[from wikipedia.org]
Marilyn Ferguson (born 1938, Grand Junction, Colorado) is an American author and public speaker. She wrote the bestselling The Brain Revolution (Taplinger, 1973).
Ferguson's 1980 The Aquarian Conspiracy (JP Tarcher, 1980; 1987) chronicled the activities of an enthusiastic network of eminent and powerful movers and shakers from diverse fields working to bring about radical change and create a more cooperative society through “a benign conspiracy for a new human agenda”. The New York Times described this movement as “an alternative thought ... working its way increasingly into the nation’s cultural, religious, social, economic, and political life.” Ferguson's manifesto is widely credited as pulling into focus and giving impetus to “the great irrevocable shift” she so vividly described and helped to foment. The Aquarian Conspiracy, which USA Today hailed as “the handbook of the New Age”, was translated into dozens of languages and sold millions of copies world-wide. The book has remained in print for nearly three decades.
The Aquarian Conspiracy was voted “the most significant political book of the decade” by readers of the alternative press. It garnered numerous honors, including being named among the ten most important books of the 20th Century in 1999.
She is a founding member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology, and serves on the board of directors of The Institute of Noetic Science. She was awarded the “Library Trust Award” from Brandeis University, an honorary D.Litt from John F. Kennedy University, and the “Brain Trainer of the Year Award” from the American Society for Training and Development.
The Aquarian Conspiracy prompted Al Gore, while still a United States Senator, to found the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, to establish a forum for introducing policymakers in Washington to ideas and insights from the private sector. The vast success of her book helped create a movement in American publishing during the 1980s/1990s that would come to be known as the widely popular New Age genre.
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Books by Marilyn Fergusion
The Brain Revolution:
The Frontiers of Mind Research
(Taplinger, 1973)
The Aquarian Conspiracy
(JP Tarcher, 1980; 1987)
PragMagic: Ten Years of Scientific Breakthroughs, Exciting Ideas, and Personal Experiments That Can Profoundly Change Your Life
(Pocket, 1990)
Aquarius Now: Radical Common Sense and Reclaiming Our Personal Sovereignty
(Red Wheel/Weiser, 2005)
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Remembering Marilyn
In my 20s, while working with Marilyn, I was a very skeptical, albeit ferociously curious soul. Marilyn would abide my constant challenges and would often comment about how carrying the name "Thomas" and its archetype of "The Doubting Thomas" was a heavy load for me.
I wrote a song back then, while hanging out with our Brain/Mind tribe, called Lance of Doubt. To this day it reminds me of her and that time so I dedicate it to Marilyn's memory and her ceaseless patience with me. Those of us who knew her were forever changed by her incendiary passion for humanity's potential and an intimate intrigue in our own coming into awareness.
I first became aware of Marilyn's work in 1982. I had been researching hemispherical brain function for a scholarship program and came across her publication The Brain/Mind Bulletin, then her bestseller, The Brain Revolution and finally The Aquarian Conspiracy. Excited about the "benign conspiracy"—the idea of a vast group of people "conspiring to do good" talked about in The Aquarian Conspiracy, I enthusiastically shared the book with family and friends who also devoured it.
I consider Marilyn the Thomas Paine of our time—able to cut to the core of an issue with rousing Reason. I will always be grateful to her as someone who taught me to recognize (and act on) the connections everywhere and to navigate my synchronicities into manifestation.
— Tom Ross 4/08
Obituary
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