Beginning of Essay
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) began his spiritual enquiry as a young man. At university he studied comparative religions and the medieval mystics. His thinking was greatly influenced by the philosopher Bertrand Russell and the poet Ezra Pound. Eliot’s experim ....

Middle of Essay
.... Waste Land (1922), Eliot concluded that ‘some forms of illness are extremely favourable to religious illumination’. I have not had personal experience of this but I am aware that serious illness and death can often make people focus sharply on the meaning of life. This could be said of the circumstances surrounding the writing of The Hollow Men, even if the ‘illumination’ simply highlighted a very dark time in Eliot’s life. The overriding image of humankind as ‘hollow men’ is powerful and depressing. In the context of a spiritual journey I would liken it to a ‘wilderness experience’. Like the children of Israel who came out of Egyp ....