The famous poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote to his friend and publisher Geoffrey Faber around 1927 about the sense of horror that sometimes overcame him when he felt that he was separated from all enjoyment, “from all things of this earth, even from Hope; a sudden separation and isolation from everything; and at that moment of illumination, a recognition of the fact that one can do without all these things, a joyful recognition of what John of the Cross means when he says that the soul cannot be possessed of the divine union until it has divested itself of the craving for all created beings”.

Is this true?