In plain words
He always seems to be laughing outwardly, but inside he is all the while eaten away with grief.
Embodiments of Prema! You must recognise the main point. You may think of yourselves as great devotees, as sādhakas, as jñānīs. First of all, root out your Ahaṅkāra. Give no room at all to show. Do service in the feeling of tyāga. This itself is a great yajña. This is karma-yajña. What is within is Brahma-yajña. Karma-yajña is the reflection of Brahma-yajña. But unfortunately the sacred Veda, which used to be full of Jñāna, kept changing day by day and turned into a body of words. The Veda is not a body of words. It is full of Brahman. Today people utter it with speech alone, but they do not show it forth in action at all. That is: manasyekaṃ vacasyekaṃ karmaṇyekaṃ mahātmanaṃ. Manassanyak, vacassanyak, karmaṇyanyak durātmanaṃ. One thing inside, another outside: this is merely a state lower than any kind of humanness. Whatever you do, you must do it as God's command. You must keep God's command to the letter. That itself is the fruit. There is no fruit beyond this. God is a feeling free of selfishness. Whatever He does, He does for the world alone. He does nothing without a reason. The reason is the welfare of the world, nothing else. Only when you recognise this feeling does humanness reach its fulfilment. So we must foster the feeling of tyāga. To think that we love someone else is a great mistake. Each loves himself, for the sake of his own joy. Whoever you love, to feel that you are loving the Ātma is true Prema. To think that you love a person, or a thing, or an object, is Ajñāna. I am thirsty and drink water. Do I drink water for the satisfaction of the water? I drink water for my own satisfaction. I am hungry and eat food. This is not for the satisfaction of the food. I eat for my own satisfaction. If you go on examining small matters like this, in every small matter a man takes his own satisfaction, his own joy, as his aim.
What is this self? Not the body. If the self were the body, why should one say, “This is my body”? The self is the very embodiment of the Ātma. This very Ātma pervades everywhere. Take away the difference of upādhi, and you and I are both one. It is because of upādhi that differences such as these grow. So you must grasp the inner meaning in satyaṃ jñānam anantam. You must go on inquiring in this way; it is not by merely doing bhajan in some fashion, crying “Bhakti, Bhakti,” nor by merely doing japa.