Śivasaṃhitā 1.70

The experience of pleasure and displeasure as a cosmological starting point. Before speaking of elements and creation, the text anchors cosmogony in lived experience: the priya-apriya (pleasant-unpleasant) distinction is the most immediate. The world is given to us not as a neutral object but as a field of attraction and repulsion. From that psychological dynamic to the subtlest cosmogony, there is a deep continuity.

Priyāpriya (the pleasant and the unpleasant) are the first pair of opposites experienced by embodied consciousness. Vastuṣu (in objects) indicates that the distinction is not in the objects themselves but in the relationship we establish with them. Niyata (constant, inevitable) and sphuṭam (clear, manifest) suggest that this differentiation is structural in worldly experience.

The cosmogony that follows—the conjunction of pure brahman with avidyā producing ākāśa (ether)—follows the model of the Taittirīya Upaniṣad and Sāṃkhya. The emanationist sequence goes from the subtlest to the densest: consciousness → avidyā → ākāśa → vāyu → agni → āpas → pṛthivī. The Śivasaṃhitā integrates this model into its Tantric framework where Śiva and Śakti are the poles of the creative process.