The Prayer of Recollection: A Classic Mystical Practice as Taught by Evelyn Underhill

Contemplative spirituality has its own jargon, and this “language of prayer” evolves over time. Nowadays you’ll find students of the mystical path speaking about meditation, nonduality, mindfulness and heightened consciousness, whereas a century ago you’d be more likely to encounter terminology like mental prayer, unitive life, recollection and rapture.

Sometimes words themselves evolve in how they are used: when Evelyn Underhill spoke about the prayer of rapture, she was not talking about the ...