In plain words
You only ask for God, but you do not do the sādhanas fit for experiencing His divine principle. Merely thinking that we want water does not quench our thirst. We must take the water into our hand. Only when we drink it is the thirst quenched. If there truly is spiritual hunger in you, strive to win the Prema of God. This hunger will be satisfied. This thirst will be quenched. The anguish will end. Instead, to sit idle and merely pray, ‘O God! Give me Ānanda and satisfy my hunger, quench my thirst’, will bring no success. Fill your heart with selfishness and merely long for the principle of Prema, which is for others, and it will not come to you. What we must ask for today is Prema alone! This Prema has no form. This Prema is beyond description. It is beyond the reach of speech and mind. It is to be had only in experience. The nearer you come, the more Ānanda, the more food, you can receive. The root cause of all the troubles in the world today is this very lack of Prema! Yet there is Prema. It is there as a Prema of the body, a selfish Prema.
What use is it to cling to the supported without the support?
Today people long only for the feeling that the body is the self, but they do not long for the feeling of the Paramātma. They believe in the upādhis alone, but they do not believe in the Ātmatattva that is the support of the upādhi. What use is it to cling to the supported without the support? The support of all, the chief of all, the measure: that is Prema alone! Where is this Prema born? Where does it end? ‘Dāsoham, dāsoham’: from there it begins, and this Prema comes to its end in what is called ‘Soham, soham, soham’. Without dāsoham, we cannot experience what is called soham. That soham itself is Prema. In ‘So’-‘ham’, the Ātma called ‘So’ is I myself; the Ātma itself is Prema, the Ātma itself is Brahman, the Ātma itself is Satya. That Ātma itself is Dharma.