Śivasaṃhitā 1.25

This verse opens the text’s karmic cosmology: beings (jantu) experience (anubhūyante) in heaven (svarga) pleasures that are many and varied (nānāsukhāni). The statement is not a naive theological promise but the first step in an argument the text will unfold to expose the insufficiency of all conditioned reward, however exalted it may appear.

The word jantu (living being, creature) derives from the root jan- (to be born), emphasizing that the one who enjoys these pleasures is precisely the born being, the being subject to the cycle. Anubhūyante combines the prefix anu- (following, according to) with bhū (to be, to experience): one experiences «in consequence of» something prior, already hinting at the karmic logic that follows.

In the cosmological framework shared by yoga and Purāṇic texts, svarga is not an eternal destination but a temporary state of enjoyment proportional to accumulated merit. The Śivasaṃhitā invokes this doctrine not to endorse it as a goal but to relativize it: even celestial pleasures belong to the wheel of saṃsāra.