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The Gita’s timing is symbolic: wisdom can arise in one deep, quiet pause, not after long hours.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, it takes at least four hours to recite the seven hundred and one verses of the Gita. So when, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the Shri Krishna–Arjuna dialogue took place between the two armies, was the war suspended for four hours during that time?
Quite right. Please sit down.
Questioner: the other day you said that a soul is reborn within a year of its leaving its former body, and just now you said that a certain ghost lived in the bodiless state for eleven hundred years. Please explain the contradiction.
Yes, there are a few people who have extraordinary memory. People with ordinary memory don't take much time for being born. But those of extraordinary memory, who are few and far between, do take time. Curzon, a former British viceroy of India, has mentioned an event in his memoirs. A man of extraordinary memory was once brought to his court from Rajasthan. Even the word "extraordinary" does not rightly describe his memory; it was really incredible. The man did not know any language other than his mother tongue -- Rajasthani. Thirty persons speaking thirty different languages were called to the Viceroy House in Delhi to test this man's memory. Each one of them was asked to formulate a sentence in his own language and keep it in his mind. The Rajasthani man, a villager who knew no other language than his own, went to each of the thirty persons, one…
Osho, Arjuna was in front and Krishna’s Gita was born; because of Janak, Ashtavakra’s Mahageeta took form. And here you are, uttering the supreme Gita without any Arjuna or Janak. How?
You would not have recognized Arjuna before Krishna’s Gita; nor would you have recognized Janak. Arjuna became Arjuna by passing through Krishna; he was not that before. Before, he was just like you. Janak became Janak by passing through Ashtavakra’s Mahageeta; otherwise he too was like you. Today the glory you see in Arjuna is because he passed through Krishna’s fire. When Krishna spoke the Gita, that glory was nowhere to be seen. Then Arjuna was a seed. Krishna tended that seed, called forth the hidden possibility in it. He explained to that seed, coaxed it, persuaded it—“Don’t be afraid; break open the husk; sprout; don’t panic; enter the battle; don’t run away; don’t escape”—he prepared the soil and sowed the seed. Today the flowers you see blooming in Arjuna were not always there. Before Krishna’s Gita, they were not there at all. There was only a possibility, which could…
Osho, the Gita has been the most read and heard in this land, and Krishna the most worshiped. Then how did song and celebration vanish from this country, and sannyas become filled with stench?
Reading the Gita does not bring song into one’s life. Reading the Gita is not the same as becoming suffused with song. That is where the mistake happened. Hearing these unique words from Krishna, Arjuna awakened. We thought there was some magic in the words. We thought the words contained certain keys. We thought: if these words opened the lock of Arjuna’s heart, they will open the locks of our hearts too. So the recitation of the Gita began. For five thousand years we have been reciting the Gita. No one’s lock opens. It seems there is no key in the words. Not only does the lock not open; by repeating the Gita the lock becomes more and more rusty. It does not open, and even the hope of opening breaks. There is a reason behind this delusion. The first time, the event truly happened: the lock opened. We saw…