Have you ever found yourself searching endlessly for peace and happiness, only to feel like it’s just out of reach?
During my time at the Vedanta Academy in India, I learned a spiritual discipline that completely transformed my life. It’s one I have practised for over three decades. It starts with an alarm set for 4am.1
Now, rising at 4am might sound ridiculous, but according to Vedanta philosophy, these early morning hours are the most spiritual time of the day.
If we want genuine peace, contentment and composure, the only path forward is to turn inward; and early morning provides the perfect, quiet space to do just that.
Rising early gives us the opportunity to turn inward, to question ourselves:
What am I doing?
Where am I heading?
If I continue this way, where am I going to end up?
Three Thought Temperaments
Throughout our lives, we all experience three thought temperaments. In Sanskrit, these are known as Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas:
Sattva is a state of peace, contentment, composure, serenity, poise, and pause. It is a state of contemplation and objectivity — seeing life as it is. It is the highest state, and while we all have it, in some of us it is very faint, so we need to strengthen it.
Rajas is a state of passionate activity. You’re out there running around desire-ridden, propelled into action helter-skelter by every desire that comes up.
Tamas is a state of inertia. Your mind and body are sluggish, your intellect is asleep, and you’re just going through the motions.
A lot of people mistake tamas for sattva, but it isn’t!
Even in modern-day meditation, people claim to be peaceful, but what has actually happened is that they have simply stopped running around and slipped into inactivity. But the peace you find will never last.
Waking Up to Your Higher Nature
In nature, sattva manifests between 4-6am. If you wake up after six, you miss it completely and jump right into rajas, rushing into the day, propelled by desires, without any clarity or composure. This is no way to function!
When you rise early, you enliven the Buddhi, which is translated into English as intellect.
Unfortunately, we live in a world that thinks “intellect” means intellectual brilliance or academic achievement. But the Buddhi is your awakened thinking.
Look at it this way: Buddhi is Buddha with an ‘i’ on the end. To become awakened like the Buddha (the awakened one), you need the Buddhi — your awakened thinking to take you to that state of Self Realisation.
The intellect is like a muscle: if you don’t exercise it, it remains weak. When the intellect is asleep, the mind jumps into the driver’s seat while the intellect sits sleeping in the passenger seat!
The mind is just a flow of thoughts — it gets into worries of the past and anxieties of the future, jumping around constantly like a monkey from one branch to another. The intellect is what keeps the mind in the present. We need to wake it up, and the best time to do that is first thing in the morning through the practice of Jnana Yoga (the yoga of knowledge).
How to Practice This at Home
You don’t have to overhaul your life overnight. Just tweak your habits: go to bed a little earlier and get up a little earlier.
Start with 30 minutes: Get up at 5:30am, sit quietly in a comfortable chair without disturbances, and gradually build up to an hour.
Choose an uplifting text: Find a sacred text that uplifts you. My choice is the Bhagavad Gita by A. Parthasarathy, but choose whatever inspires you. It could be the Bible or the Dharmapada.2
Read systematically: Don’t just turn to a random page. Go systematically from beginning to end, reading just a couple of paragraphs.
Follow the 20/80 Rule: Spend 20% reading and 80% reflection. Ask yourself: How does this apply to my life? What do I need to do to bring about a positive change?
What you read and contemplate in the quiet morning hours carries you throughout the day. You find that you are no longer as reactive as you used to be. You become calmer, more in control, poised, and dignified in how you respond to life.
Thank you for reading.
Till next time, Be Well, Meredith ∞ The Elder Sage
