Beauty ＆ Pure 42

nstead of directly experiencing the supreme reality that shines in the Heart as consciousness through an inward enquiry performed in solitude, with calm deliberation, to seek it externally, excitedly enquiring everywhere else, is like using a lighted candle to search for someone sunk deep in water.
Guru Vachaka Kovai v390
BHAGAVAN : Without turning inwards and merging in the Lord – he who shines within the mind and lends it all its light - how can we know the light of lights with the borrowed light of the mind?
[Ulladu Narpadu, v.22]

This Guru Vachaka Kovai verse stresses two points: the futility of searching for reality in the external world and the uselessness of the tools that are generally used to make such searches. The lighted candle is suttarivu, the divided consciousness in which a perceiver perceives mental or physical objects. However, though the tool itself is defective, through the act of attempting to discover reality through sel-enquiry, suttarivu is extinguished. 

While Ishwara continuously abides in the Heart, bestowing his grace, without form, as not different from oneself, and as a directly experienced entity, how can he be seen if one assumes that he is with form, different from oneself and mediated through the senses, even if one searches and wanders for aeons in the outside world?