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On the Way to Kṛṣṇa
ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo maṭtaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate iti matvā bhajante māṁ budhā bhāva-samanvitāḥ
“I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who know this perfectly engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.” (Bg. 10.8)
The  Vedānta-sūtra  also confirms that the Absolute Truth is He from whom everything is born. If we truly believe that Kṛṣṇa is the origin of everything, and if we worship Him, our whole account is closed in one second. But if one doesn’t believe and says, “Oh, I want to see what God is,” he has to go by stages by realizing the impersonal Brahman effulgence and then Paramātmā, the localized feature, before finally coming to the last stage of realizing, “Oh, here is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” It should be understood, however, that this process takes more time. When one through many years of research comes to realize the Absolute Truth, he concludes  vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti —“Vāsudeva is all that is.” Vāsudeva is a name for Kṛṣṇa, and it means “He who lives everywhere.” Realizing that Vāsudeva is the root of everything— māṁ prapadyate —he surrenders. The surrendering process is the ultimate goal; either one does it immediately or after many births of research work. In either case, surrender must be there by realizing that “God is great, and I am His subordinate.”