Śivasaṃhitā 4.19

This verse announces one of tantric yoga’s most ambitious promises: victory over death itself. The compound mṛtyuñjayo bhavet — «one becomes a conqueror of death» — invokes Śiva’s own epithet as the destroyer of temporal limitation. The vehicle for this transformation is abhyāsa, sustained and disciplined practice of the mudrā previously described.

The term kālavañcana deserves careful unpacking. Kāla carries the double meaning of «time» and «death» — Yama, the lord of death, is frequently called Kāla in Sanskrit literature. Vañcana means «deception» or «circumvention.» The practitioner does not stop the clock; rather, he slips free of time’s jurisdiction altogether.

Within the Śaiva philosophical framework underlying the Śivasaṃhitā, immortality is understood as the realization of consciousness’s intrinsically timeless nature. Abhyāsa here is not mechanical repetition but a gradual perceptual transformation — a dismantling of the habitual identification with the mortal body-mind complex that keeps the yogi bound to cyclic existence.