Every Religious Faith is believed to have been established under the word of God given to their Sages or Messiahs who explained it to the followers through their disciples. The followers of Hindu Dharma, similarly, were given the Holy Message in the form of Pranava Manthra OM, the four Vedas and the three Agamas by God. The Ancient Sages of our Hindu Dharma received these messages through their intuitive powers and gave it to their disciples. The Srutis are the Vedas, which were received by the great Hindu Rishis through intuition as direct revelations from God and are held to be entirely Superhuman or "Apauresheya".These were passed on through oral recitation by many generations of sages in their schools until they were put on writing on palm leaves, stone tablets, writing and printing on paper and now by digital recordings. These texts clearly explain all our Dharma.

To understand the practice of the faith, it is necessary to go over the teachings at various levels of understanding. This is like reading about water, air, metals and non-metals before understanding Nuclear Physics and space travel. We need to understand about the Immanent Divine Truth, how this Divine manifests Itself in Transcendent forms in the Phenomenal universe, how the concepts and understanding of God evolved over the years, and also how the various forms of faith, tradition, worship and practice evolved among various communities. In Hindu Faith and in most Eastern religions, God is understood to be without gender and is neither or both Masculine and Feminine. In this article wherever appropriate, all masculine terminology used for devotees as well as for God should be understood as representing also the Feminine terms and singular also represents plural.

While we compare various traditions among Hindu Dharma, we can also compare the practices of other ancient and modern Western and Eastern Faiths. But, in this, one should not consider any other faith inferior to our own however much one may feel such other traditions as incomplete or unacceptable. You will notice in this practice of Dharma, there is a bewildering diversity and at the same time a solid unity that has kept us all together over the many thousand years, in spite of many onslaughts of outside pressures and influence in our thinking.

A study of the principles behind the practice of rituals and an understanding of the Divine and Its manifestations becomes essential to the total understanding of the faith, while some basic following of the rituals and practice becomes essential for the understanding of the true nature of God. As Kanchi Paramacharya, Pujyasri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi explains this, that "fire, firewood, water and proper utensils are essential to cook rice to be consumed, though rice is the only material needed for our energy, so also prayers, rituals and mythology are needed to carry our thoughts to understand the philosophy and the Divine Supreme Truth".