bahoonaam janmanaamante jnyaanavaanmaam prapadyate |
vaasudevaha sarvamiti sa mahaatmaa sudurlabhaha || 19 ||
 
At the end of several births, the wise one seeks my refuge knowing that Vaasudev is everything. Such an individual is supreme and extremely rare.
 
bahoonaam : several
janmanaam : births
ante : end of
jnyaanavaan : the wise one
maam : my
prapadyate : seeks refuge
vaasudevaha : Vaasudev
sarvam : everything is
iti : in this manner
saha : he
mahaatmaa : supreme individual
sudurlabhaha : extremely rare
 
Shri Krishna previously pointed out that the wise devotee is special because he does not use Ishvara to gain anything else but Ishvara. He treats Ishvara no different than his own self. Here, Shri Krishna emphasizes the fact that such people, who know that the ultimate cause of everything is Ishvara, are extremely rare and exalted. In fact, it has taken them several lives worth of effort to get to this stage.
 
Let us examine the nature of this effort that has led to this vision of the wise devotee. This effort is of two types – the dawning of knowledge that there is a single cause behind everything, and the surrender of one’s ego to that single cause or Ishvara. There is no specific order in which these can happen first, but both are necessary. The individual who has gone through so much effort to get to this stage is most certainly rare and privileged.
 
Now, we need to be careful in how we interpret the second half of this shloka. “Vaasudev” means one who resides in all, as well as one in whom everything and everyone resides. In other words, the phrase “Vaasudev is everything” denotes “Ishvara is everything”. If we get stuck with the image of “Vaasudev”, if we forget that Vaasudev is an indicator for the one Ishvara, we will begin to develop a fanatic attitude towards people who worship other deities.
 
Next, Shri Krishna elaborates on the topic of worship for finite gain.