“Isn’t that mythology?”  This doubt may trouble us whenever we hear about Krishna’s super-human pastimes such as lifting Govardhan hill that seem too unreasonable to believe.

Reason has helped us to make sense of much of the natural world. It has helped us discover the laws of nature that are foundational to technology. Naturally, therefore, we value reason.

Gita wisdom acknowledges the potency of reason. At the same time, it cautions us against ascribing omnipotence to reason by using it to judge the omnipotent God. Why? Because thereby we commit the logical blunder of denying God his defining attribute of omnipotence. If God cannot do anything beyond what nature allows, he is subordinate to nature. If he cannot do anything beyond what reason fathoms, he is subordinate to reason. Either way, he is no longer supreme, no longer omnipotent. A non-omnipotent god is a meaningless god – not God, but a cartoon of God.

By transferring omnipotence from God to reason, we install reason as a surrogate god.

But reason is a false god.

Reason cannot satisfy our heart’s hankering for love. Reason cannot provide the emotional warmth necessary to face life’s adversities with dignity. Reason cannot replicate the rich fulfillment that a life of reciprocated feelings begets.

Only Krishna – and a life devoted to him – can.

What this analysis implies is not that we abandon reason altogether, but that we adopt a different kind of reason, a proper philosophical reasoning (tattvatah) as indicated in the Bhagavad-gita (04.09).  This reasoning is not extrapolated unwarrantedly from our finite experience with nature, but is derived warrantedly from recognition of Krishna’s omnipotence. When seen in this light, the seemingly mythological pastimes become revealed as confirmations of Krishna’s divinity: “Because he is God, naturally he can do such things.”

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 04 Text 09

“One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.”