According to these principles, causality not pertaining either to the insentient or to the non-divine intelligence, the mere will of Maheśvara, the absolute Lord, when he wills to emanate into thousands of forms, as this or that difference, this or that action, this or that modification of entity, of birth, continuance, and the like, in the series of transmigratory environments,—his mere will is his progressively higher and higher activity, that is to say, his universal creativeness.
How he creates the world by his will alone is clearly exhibited in the following illustration—
"The tree or jar produced by the mere will of thaumaturgists, without clay, without seed, continues to serve its proper purpose as tree or jar."
If clay and similar materials were really the substantial cause of the jar and the rest, how could they be produced by the mere volition of the thaumaturgist? If you say: Some jars and some plants are made of clay, and spring from seeds, while others arise from the bare volition of the thaumaturgist; then we should inform you that it is a fact notorious to all the world that different things must emanate from different materials.
As for those who say that a jar or the like cannot be made without materials to make it of, and that when a thaumaturgist makes one he does so by putting atoms in motion by his will, and so composing it: they may be informed that unless there is to be a palpable violation of the causal relation, all the co-efficients, without exception, must be desiderated; to make the jar there must be the clay, the potter's staff, the potter's wheel, and all the rest of it; to make a body there must be the congress of the male and female, and the successive results of that congress. Now, if that be the case, the genesis of a jar, a body, or the like, upon the mere volition of the thaumaturgist, would be hardly possible.
On the other hand, there is no difficulty in supposing that Mahádeva, amply free to remain within or to over-step any limit whatever, the Lord, manifold in his operancy, the intelligent principle, thus operates. Thus it is that Vasuguptáchárya says—
"To him that painted this world-picture without materials, without appliances, without a wall to paint it on,—to him be glory, to him resplendent with the lunar digit, to him that bears the trident."
It may be asked: If the supersensible self be no other than God, how comes this implication in successive transmigratory conditions? The answer is given in the section treating of accredited institution—
"This agent of cognition, blinded by illusion, transmigrates through the fatality of works:
"Taught his divine nature by science, as pure intelligence, he is enfranchised."