without effort directed to God, and the whole self as it were held in
His presence. This presence is given, dimly or clearly, in intuition.
The actual prayer used will probably consist--again to use technical
language--of "affective acts and aspirations"; short phrases repeated
and held, perhaps expressing penitence, humility, adoration or love, and
for the praying self charged with profound significance.

"If we would intentively pray for getting of good," says "The Cloud of
Unknowing," "let us cry either with word or with thought or with desire,
nought else nor on more words but this word God.... Study thou not for
no words, for so shouldst thou never come to thy purpose nor to this
work, for it is never got by study, but all only by grace."[92]

Now the question naturally arises, how does this recollected state, this
alogical brooding on a spiritual theme, exceed in religions value the
orderly saying of one's prayers? And the answer psychology suggests is,
that more of us, not less, is engaged in such a spiritual act: that not
only the conscious attention, but the foreconscious region too is then
thrown open to the highest sources of life. We are at last learning to
recognize the existence of delicate mental processes which entirely
escape the crude methods of speech. Reverie as a genuine thought process
is beginning to be studied with the attention it deserves, and new
understanding of prayer must result. By its means powers of perception
and response ordinarily latent are roused to action; and thus the whole
life is enriched. That faculty in us which corresponds, not with the
busy life of succession but with the eternal sources of power, gets its
chance. "Though the soul," says Von Hügel, "cannot abidingly abstract
itself from its fellows, it can and ought frequently to recollect itself
in a simple sense of God's presence. Such moments of direct
preoccupation with God alone bring a deep refreshment and simplification