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Silent Assemblies 
Thank you, Mike. As you say, there is quite a distinction between a mantra, in the oriental sense, and the Jesus Prayer, as the Orthodox have always maintained. It is quite different, in my own experience, from the maranatha mantra recommended by John Main, and has a noticeably different effect (though I’m not saying either is better). Your quotation from John Gill’s book of John Climacus is a very good one (John Gill’s book contains an enormous amount of relevant material and is very readable, I thought).