The Story of Sage Vitahavya
Vasishtha narrates to Rama the story of the sage Vitahavya, who is helped by Pingala (the sun's radiance) sent by the sun-god Surya
Vasishtha tells Rama of the sage Vitahavya, who withdrew into a cave in the Vindhya mountains, mastered his restless senses through inquiry, and sat in unbroken meditation. He remained motionless for three hundred years while storms and rain filled the cave with mud, burying his body up to the shoulders. Inwardly awake the whole time, his consciousness ranged freely and took on other forms and lifetimes elsewhere -- as a king, an Indra, a swan -- while his real body lay entombed.
When he finally turned his attention back to his buried body, he found himself unable to move it, so he sent his awareness out in the form of wind into the sun, and asked the sun's attendant, Pingala, to go and lift his body out of the earth. Pingala did this, drawing the body out of the mud like a lotus stem, and Vitahavya re-entered it, bathed, and resumed his life in the forest. He meditated again for years, made a farewell address to his own body, desire, and sorrow, and eventually his body quietly withered away and he was freed from it entirely.
Rama then asks why scavenging animals never touched the exposed body and how Vitahavya was freed from it so quickly; Vasishtha answers with general teaching on why a yogi's stilled body does not decay.
वीतहव्यो महातेजा विबभ्राम वने पुरा विन्ध्यशैलदरीर्दीर्घा रविर्मेरुदरीरिव ॥ ४ ॥
Vitahavya, of great brilliance, once wandered in the forest, through the long caves of the Vindhya mountain, like the sun moving through the caves of Mount Meru.
महातेजस्वी वीतहव्य पहले वन में घूमते थे, विन्ध्य पर्वत की लंबी गुफाओं में, जैसे सूर्य मेरु पर्वत की गुफाओं में घूमता है।
शतत्रये स वर्षाणामथ याते स्वयंप्रभुः । व्यबुध्यतात्मरूपात्मा धराकोटरपीडितः ॥ १७ ॥
Then, when three hundred years had passed, he awoke as his own master, his very self one with the true Self, still pressed in by the hollow of the earth.
फिर जब तीन सौ वर्ष बीत गए, तो वह जाग उठा, अपने आप का स्वामी, जिसका स्वरूप ही आत्मा था, फिर भी धरती की उस कंदरा में दबा हुआ।
तथैव तिष्ठन्निःस्पन्दः स कायो म्लानिमाययौ । अन्तर्विरसतां प्राप्य मार्गशीर्षान्तपद्मवत् ॥ ३ ॥
His body stayed just like that, without any movement, and it withered away, turning dry and lifeless inside, like a lotus at the end of the month of Margashirsha.
उनका शरीर वैसे ही बिना हिले-डुले पड़ा रहा, और वह मुरझा गया, अंदर से सूखा और निर्जीव हो गया, जैसे मार्गशीर्ष महीने के आखिर में कमल मुरझा जाता है।
Read it in full
The story runs through chapters 82–89 of Book 5. Each chapter has the Sanskrit in Devanagari and IAST beside a plain English and Hindi translation of every verse. The number under each chapter is its verse count.