I had pulled the Jess Stearn book, The Search for a Soul: Taylor
Caldwell's Psychic Lives, (1973) from my book shelf a bit ago, as I had done a FB
post about author, Taylor Caldwell. In Stearn's
book, I had to smile and appreciate this, especially as a native Californian. In a discussion with Caldwell, he asked her if she wanted to be
hypnotized. She answered, "If anybody can manage it." He said, "If they can’t do it in California, it can't be
done anywhere." She replied,
"And why California,
pray?" With laughter, he said,
"The atmosphere is so electric out there that even the people think
they're spirits."
Taylor Caldwell's
writing intrigues me. I'll always remember a TV interview she did back in the
late 1950s, in which she spoke of not knowing where her ideas came from and
that she felt as if she was doing "automatic" typing, as if a
"Presence" (what she called it) guided her fingers. She often claimed
that she had no idea how the facts within her books came to her. It was
especially evident in her book, Dear and Glorious Physician, Later in a book by
Jess Stearn, she talked of the "Presence," who communicated with her.
She was also known to be psychic. That TV interview, which I watched with my
Dad, has always stuck with me--it fascinated me then, and now. Part of the
reason may be that I've always believed in past lives, and contact with the
other side, and having some psychic ability myself, makes it easier to understand.
