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A lot of people want to be thankful. They want to have gratitude. But there is a problem. You cannot have gratitude without gratification. You have to have gratification. And you know what one of the meanings of gratification is?

One of the meanings: to be fulfilled. Fulfillment. If you want of feel gratitude in your life,  great! How do people express that? Smile. Have a nice day! I wish it was that simple. Somebody says, “Have a nice day” And you go, “Oh! Great now I’m going to have a nice day.”

See, real gratification is what you need. And when there is real gratification, gratitude is automatic.

People ask me what should we be thankful for? It’s a trick question; it cannot be answered. If you don’t have gratification, trying to pretend that you are grateful will never happen. But when you have gratification, when you have that fulfillment in your life, gratitude is automatic. You don’t have to work on it. That just happens.

- Prem Rawat

The question becomes: is the focus to have that joy in this life? Is the focus to be content, to be fulfilled? Or is the focus on bewilderment? What do you entertain as a thought every single day? Gratitude? Or “I wonder what’s next?”

You have both possibilities. You have the possibility of being in a place where you entertain that one singular, most beautiful thought of gratitude, of fulfillment. Or you have the possibility of bewilderment.

Bewilderment will not bring you gratification. Never has, never will. Knowing, feeling, experiencing will. Don’t let them go to waste. Don’t. Live your life consciously in gratitude, in knowing, in clarity, in simplicity—and prosper! Of course, prosper! Absolutely, prosper! Bloom. Be fulfilled.

- Prem Rawat

When you were a baby, you didn’t have much awareness of change, and this and that. But you started going to school and things changed—where, all the people you really knew were the people that you came across every day—your mom, your dad—now all of a sudden there are all these other people.

And you start learning you have to interact with them, and you have to be submissive; you have to be assertive, and somebody comes along and take your book, and somebody might do something and do something and do something, and you have to be nice, and you have to be this, and you have to be that. Things change. It’s not a severe realization; it happens pretty gradually.

Then comes that time when now you can have a driver’s license—and you feel, like, some sense of accomplishment, “Now things have changed!” And these are all kind of, “nice change,” but then comes that other change; you realize, “Ah-huh, umm-hmm! There is a new smell in the air”—that you never smelt before. And the body is not performing the same way.

And there are so many people who want to hang onto their youth—when the body itself doesn’t want to hang onto it. “Done.” There is a big difference, my friends, in being healthy, staying healthy—and trying to look like who you are not. Do you get it? There’s a big difference.

Because, one is a presentation—of that which you are trying to hide, which is inevitable. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen! Slowly, things are going to change, and this change has been afoot. This change started when you took your first breath. Not before that. When you took your first breath, this entire change started.

Now, I know everybody’s like, "Whoa, that's heavy stuff." It’s not heavy stuff; it’s nature. This is how it does it. It’s for everything. Trees will age. Even rocks. Mountains!

You look at some mountains and they are nice and soft—right? And you look at the other mountains and they’re sharp, and all, you know, edgy and...? You know what the—why? One is an old mountain; one is a new mountain. The new one hasn’t had the chance to get softened.

That’s neither good nor bad. It has nothing to do with it; it is just how it is.

I say to people; I say, "Do you know that somewhere on this planet Earth the sun is rising always? And it is setting always. This process of sunrise and sunset is continuous." It doesn’t feel like that to us, does it? We look out; "Oh, the sun is out, but, ah, let’s go, arrr-arrr-arrr...."

But if you have ever looked at a sundial, what it’s really showing you, is it’s constantly moving—slowly—but absolutely.

So is your life, so is your body, so is this time, so is all of this. It’s in a constant motion. You don’t want that. You want—you want to have a little "pause" button, get to that one nice point and go, “Tah-dah! I want to stay here.” But that’s not how it is.

So, in this change, is there any certainty? Because change can bring another element into it, which is uncertainty; you don’t know where you’re headed. "What does this change actually do?"

Well, there is a certainty. And the certainty is, your ability to enjoy will not diminish, even with age. Your ability to feel gratitude will not diminish, even with age. Your ability to be happy will not change, even with age. Your ability to have clarity in your life will not change, even with age—provided, provided you have made those things the core of your life.

- Prem Rawat

Whether Ram actually said this or not is irrelevant. And I am sure that Ram is not the one who sat down and wrote this. But he says—and this is obviously in some understanding on Ram’s behalf, some conclusion that this writer has, in which he says, "This is the vessel to go across the ocean of this world."

