Eliot was much influenced by John of the Cross. Here is a tribute and allusion to him from Eliot’s East Coker:


  You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.


Do you read T.S.Eliot? You ought to. 


Especially his Four Quartets. They are the most spiritual poems written in the twentieth century, and Eliot was, above all, a mystic. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, and certainly don’t be swayed by that crap about him being a misogynistic, anti-Semite. There’s a smear campaign going on by the liberal intelligentsia because Eliot was un-apologetically Christian.


PS: It was T.S.Eliot who taught me the word ‘inchoate’.