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

What a wonderfully written page-turner this book is--and the product of a careful scientist. Elizabeth Mayer weaves together her proper skepticism as a scientist (she is an accomplished psychoanalyst)and the astonishment of a believer (she has had personal experience of the phenomena she recounts). After an accomplished dowser in the Arkansas located her daughter's stolen harp in Oakland, California, she remarked that "this irrevocably changed my familiar world of science and rational thinking." Yet rather than becoming an immediate enthusiast she engaged in research of literature about ESP, remote viewing, Psi, and other "inexplicable powers of the human mind." She became involved with people who were adept in these areas--her mind open to new knowledge, but still armed with the scientist's proper skepticism of phenomena not easily suceptible to experimental replication. It deals more broadly with an area covered in depth in Mario Beaurergard's book, "The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul." His closing remarks apply well to the implications of Mayer's book as well: "We need a new scientific frame of reference. Such a frame will recognize that the dogmatic materialism of scientism is not synonymous with science. . . The nature of mind, consciousness, and reality as well as the meaning of life can be apprehended through an intuitie, unitive, and experiential form of knowing. A scienticif frame of reference must address the evidence for that." In short, both Mayer and Beauregard call us to seek to develop a science of the intangible.

A professor of psychology at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, before her death shortly after completing this book, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D. begins with a real "Wow!" personal experience. It left her deeply shaken and prompted her to spend the next 14 years attempting to make sense out of it and other paranormal phenomena. Prior to the "Wow!" experience, Mayer had been, like so many of her colleagues, stuck in the muck and mire of scientific materialism. "I was discovering a vast, strange new territory of research regarding anomalous mind-matter interactions - interactions between mind and matter that simply cannot be contained inside what we call normal science," she writes in the first chapter. As Mayer delved into the world of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), she met a number of friends and associates who had experienced paranormal phenomena of one kind or another but had been reluctant to discuss them until after she told her special story. She began to realize that such experiences are much more common than she had known and came to see how scientific fundamentalism has thwarted discussion and research in the area of parapsychology. "Inevitably, we tiptoe around anomalies," she offers. Mayer approached her investigation objectively and had hoped that CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) would help her understand what was going on. "I found [their] journal dismayingly snide, regularly punctuated by sarcasm, self-congratulation, and nastiness, all parading as reverence for true science," she wrote. Much to her surprise, Mayer found that reputable scientific organizations and publications were rejecting valid research in parapsychology because it conflicted with mainstream scientific thought. "Science has stopped acting like science," she mused. "Instead it's acting a lot more like religion - or politics." Remote viewing and telepathy are the major fields explored by Mayer. Although little, if anything, discovered by Mayer was news to me, I found much enjoyment in reading her reaction and the reactions of scientific colleagues to the realization that the world is not what their college professors brainwashed them with in their innocent years. The "Wow!" experience, as described in the first chapter, was alone worth the price of the book.

Finally, a book that reviews the scientific evidence for the existence of extra-ordinary events. It is disturbing to see how scientists, under the guise of skepticism, have refused to look at well-designed studies that, unfortunately for them, challenge their perception of the world AS THEY WOULD LIKE IT TO BE. Skepticism is certainly healthy, but prejudice is not. To decide beforehand that events that appear to not quite follow natural laws are totally unworthy of study is simply not good science. In this book Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer points us to the many high-quality studies (and scientists) that have been simply ignored by mainstream science. Reading this book should certainly open your eyes to the variety of human experience that modern science both rejects and neglects.

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer gives insight into understanding the world, the mind, and the unknown. Extraordinary Knowing is an in depth study into ESP and the rational mind. What Mayer uncovered in her research as she probed the minds of those in the fields of psychology and even a neurosurgeon, she found they too, inexplicably, just "know" things without rational explanation. Mayer found there was often shame associated with these admissions as society may not be quite ready to admit ESP or "knowing" as a viable alternative to rational thinking. What we do know is many have experienced this and Extraordinary Knowing asks if we could train our minds to use this perception all the time as a way of making deeper connections with each other. It's worth asking and well worth exploring. I thoroughly enjoyed Mayer's book and the questions it left for me to ponder on my own.

This is a marvelous book for several reasons. First, it sheds a light on the fact that thousands (probably millions) of trained scientists, physicians and psychologists have had extraordinary paranormal experiences, but feel constrained by the academic/scientific fundamentalists that they refuse to talk about them. This is where the call for a kind of scientific inquiry that takes anecdotal reports seriously becomes more urgent. Second, it is a wonderful breakdown of psi and distant intentionality research from a truly skeptical source. Such things always carry more weight when they are told by a skeptic rather than a true believer, and the only sensible conclusion from all the data Dr. Mayer provides is that, like it or not, psi and extraordinary human abilities are real. We may not know why they work yet, but we know they are real. Third, her leap of insight related to the idea of universal holism as the ground state of reality is brilliant. Many New Age types, meditators and intuitives have preached this for many years, but it's been hard even for me to accept the idea. Lisby Mayer shows compelling evidence that we may exist in a holistic cosmos where everything and everyone is indeed "one," and our brains prevent most of us from perceiving this in order to allow us to function as individual causal agents and promote the survival of our race. But the concept, yet to be proved but tantalizingly hinted at, that all aspects of the cosmos are connected is a thrilling, marvelous idea. Finally, the book explores the vehement skepticism of some and the inability of others to perceive the paranormal as a fascinating extension of Gestalt psychology. In this theory, people simply cannot perceive both the rational, separate level of reality and the holistic, entangled level at the same time. We can only perceive one or the other at a time, and if we have never adjusted our "vision" to perceive the unseen aspect, it takes a monumental effort to see it. That is why most caustic pseudo-skeptics will remain so no matter what the evidence, while most believers in any New Age claptrap will believe no matter what the evidence says. A brilliant, brave and eye-opening book, and a wonderful legacy for the late Dr. Mayer.