The Eighteen Conversations • गीता
Arjuna does not stand up at the end of the first chapter. He sits down.
Chapter by chapter — the Gita read as the psychological text it was always meant to be.
A man at the height of his power, at the centre of the most important moment of his life, looks at what he is about to do — and refuses. He drops his bow. He sits down in the chariot. He says, in so many words: I cannot do this. I cannot keep going.
Krishna, through the Gita, restores Arjuna's विचारना — his power of discernment — until, in the eighteenth chapter, he says: now I have my स्मृति back.
There was a moment when Karna set down his शस्त्र to lift a chariot wheel, and Arjuna, embracing empathy, held back. Krishna told him to charge: there is a difference, he said, between निहत्था and शस्त्र-विहीन — between one who is unarmed and one who has merely laid down his arms. Every CEO who has walked into Rajesh ji's room at 4 PM on a Friday has felt the same jinx that week.
“The Gita is the only text in world literature designed for an audience that has just collapsed at the top of its career. Arjuna is the patron saint of the third generation.”
— Rajesh Pandey
Why the Pratikraman reading is different
- We read the Sanskrit. Then three translations. Then we set them aside and ask what the verse is actually saying — to the householder, in this century, with this nervous system.
- We refuse the priestly reading. The Gita is not a manual for temple ritual. The pandit who told a young Rajesh that verse 2.62 meant he was not religious enough is the reason this school exists.
- We hold the Gita against Patanjali, the Buddha, Osho — and, where useful, against Freud, Jung and the modern cognitive sciences. The text is strong enough to bear the cross-examination.
- We translate sense, not word. Every Hindi translation is read aloud to native speakers and rewritten until it sounds like the speech of a thoughtful friend — never a Sanskritised commentary.
The eighteen chapters — the Pratikraman essence
| Ch. | Sanskrit / English name | The Pratikraman essence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | अर्जुन विषाद योग The Despair of Arjuna | The moral-ethical jinx we face every day. |
| 2 | सांख्य योग The Yoga of Knowledge | The most precise psychological chapter ever written — thought to attachment to desire to anger to confusion to ruin. The complete chain, in six verses. |
| 3 | कर्म योग The Yoga of Action | Action is unavoidable. Detachment from its fruit is a discipline. The chapter that frees the householder. |
| 4 | ज्ञान कर्म संन्यास योग Knowledge & Renunciation | Every act of offering is itself the divine. Why the spiritual life is not somewhere else — it is in the office. |
| 5 | कर्म संन्यास योग Renunciation | The wise neither act nor refrain from acting. The doer disappears. |
| 6 | आत्म संयम योग Self-Discipline | Practical instructions for meditation. The structural foundation under Kaalika Kriya is laid here. |
| 7 | ज्ञान विज्ञान योग Knowledge & Realisation | Two kinds of knowledge: the one you have read about, and the one that has entered you. |
| 8 | अक्षर ब्रह्म योग The Imperishable | What survives the body. What you actually are. The chapter most often re-read after a parent dies. |
| 9 | राज विद्या योग The Royal Secret | Surrender as the highest discipline. The chapter that ends the cycle of high-functioning anxiety. |
| 10 | विभूति योग Divine Manifestations | A meditation on the everywhere-ness of consciousness. |
| 11 | विश्वरूप दर्शन योग The Cosmic Form | The terror of seeing too much, too soon. Why the journey requires a teacher, not a workshop. |
| 12 | भक्ति योग Devotion | The four kinds of devotee. Where do you stand — and what is the next door? |
| 13 | क्षेत्र क्षेत्रज्ञ योग The Field & the Knower | The mind-body distinction, written seventeen centuries before Descartes — and far more useful. |
| 14 | गुणत्रय विभाग योग The Three Gunas | Sattva, Rajas, Tamas. The diagnostic the school uses to design a student's daily practice. |
| 15 | पुरुषोत्तम योग The Supreme Person | The upside-down tree — the image that re-orders everything you knew about how the world is held. |
| 16 | दैवासुर सम्पद योग Divine & Demonic Qualities | An uncomfortable chapter. We do not soften it. The reader does the audit, alone. |
| 17 | श्रद्धात्रय विभाग योग The Threefold Faith | The Gita's audit of daily life — food, work, speech, charity. Read it once a year. |
| 18 | मोक्ष संन्यास योग Liberation | Arjuna stands up. The bow is picked up. And the fighter is no longer the man we met in chapter one. |
Three formats, three intensities
Live
One chapter per month. Second Sunday, 7:00–9:00 PM IST. Two hours with Rajesh ji. Recording shared with attendees only — never the public.
On-Demand
All eighteen chapters as a self-paced video course. Sanskrit, English, Hindi. Lifetime access. Includes the printed notes for each chapter.
Private
A bespoke walkthrough of any chapter, or the full sequence, for a family or small circle of friends. By application — at your home or in Jaipur.
Enrol in the Gita series.
The next live chapter begins on the second Sunday of the month. Seats are limited.