Does sarva dharman parityajya mean that we should give up our rationality and just surrender?
So when Krishna says is he telling us to abandon our rationality and process and just surrender to him I would say no and yes no in the sense if that was the only thing Krishna was telling us Krishna could have just given one verse of Bhagavad Gita isn't it I am asking what is Dharma there is 2.7 and 2.8 Krishna could have said so Krishna doesn't do that in fact there is 18.66 but before that we have 1863 which is Vimrish Shaitanashiv that deliberate deeply on what I have said and then do as you desire so Krishna is actually not just calling to this one of my friends he is also quite a scholarly devotee he was saying he is trying to write a book the 10 commandments of the Bhagavad Gita so like in the Bible I said please don't write a book like that he said why I said the Bhagavad Gita's mood is not the mood of reading commandments the Bhagavad Gita's mood is of choices and consequences you do this, this will happen you do this, this will happen now you decide what you want to do Vimrish Shaitanashiv that deliberate and decide what you want to do now after that Arjuna becomes deeply lost in thought then it's like there is at one level we have to give people options but another level we also have to give recommendation it's like nowadays in the medical profession sometimes the doctors are very fearful that they might be sued I was in Australia I was staying at a doctor's house where on average a doctor gets a court case at least every 3 years against them I was serving for 30 years I got around 10 cases so now the point is doctors have to be very careful when they give some recommendation but in Niger if a doctor if a patient is sick and the patient goes to the doctor the doctor says you have these symptoms these 5 symptoms they can indicate this disease and if this is a disease for this there are 5 possible treatments you can take this tablet you can take this injection you can take this intravenous and these 5 symptoms can also mean this disease and this disease can have these 5 treatments so like this doctor says there can be 5 possible diseases and 25 possible treatments now you decide what you want to do how will the patient decide now the doctor also has to take an advisory position to do this yeah you just give options actually we all talk about freedom to choose freedom to choose is important but too many choices can overload suppose you want to send a message to someone on the phone and you open your whatsapp and immediately the person asks what font do you want to use what color font do you want to use what size font do you want to use do you want italics or standard and if you just go into the preferences there are 25 specific options and for every message if you have to select all the 25 options you are not going to do anything at all isn't it so certain things are sent as default preferences so options without recommendations doesn't work so Krishna gives the philosophical world view by which Arjuna can choose and he asks Arjuna to choose but then when he says sarva dharman pratyajya he could say that is a very strong recommendation that Krishna has given to Arjuna so that is out of his compassion it is not rejection of rejection of Arjuna's intelligence or a call to Arjuna to reject his intelligence so you could say that if Krishna had given sarva dharman pratyajya as a one verse response to the Bhagavad Gita that would have been a rejection of his rationality that would have been irrational just give up rationality and surrender to him but the whole Bhagavad Gita is a rational book practically nowhere in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna is telling Arjuna do what I am telling you to do because I am God he does say that I am God and he does say this is what you should do but he doesn't put this two together and say because I am God so you should do this that is not the mood of the Bhagavad Gita so the whole Bhagavad Gita is a very soundly reasoned book which is personally based on a certain thing but then at the end when he is calling this that is not rejection of rationality but rejection of dependence on rationality we don't let rationality become our master but it is a ministry all this makes sense but see facts and actions there is not necessarily one path from there what is and what should be done for example somebody says that I lost my job and I have only one savings in another 3 months so what should you do based on that so the fact is I have only 3 months savings from that you can say start full time searching for a job so that I can find it before I get 3 months or job market is very tough so I use 2 months say that I have to do some new course and then I search for 1 month or for the single saving I invest somewhere at least I will have some returns so you could have many different options so basically from the facts to actions there is no one linear essential path so from the same set of facts different people can infer different course of action and all of them can be reasonable that's why what Krishna is doing is there is a time when everyone of us has to take a leap of faith but the leap of faith is not by rejecting rationality there is a foundation of rationality from which we take the leap of faith it's like if there is no solid ground if the ground below is slippery or marshy and from there I try to leap I can't leap at all, it's sinking over there now the ground is sound but even when the ground is sound that will not take me to the sky I have to take a leap so for us rationality is like a solid ground so what Krishna is doing throughout the Bhagavad Gita is till 18.63 he is building the ground Arjuna, do you want to leap? and if you want to leap, this is how you leap Sarvajanamadhi.