The verse contrasts two ways of seeking: (1) inward, practice-based seeing and (2) outward, text-based searching. “Closing the eyes” points to pratyāhāra/dhyāna—withdrawal from sensory dispersion into an interior locus where vision becomes subtle (often implied as the “inner eye,” the brow-center, or the heart-space). The repeated “Where, where?” is the seeker’s habitual outward question, while the answer “there” quietly redirects the location from geography to inner experience.

“Siddhars gathered” can be read as perfected beings assembling in a subtle realm, but also as siddhi-states/powers “converging” when mind and prāṇa become unified. In many Siddha frames, when vāyu (breath/prāṇa) is made to stand in a central channel or still point, the scattered faculties collect; the ‘assembly’ is an image for this convergence.

The “skill/technique shown by the adept ones” (vittai) hints at an esoteric method—often transmitted orally—such as breath-regulation, mantra, nāḍi-work, kuṇḍalinī processes, or a coded alchemical-yogic discipline. Siddha literature frequently implies that books contain clues but not the living key; without embodied practice and competent guidance, one “turns pages and laments,” accumulating concepts while the promised experience remains absent. The critique is not of texts per se, but of substituting textual agitation for transformative sādhanā.