What is God in Tantra?

Perhaps one of the reasons all the various religions in the world are fighting and killing each other is because they never took the time to clarify to one another what, precisely, they meant by the term "God"? 

Often when atheists criticize religion, they only conceive of God along Abrahamic lines, and poorly at that. But the Abrahamic notions of God (while also being more diverse than many realize), are but a small part of the discourse. In India, during the course of our 9000 year (or so, by conservation estimates) civilization in which we have focused the main efforts of cultural life on spirituality, many very subtle and refined notions of God were realized! For example:

1. Nirguna Nirākara, God who is Impersonal and Formless like what the Buddhist and the Advaita Vedantin proposes
2. Saguna Nirākara, God who is Personal but Formless like we find in Abrahamic religion 
3. Saguna Sākara, God who is both Personal and with Form (like Kālī, Krishna etc.) 
4. The Avatāra, God as an incarnation on earth (Rāma, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Chaitanya, Ramakrishna)
To name a few! 

Some traditions on the subcontinent favor one of these over the others. Some take an exclusive view, some prefer a more hierarchical, inclusive approach and yet others, like our tradition, maintain a pluralistic position: all these conceptions (and in fact all conceptions of God) are all equally valid since God, the Absolute Reality, can never be limited! There is no end to what we can discover in Her, no end to what She can reveal to us! 

Having said that, what is the Tāntrik view on God? Since Tantra is largely a theistic tradition (oriented around the idea of God), in this lecture, we track some of the various concepts of God that have emerged over the years. 

This is part of an introductory series of lectures on the foundational ideas of Tantra. You can watch the other videos in this series here.