The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c7.s2.t3.4

c7.s2.t3.4

It is true that milk etc. are unintelligent substances, and we see that beings with intelligence, like potters etc., call in the aid of instruments. Thus we may suppose it to be with Brahman, as he also is an intelligent being.—To this can be opposed the fact that gods also, and ancestors, and Rishis, who are certainly beings possessed of intelligence, through their own power, without external means, according to their innate sovereignty, and through meditation alone, creat many variously shaped bodies, palaces, carriages etc., as the Hymns and Brâhmaṇas as well as the epic and mythological works attest. Further, we must remember that the spider puts forth her thread from herself, that female cranes become fertilised without seed, and that lotus-flowers wander from one pond to another without outward means of transit. The applicability of these comparisons may be contested, because the gods accomplish their deeds only by taking bodily forms to aid them, and not by the spiritual Self alone, because the saliva of the spider, after it has been stiffened by eating smaller creatures, becomes threads, because the female cranes are fertilised⁹⁵ when they hear the voice of the thunder, because the lotus-flowers do not wander among the ponds by means of their unintelligent bodies, but precisely because they are endowed with intelligence, as climbing plants find their way to trees;—but to all this we can reply that the creatures named do not, like the potter, use [external instruments in