As the cultures and civilizations evolved many did not understand the paths and ways of worshipping and reaching the Divine grace of the Supreme whom they prayed in various forms. The Supreme God himself, with the powers of nature, gave us methods for our way of life as rules and paths. This Divine knowledge was received by our ancient sages through their meditative powers of spiritual realization as our Vedas and Agamas.

The various paths of practices in our traditions were combined and united by King Vaivasvatha Manu about 10,000 years back as our Sanathana Dharma. Later, Sage Krishna Dwaipanya, also known as Sage Veda Vyasa and several other sages organized this Divine Knowledge and gave us our four forms of Vedas, the three sects of several Agamas and also gave us many Dharma Sasthras and Puranas based on the Vedic Truth. In this, we have the traditions of prayers to Celestial and natural forces according to the teachings in Vedas.

We also have the traditions of Agama forms of Temple worship of Deities in several manifestations. Then, there were those who studied the philosophy of the Vedic teachings of Upanishads as Vedanthis and those simple villagers who continued to worship the village Deities with all their devotion. All of them understood the Truth as One in many forms. There was also development of heterodox philosophies of Agnostic paths of Jaina and Baudha and Atheistic thinking of Charvaka.

At a later time, about 2,500 years back, (some say 1,200 years back) we were blessed with the appearance of Acharya Sri (Aadi) Sankara who in a short span of life combined all the various forms of the religious traditions and practices and started a renaissance of Hindu Dharma for us. He gave a Dharmasasthra based on Vedhantha as Adhvaitha Philosophy of the unmanifest Divine Truth and combined it with the Shanmadha of manifest divine worship in six forms of prayer traditions. Later, as other faiths and beliefs entered our areas, alternate Philosophies like Visishtadhvatha and Dvaitha and several other paths were introduced by great Achrayas like Sri Ramanuja, Sri Madhva and several others. In the middle of all these changes, as in ancient times, there were those Hindus who did not care to understand the divine and those who denied the existence of a God.

From ancient times, both believers and non-believers had several questions about Hindu faith. These questions often occur in the young minds. As already noted, we need to find the answers. First, who is or what is God? In Hindu Dharma what is our concept of God or how do we understand God. Is there only one God? Are there many different gods, or are they different forms and different path? How do you explain the conflicts in the idea? Then, there are little Village gods, Devathas, Angels and spirits as well as some leaders who are worshipped by some Hindus. Are they equal to or same as the Supreme God that we worship?

In most Western Religious faiths and beliefs, the true concept of God remains largely unexplained, who is believed by them to be in a masculine form, all powerful, lives in heaven, created the worlds and all life forms and created man in his own form. Then there are subservient angels, satan, devils, and messengers of God who come to earth as His Messiahs.

There are more elaborate explanations and descriptions of the forms and manifestations of the Divine supreme in Hindu Dharma, in our traditions and religious books. We believe that God exists everywhere in the universe and manifests in many forms on many occasions. God is described as Divine Truth which is only one and that the sages call this One Truth by different names. "Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanthi". God is explained as the matter and energy that created the entire universe and all the matters and life forms and is inside us and outside us everywhere. He is the one who created all these worlds, maintains them and dissolve them when the time comes and also in addition has unlimited types of divine play and grace for us. "Ulagelam thamulavaakalum nilai peruththalum neekkalum neengalah, alagila vilayaattudaiyar avar Thalaivar." (Periya Puranam -Tamil)