title: Inner Knowing: Consciousness, Creativity, Insight, and Intuition (New Consciousness Reader)
author:  Helen Palmer 
description: Although opinion polls indicate that most Americans believe in the power of intuition, dreams, and precognition to offer valid guidance and information, "we have not yet developed an educational context for developing these abilities," according to author and editor Helen Palmer. By assembling this stunning collection of essays from leading authorities on perception, creativity, and intuition, Palmer hoped to offer a classic resource for anyone who wants to commit to developing his or her mental and spiritual powers. Contributors include Bruno Bettelheim, who speaks about fairytales and their ability to enhance the link between imagination and inner knowing; Carl Jung, who writes of the <i>I Ching</i>'s ability to chart ancient avenues of wisdom; and an interview with Isabel Allende, in which she recounts the prophetic powers of storytelling. <I>--Gail Hudson</I>
zlib_text: **Learning to Be Me by Greg Egan**
  
  I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel
  inside my skull, learning to be me.
  
  Microscopic spiders had woven a fine golden web through my brain, so that the
  jewel's teacher could listen to the whisper of my thoughts. The jewel itself
  eavesdropped on my senses, and read the chemical messages carried in my
  bloodstream; it saw, heard, smelt, tasted and felt the world exactly as I did,
  while the teacher monitored its thoughts and compared them with my own.
  Whenever the jewel's thoughts were _wrong,_ the teacher-faster than thought-
  rebuilt the jewel slightly, altering it this way and that, seeking out the
  changes that would make its thoughts correct.
  
  Why? So that when I could no longer be me, the jewel could do it for me.
  
  I thought: if hearing that makes _me_ feel strange and giddy, how must it make
  the _jewel_ feel? Exactly the same, I reasoned; it doesn't know it's the
  jewel, and it too wonders how the jewel must 