Devotion means oneness of the mind with God. Oneness of the mind with God or loving God with all your heart and mind; Tulsidas Ji, Surdas Ji, Meera, these Saints had unwavering and resolute love for God.
They performed single-minded devotion to God. We inversely perform devotion by external acts of prayer, while our mind remains entangled in worldly desires. We goose-step to the dictates of our mind only to gratify our material senses.
In other words, we attempt to fool God who resides within us in our heart, forgetting that He is omnipresent and omniscient, and is witness to each and every thought of our mind. So it is our mind that has to practice devotion. It's the mind. Now our mind is a product of the cosmic energy maya and therefore, it is inert.
The cosmic energy maya, our mind is a product of maya, which is inert. So anything, whatever our mind envisages or fathoms is within the realm of maya, whereas God is Divine. And so to receive or perceive Divine power, we need to have a Divine receptacle, a Divine patra; that's what we need.
So, how can anything material be a prize or the prize for something Divine? How is it possible? So, here God's causelessly merciful nature comes into play. And so He graciously accepts our material mayic devotion and assists us in our spiritual journey in growing our bhakti, our devotion, our spiritual efforts. That's what He does.
