Shankara recognised two kinds of knowledge: para vidya or higher knowledge, and apara vidya or knowledge of a lower order. These two levels coincided with his dual levels of reality, one paramarthik or transcendental, and the other vyavaharik or practical. Now, if the indefinable maya had the powers to create the relative reality of the empirical world, it also could, create, at the vyavaharik level, an Ishwara or God as its efficient cause.
