You have to be dismissive of any talk of the afterlife. Only then the Gita will make sense to you. Those who have a battle at hand, those who are living in matters of the moment, those who are engaging deeply with the world as it is right now — present to them — they are the ones who will find the Gita useful, indispensable rather.
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Acharya Prashant: The direct path having failed on Arjun, Shri Krishna is being extra cautious now. It is notable that the kind of warning or caution that was never sounded out to Arjun in the beginning, or after the first chapter, or at the beginning of the second, is being delivered now, right in the middle of the Gyan-centered discourse in chapter 2.
The reason is simple, obvious. The best, simplest, most direct, most obvious treatment has failed. Shri Krishna tried to take Arjun directly to the center of all being and doing, with being coming prior to doing, and that didn't succeed on Arjun.
So, Shri Krishna is doling out precautionary advice in advance now, anticipating a similar kind of resistance as Arjun displayed when Shri Krishna was talking self-knowledge to him. So now Shri Krishna is about to tell Arjun the possible reasons why he is likely to fail, why he is likely to not get Shri Krishna, why he is likely to miss out on the obvious message.
And what applies to Arjun applies to everybody.
