Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind

In 1991, when her daughters rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayers familiar world of science and rational thinking turned upside down. After the police failed to turn up any leads, a friend suggested she call a dowser—a man who specialized in finding lost objects. With nothing to lose—and almost as a joke—Dr. Mayer agreed. Within two days, and without leaving his Arkansas home, the dowser located the exact California street coordinates where the harp was found.

Deeply shaken, yet driven to understand what had happened, Mayer began the fourteen-year journey of discovery that she recounts in this mind-opening, brilliantly readable book. Her first surprise: the dozens of colleagues whod been keeping similar experiences secret for years, fearful of being labeled credulous or crazy.

Extraordinary Knowing is an attempt to break through the silence imposed by fear and to explore what science has to say about these and countless other “inexplicable” phenomena. From Sigmund Freuds writings on telepathy to secret CIA experiments on remote viewing, from leading-edge neuroscience to the strange world of quantum physics, Dr. Mayer reveals a wealth of credible and fascinating research into the realm where the mind seems to trump the laws of nature.

She does not ask us to believe. Rather she brings us a book of profound intrigue and optimism, with far-reaching implications not just for scientific inquiry but also for the ways we go about living in the world.

From the Hardcover edition.

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D., was an internationally known psychoanalyst, researcher, and clinician, the author of groundbreaking papers on female development, the nature of science, and intuition, and a contributor to Consciousness and Healing, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. In addition to her private practice, she was associate clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and also taught at UC Medical Center, San Francisco. She died just after completing Extraordinary Knowing.

From the Hardcover edition.

Foreword by Freeman Dyson

Foreword by Carol Gilligan

1. The Harp that Came Back

My Journey Begins

2. Going Public with Private Knowing

Breaking the Silence

3. Disavowing the Extraordinary

Personal Cost and Public Consequences

4. States of Mind

Knowing That Doesn't Feel Like Knowing

5. Intuitive Intelligence

The Art and Science of Union

6. Starting—and Stopping—the Conversation

The Strange History of Paranormal Research

7. Tossing Out Meteorites

Science Fear, and Anxiety

8. Nighttime Eyes

Learning to Live with Paradox