Śivasaṃhitā 5.146

This verse introduces an eschatological dimension: contemplation of the supreme lotus is not merely a daily meditation practice but a decisive act performed at the threshold of death itself. Prāṇaprayāṇasamaya — «the moment of the prāṇa’s departure» — is the critical instant in which consciousness can be directed toward liberation or scatter into confusion. The trained yogi transforms that moment into the culmination of an entire lifetime of practice.

The compound prāṇaprayāṇa joins prāṇa (vital force) with prayāṇa (departure, final journey), evoking the image of prāṇa as a traveller leaving its bodily dwelling. The adjective sudhī («of excellent mind») does not denote mere intellectual acuity but the contemplative clarity built through years of sustained dhyāna. Only such a refined mind can hold its focus on the inner lotus under the extreme conditions of dying.

This teaching resonates strongly with the eighth chapter of the Bhagavadgītā, where Kṛṣṇa instructs Arjuna to remember the divine at the moment of death in order to attain liberation. The Śivasaṃhitā offers the tantric version of that principle: rather than recollecting an external deity, the yogi recalls the internal lotus of the sahasrāra, asserting the ultimate identity between practitioner and the absolute.