"What ocean?" Right? Ocean of ignorance. "This form that you have is the vessel to go across this ocean. The coming and going of this breath is my blessing. Coming and going of this breath is my blessing."

Wow. Wow. Wow, hmm-hmm. Coming of this breath, going of this breath is the blessing?

Is that obvious to you? Don’t shake your head yet; the question isn’t finished yet—is it obvious to you every time you breathe? Because it still is a blessing.

And this you have to feel in your life, acknowledge, understand in your life. No doubt. Not taking my word for it. Experiencing it for yourself, knowing—that’s what Knowledge is, hmm. Not reading in a book.

Because, putting something down in a book, it’s a real challenge. For me, it’s a real challenge. Because here I am offering words, but I’m also the same person who offers experience. And it’s a real dance! It’s a real dance. What can only be experienced should not be written about. And that’s a hell of a discipline—but it must be experienced.

I’m in a unique situation; I know that. If somebody comes to me, and says, "I have heard this thing called a 'mango.' What is it?" I am one of those people who doesn’t have to hand this person a book. I can hand him a mango.

There are other people who don’t have a mango; they can only offer him a book. But I am, it's slightly different; I have a slight different advantage; I can hand a mango. And hopefully, you're here to taste the mango.

- Prem Rawat

I’m so glad that I’m here, at least, and have this opportunity to talk about something that’s very profound, very misinterpreted, but nonetheless very profound. And of course I’m talking about gratitude.

Now, why is it misinterpreted? Because people say to themselves, “Oh, I should feel more thankful in my life.” But you don’t! That’s the fact. Should you? Yes.

That’s like, you know, making a New Year’s resolution, but you don’t go through with it. Because what will you do the next year? You need to keep that one going, so you can say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, this year I’ll do it; this year I’ll do it.” And this is how we work.

But true gratitude is not manufactured. It’s real! It comes from within you—when the things are right—not when they are wrong, when things are right. So what are the things that have to be right for the truest gratitude to flow from a human being? One of the things that has to happen is, there has to be appreciation. But appreciation of what?

People say—and I’m not saying that this is wrong by any stretch of the imagination: “You should be thankful for your family.” You should be. But you’re only thankful to your family if they’re doing what you tell them to do.

If the situation reverses and the family is telling you to do things that you don’t want to do, you’re not going to be thankful. And, but, you know, okay, this is just how it is. Not right, not wrong, not good, not bad—but just this is how it is.

Your dog is happy to see you; he’s wagging his tail. He’s hoping you will give some attention, maybe a nice little snack perhaps. And when the dog realizes none of that’s going to happen, and you’re going to be busy doing your thing, the dog finds a place and sits down and it’s like, “And, okay.” All that “hah-ah-hah-ah-hah!” goes away.

So, interestingly enough, a few days ago, it was at nighttime, and I was up. And what had come to my mind that night was “Someone loves you”—just that. “Someone loves you.” Now of course, who is this someone?

Because we are very caught up in our names; we are very caught up in our nomenclature, how we address each other, how people address you, so on and so forth. I mean, it’s like, if somebody says—so, if your name is John and somebody says, “Hey Tom!”—you’ll go, “And no! I, it’s, I’m not Tom; I’m John!” What difference does it make?

Because if there is somebody called “Tom,” they’re made out of the same thing as you are—exactly! Maybe you look a little different, but that’s just rearranged molecules.

So, it’s not—the importance isn’t who that “someone” is. So it’s like, pointless to even, even try to figure out who that “someone” is, because you don’t have the capacity to figure out. You can have an imagination, but your imagination will fall short of the reality of who that “someone” is. So, knowing that it’s a futile attempt, I don’t even go there.

Ha! But ‘loves you!’ That’s good! And how do I know this? I know this because this gift of breath comes to me. I have been given an opportunity to be alive.

But when we come across our problem, we are so intrigued by that problem, and so willing to find a resolution to that problem that we blind ourselves to still what is going on around us.

That this breath still comes into me. That I still have an ocean of answers in me. That I have an ocean of clarity in me, that I have an ocean of kindness in me, that I have an ocean of joy in me. That I have simplicity in my life. That I have light in me. These things—regardless of what is happening.

- Prem Rawat