Wounds

A wound is a door through which the objective exterior world intrudes into the interior of the closed system of the subjective interior world. Speaking biologically, it is a breach in the walls of the fortress of the organism by which forces from outside the organism penetrate into its interior. A simple lesion of the skin, for example, signifies a breach and for a certain time gives the air (and all that which is borne by the air) access into an interior region of the organism which would be barred to it if the skin were intact.

Now, the organ of sight, the eye, in comparison with the surface of the human body covered over with skin, is a wound which can be covered by mobile skin -- the eyelids. Through this wound the objective outer world penetrates into our inner life with that much intensity, corresponding to the degree that sight reveals more of the outer world than the sense of touch. With the eyelids closed, the place where the experience of the world named "sight" takes place becomes again that reduced experience of the world -- yet normal for the entire surface of the body -- that we designate as "touch".

The eyes are open wounds which are so sensitive that they suffer with (i.e. react to) every nuance of light and color. And it is the same with the other sense organs. They are wounds, i.e. it is they which impose on us the objective reality of the outer world. There where I would like to see beautiful flowers, my eyes make me see a pile of dung. I am forced to see what the objective world show me by way of my eyes. It is like a nail from the outside nailing my will.

--Meditations on the Tarot, LETTER V THE POPE, Anonymous