creative fount.

In Integral Spirituality, Ken Wilber argues that there is another benefit that religion offers to humanity.  The religions of the world preserve the forms and languages of the history of human consciousness, a history which repeats itself in each child as she utters her first words and slowly grows and deepens in her relationship to the world, passing through structures of consciousness which mirror the major stages of human development across the ages.  As the products of these different stages, religious traditions not only provide a map of what once was, but offer holding and nurturing spaces for modern humanity as we traverse these stages anew.  Amber (mythic membership) religion, for instance, can powerfully challenge and support individuals as they transition out of Red (egocentric) perspectives, calling them to greater responsibility, a greater sense of connectedness with other human beings, a fuller flowering in goodness than Red structures ever could have offered them.

And with the philosophical and esoteric contemplative streams also preserved in the great texts and oral traditions of the world, religion may help to support and guide individuals as they develop past Amber (conventional, mythic-membership) structures without having to make the choice that is so often presented to individuals in our culture: choose progress and leave religion behind as a childish ego-toy, or choose religion and remain regressive and out of place in the (post)modern world.

Wilber argues that the presuppositions that underlie this choice are founded on what he calls the level/line fallacy:  mistaking a particular level of religion for the entire line of religious development.  In this case, mythological religion is mistaken for religion itself, and the baby is tossed out with the bathwater.  It seems to me that a number of the negative comments that I've read on Zaadz in response to this question are inspired by the same level/line fallacy, and the fullness of  religion is missed because the offenses of one level are so strongly in evidence.

In my opinion, religion does not have all the answers.  Such a position is no longer tenable in a postmodern or Integral world.  But religion does have gifts that it can continue to offer our age, and some of its esoteric streams offer guidance for navigating some of the deepest waters mankind has ever touched.