Śivasaṃhitā 1.71

The double authority—scripture and reason—as the foundation of liberating knowledge. The Śivasaṃhitā does not ask for blind faith: it demands that the yogi understand the illusory character of the universe both through śruti (the revealed teaching of the Upaniṣads) and through yukti (reason, valid reasoning). Only that double endorsement turns knowledge into liberation.

Māyāvilasitam (māyā’s play, the unfolding of illusion) describes the universe as the playful activity of the illusory potency. Śrutiyuktitaḥ (through śruti and reason) combines the two sources of valid knowledge in Indian epistemology: āgama (revealed scripture) and anumāna (rational inference). The descending cosmogony—ākāśa, vāyu, agni, āpas, pṛthivī—follows the classical model of creation through densification.

The cosmological chain that appears here—from ether to air, from air to fire, from fire to water, from water to earth—follows the sequence established in Taittirīya Upaniṣad II.1-5 and Sāṃkhya cosmology. In Tantric thought, this chain is not merely cosmological but has a correlate in the human body: the cakra correspond to these elements, and yoga works with that correspondence.