like the deepest secrets of the jewish tradition which was like the hasidic wisdom the kabbalistic secrets the esoteric metaphysics that i was being taught and and in such a selective and exclusive way many of these texts still haven't been you know taught to the public haven't been translated are barely understood by people outside of the community and then through a strange uh chance of occurrence and a novel that i was reading and mentions of initially christian mysticism i became acquainted with christian mysticism with its very strong neoplatonic influence and i later came to understand that there was a shared historical influence and shared philosophical language and shared metaphysics that were grounding these traditions um which but at the time just discovering their commonality on a metaphysical level so so raw and so indisputably really knocked my socks off and and then i as one does i got interested in eastern thought um first through you know huxley and watts and and uh and terence mckenna and all those but then more seriously and more academically and then my focus is my focus shifted more to really to western mysticism and to that tradition that emerges from plato through the abrahamic faiths and and beyond and trying to my real quest i think since then in some protracted way and different themes have had different sailing to me throughout time for a long time it was a theme of of death and rebirth immortality that was a very strong theme for another time it was an associated theme of the theosis hypnosis or apotheosis of the individual right they can be applied through through different forms and different traditions different different points picked up salience and i was sort of trying to stitch together these sailing ideas in across the different traditions and i think where it's kind of evolved to and it's where it is now and i think it's still growing i'm still quite young and it's still part of the excitement is that i have no idea where it's heading is is really looking at the deepest the de