In plain words
The feeling of Bhakti means precisely this: to change one's own mental nature into divinity! Bhakti is to turn the mind toward Mādhava. Today man is forgetting the principle of such Bhakti and prapatti. You think that thinking of God, worshipping God and adoring God are for God's sake. All these man practises for his own sake; they are not acts done for God's sake. When man loves an object, he does not love it for the object's sake. He loves objects for his own sake. When he loves a person, he does not love that person for the person's sake. He loves that person for his own sake alone. In the same way he loves even God for his own sake; to love God for God's sake is very rare. To love God for God's own sake: that alone is true Bhakti. In this worldly love some measure of selfishness and Ahaṅkāra is always bound up. That is precisely why they have given it the name ‘anurāga’. The essence of true Bhakti and prapatti is precisely this: to give up selfishness, to put one's faith in the good of others, to worship divinity and to experience Ānanda. As long as selfishness and self-interest remain, people cannot make divinity blossom in themselves, nor make it shine. To the hard-hearted, God is not to be seen. Faith is most necessary. Without faith, humanness does not flourish at all. So faith is essential. In this, faith joined with the principle of Prema is the chief thing. This Prema makes even the Paramātma lose Himself in it. It drives the devotee mad. It makes God and the devotee dance. Simply because he has lost such a sacred principle of Prema, man falls prey to unrest and takes to wrongdoing and bad conduct. Our President, Shankar Dayal Sharma, quoted Vivekananda's saying, “faith in yourself, faith in the country, faith in God, this is the secret of grace”. What is divinity within humanness like? First of all, self confidence. How can faith in the country and in God arise in one who has no self-confidence?