Stearn was a Jewish-American journalist and author of more than thirty books, nine of which were bestsellers. As an author, Stearn specialized in sensationalist speculative non-fiction. His early work focused on outsiders and marginalized individuals such as prostitutes, drug addicts, and homosexuals. His later work focused on spirituality, the occult, and psychic phenomena. His most popular works were two biographies on the American psychic Edgar Cayce; Stearn was a conference speaker for the Association for Research and Enlightenment and a proponent of Cayce's theories.
I first read this at eighteen, during a season when I was meditating to Hearts of Space on PBS every Friday night and had just emerged from a stretch of Edgar Cayce. Stearn's account of his time at a José Silva seminar felt like a threshold — my first real encounter with alpha as a lived practice. The self-guided descent into alpha, and the mental workshop that followed, became tools I used for years.
Returning to it in 2024, after a long spiritual desert and a renewed immersion in Silva's own Silva Mind Control Method and Dispenza's Evolve Your Brain, I found the techniques a little dated — a period piece of '70s consciousness writing. But I owe the book a real debt. It opened a door I wouldn't finish walking through for another four decades.