17. I beheld all other terrestrial bodies lying manifest before me, but nobody could observe me that was hid from their sight in my spiritual form.
18. Ráma asked:—Sir, if you were invisible to the Gods, owing to your bodiless or vacuous form; how then could you be seen by the Siddha in the Kanaka land, or see others without having eyes of your own?
19. Vasishtha replied:—We spiritual beings view all things by means of our inner knowledge of them; as other people behold the things they are desirous to see, and naught what they had not any desire for. (This desire is said to be satya-sankalpa, or a firm prepossession of any idea in the mind).
20. All men though possest of pure souls, do yet forget their spiritual nature, by their being too deeply engaged in worldly affairs and unspiritual matters.
21. As I had then wished that this person the Siddha, could have a sight of me; so it was according to the wish of mine, that I was observed by him; because every man obtains what he earnestly desires.
22. Men being slack in their purposes, become unsuccessful in their desires; but this person being staunch to his purpose, and never swerving from his pursuit, succeeded in gaining his desired object.
23. But when two persons are engaged in the same pursuit, or one of them is opposed to the views of the other; the attempt of the more arduous is crowned with success, and that of the weaker meets with its failure.
24. Then I travelled through aerial regions of the Lokapála regents of the sky, and passing by the celestial city of the Siddhas in my spiritual body; I beheld these people with manners quite different from my former habits.
25. I then began to observe their strange manners in the etherial space, and being unseen myself by any one there, I saw distinctly every body there, and their mode of life and dealings with amazement.
26. I called them aloud, but they neither heard nor gave heed to my voice; and they appeared to me as empty phantoms as the images of our dreams and visions.