“Good old vain repetition!” “Not necessarily vain,” Mrs Rao objected. “Sometimes it really gets you somewhere.” “It gets you somewhere,” Vijaya elaborated, “not because of what the words mean or suggest, but simply because they’re being repeated. You could repeat Hey Diddle Diddle and it would work just as well as Om or Kyrie Eleison or La ila ilia ’llah. It works because when you’re busy with the repetition of Hey Diddle Diddle or the name of God, you can’t be entirely preoccupied with yourself. The only trouble is that you can Hey-Diddle-Diddle yourself downwards as well as upwards—down into
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