36. It is not impossible or hard, to effect the acquisition of supernatural powers; should one persist in the course of practicing and applying the proper means to those ends.
37. The success which attends on any body in the consummation of his object, is entirely owing to his personal exertion, and may be called the fruit of the tree of his own labour.
38. But these successes and consummations, are of no use to those great minded men, who have known the Knowable One in himself: and who have made an end of their worldly desires.
39. Ráma said: Sir I have yet another question for your explanation and it is this, why did not the ravenous beasts of the desert, devour the deadlike body of the devoted sage, and why did it not moulder under the earth, by which it was covered?
40. And again how the bodiless and liberated soul of the sage, which was absorbed in the sunlight, return to resume its dilapidated body, which was buried in the mountain cave.
41. Vasishtha replied:—The conscious soul that believes itself to be embodied with its mortal body, and beset by the coils of its desires and the bonds of its affections, is here subjected both to the feeling of pleasure and the pangs of pain.
42. But the intelligent soul which relies on its pure consciousness, and is freed from the net of its desires, remains only with its subtile spiritual body (which no beast or bird can devour, nor any dust or rust can destroy). So says the Gítá:—It is indivisible and unconsumable, and neither does it moulder nor dry up at any time.
43. Hear now, Ráma, the reason why the body of the Yogi, is not subject to the accidents of disjunction or corruption for many hundreds of years (under the influence of heat and cold and other casualties).
44. Whenever the mind is occupied with the thought of any thing, it is immediately assimilated into the nature of that object, and assumes the same form on itself.
45. Thus upon seeing or thinking of an enemy, the mind turns to enmity, at the very sight or thought of its foe; as it assumes the nature of friendliness, on the visit and remembrance of a friend.