{"id":109055,"date":"2025-02-10T21:23:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T04:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=109055"},"modified":"2025-02-10T22:26:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T05:26:39","slug":"finding-a-lost-harp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2025\/02\/finding-a-lost-harp.html","title":{"rendered":"Finding a Lost Harp"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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The Veil Nebula (NGC6960) \u00a0(Ken Crawford, Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several years ago, as I\u2019ve mentioned here before, I read (and was very impressed by) Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind<\/em> (2008). \u00a0Here\u2019s how the blurb on Amazon.com describes the book:<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1991, when her daughter\u2019s rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayer\u2019s 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\u2014a man who specialized in finding lost objects. With nothing to lose\u2014and almost as a joke\u2014Dr. Mayer agreed. Within two days, and without leaving his Arkansas home, the dowser located the exact California street coordinates where the harp was found.<\/p>\n

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 who\u2019d been keeping similar experiences secret for years, fearful of being labeled credulous or crazy.<\/p>\n

Extraordinary Knowing<\/em> is an attempt to break through the silence imposed by fear and to explore what science has to say about these and countless other \u201cinexplicable\u201d phenomena. From Sigmund Freud\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who was Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer? \u00a0Educated at Radcliffe College and Stanford University, she was an internationally known psychoanalyst, researcher, and clinician, the author of groundbreaking papers on female development and on the nature of science and intuition. \u00a0In addition to her private practice, she was an associate clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who also taught at UC Medical Center, San Francisco. \u00a0Unfortunately, at the age of only 57 and just after completing Extraordinary Knowing<\/em>, she died in her sleep.<\/p>\n

A couple of personal notes:<\/p>\n