God is not a static perfection. God is powers in motion—five inherent capacities that make creation, maintenance, destruction, revelation, and concealment possible. These are not skills God acquired; they are what God is.
Cit Śakti — Consciousness itself, pure awareness, the light in which everything appears.
Ānanda Śakti — Bliss, fullness, satisfaction inherent to infinite self-awareness. To be infinite and self-knowing is axiomatically to lack nothing. This is not pleasure (which depends on contrast with displeasure); it's the deep okayness of totality.
Icchā Śakti — The will-to-know and will-to-act. The desire that flows from fullness, not lack. This is the subsuming power—the one from which the other two flow. [PARAPHRASED]1
Jñāna Śakti — Knowing, intellect, the power to cognize anything. The capacity to understand, to intuit, to have insight. An expression of Icchā (the desire to know generates this power).
Kriyā Śakti — Doing, acting, expressing, making real. The power that moves into the world and creates effects. An expression of Icchā (the desire to do generates this power).
Every living being—every sentient creature—demonstrates all five. A cat has consciousness (Cit), experiences satisfaction (Ānanda), has desires and intentions (Icchā), knows things (recognizes its owner, understands the layout of its territory), and acts (hunts, plays, sleeps). This is why a cat is divine. Not metaphorically. Structurally.
This inverts the assumption that divinity is rare or requires transcendence. Divinity is the basic structure of any being that wills, knows, and acts. Most spiritual traditions treat this as problematic—"I'm just an ego, how could I be divine?" Tantra says: you have will, knowledge, and action. Those three are God. You're not separate from God's nature; you're an expression of it.2
The powers enable five functions:
These five functions require all five powers working together. A God that could only create but not destroy, or reveal but not conceal, would be less powerful—and therefore less God.3
This completely changes how you understand the world. If God does all five functions—including destruction and concealment—then nothing happens outside God's will. This isn't fatalism; it means even suffering, ignorance, and limitation are expressions of divine power. The person trapped in addiction, the person deluded about their nature, the person experiencing loss—all are experiencing God's five functions in motion.
This is radically different from traditions that posit a good God and an evil principle (Satan, Angra Mainyu) in opposition. In Tantra, there is no opposition. God is the cause of all causes. Creation and destruction. Revelation and concealment.
Psychology: Consciousness, emotion, will, knowledge, and action are the basic substrates of personality. Jung's psychological types (thinking, feeling, intuiting, sensing) map onto these powers. Every functional human has all five operating; imbalance creates pathology. A person with strong Jñāna but weak Kriyā becomes intellectually sophisticated but impotent. A person with strong Kriyā but weak Jñāna becomes hyperactive but unconscious. Integration means all five powers flowing coherently—and the person recognizing all five as divine expression, not as personal achievements.
Creative Practice: Art requires all five powers. The artist has consciousness (awareness of the medium), satisfaction (the fullness from which creation flows), will (the drive to express), knowledge (understanding of form and technique), and action (the actual making). A painting made from intellectual understanding alone is sterile; a painting made from fullness with conscious will, refined knowledge, and skillful action vibrates with life. Nishanth uses aesthetic theory to explain this: art flows from overflow, not from need.4