| Kippreport.com

Get up at 4am and get rich

November 22, 2010 3:42 by Samuel Potter

Kipp loves a good guru. Even the word is fun to say.

So we were pleased to see that the National carries an interview this week with Swami Abula Parthasarathy, apparently Wall Street’s go-to-guru over the last few years. The 84-year-old is founder of the Vedanta Academy in India, which spreads the “10,000 year-old philosophy of Vedanta to manage life-balance, self-confidence and stress.”

Apparently, in the build up to the financial crisis these Wall Street chaps sought spiritual advice from Indian gurus in what the National calls a “collective premonition in the years leading up to the global financial meltdown.” Parthasarathy, or Swamiji as he is known to his students, was one of the gurus jetting around offering life advice to the likes of Lehman, Microsoft and Ford employees.

Sadly, the article side steps the fact that all this “karma capitalism” completely failed to stop the economic implosion. Vedanta may have helped execs feel less stressed and more confident, but it clearly didn’t stop their greed encouraging them to create money out of thin air and in the process inflate a global credit bubble…etcetera.

Anyway, back to Swamiji. He’s apparently in good shape for 84, jogging 3km a day and jetting this way and that to be a speaker at business events. He’s also just launched his tenth book. Whatever his secret is, it’s clearly working for him.

So what’s his advice for success?

In a nutshell, get up at 4 am. That’s when all your satva surfaces, between 4 and 6 am. Satva “is a state of poise, serenity and maturity that leads to contemplative objectivity,” according to the paper. So you’re at your best between 4am and 6am; after that is all downhill.

Kipp has been up for a few flights at 4am, and is pretty sure there is no satva about at that time of day for us. Then again, maybe we have to do it regularly for a while to see the benefits; Swamiji also says in his interview, “Whatever is pleasurable in the beginning is detrimental in the end; whatever is unpalatable in the beginning is pleasurable in the end.”

Four in the morning is about as unpalatable as it gets, in our view. Perhaps some Kipp readers might like to try it out, and let us know how you get on.

Tags: get up at 4, karma capitalism, satva, Swami Abula Parthasarathy, swamiji, swamiji abu dhabi, swamiji Vedanta, Vedanta academy, Vedanta india, wall street guru, wall street swamiji