Why did Arjuna ask Krishna to repeat the Gita after the war?

[Shri Anil asked: In the Gītā, why did Arjuna ask Kṛṣṇa to repeat the Gītā after the war was over? During the war, he had already heard the Gītā and it had given him the motivation to kill the wicked Karuravas. Then why did he ask Kṛṣṇa to repeat it?]

Swāmi replied: The Gītā partly contains knowledge to motivate a person to do practical work in the materialistic line with the aim of establishing justice and condemning injustice. But it also contains several other important points regarding justice and injustice in the materialistic line as well as concepts in the spiritual line. Several other important points came up in the Gītā, one after the other, regarding both worldly life and spiritual life. These points were linked with the main point of doing action in worldly life. Arjuna should have grasped these points when God Kṛṣṇa was telling him all the points in a nutshell. God is not a bathroom tape-recorder to listen to songs whenever one likes. This is the reason why Kṛṣṇa refused to repeat the Gītā a second time. Finally, on Arjuna’s insistence, Kṛṣṇa repeated it and this second version of the Gītā is called the Anu Gītā. But it was not the exact copy of the original Bhagavad Gītā. Fortunately, sage Vyāsa had already recorded the original Bhagavad Gītā for the sake of the world.

So, one must concentrate on the knowledge given by the human forms of God because that knowledge is directly useful for the soul’s spiritual upliftment. The patient should concentrate on the prescription given by the doctor which alone is useful for the patient. But if the prescription alone is finally useful to the soul, why did Kṛṣṇa repeatedly emphasize that the soul must concentrate on Him, the doctor? The reason is that the medicine to be used is not available in any outside medical store. Hence, you have to concentrate on the doctor also. To speak more accurately and clearly, the doctor himself is the medicine! This is the reason why, everywhere in the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa was stressing on the aspect of concentrating on Himself!

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| Shri Datta Swami | Why did Arjuna ask Krishna to repeat the Gita after the war? | Giita Gita Krishna