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Marilyn Ferguson, born 1938 in Grand Junction, Colorado, is a world-renowned New Age American author and public speaker. Her groundbreaking bestseller, The Brain Revolution (Taplinger, 1973), pretent to synthesized key discoveries from variant neurobiological specialties and to proposed a coherent model of the systems of the brain, mind, and consciousness that presented implications for a vastly enlarged concept of human potential. The response from the scientific community was overwhelming. Cutting-edge research was traditionally ignored by conventional journals, and its pioneers were eager to share their findings. Thus, in 1975, she founded the monthly publication, Brain/Mind Bulletin, to fill the void and create an ongoing dialogue for new discoveries across multidisciplinary fields. Ferguson is an articulate science writer with a unique talent for understanding obscure jargon and translating it into comprehensive terms. Bulletin subscriptions quickly multiplied by the thousands and eventually spanned fifty-two countries. Wide notoriety placed her at the hub of a vast community of innovators and cultural creatives. The Bulletin became largely responsible for popularizing some of the most significant scientific paradigm shifts of the Twentieth Century. For example: chemist Illya Prigogine’s Theory of Dissipative Structures, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and his later Reformulation of Physics and the Arrow of Time, which debunked Einstein’s notion of possible time travel; plant biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s Theory of Morphic Resonance; the Holographic Theory of Reality and Brain Function as proposed, in tandem, by Stanford neuroscientist Karl Pribram and physicist David Bohm, a protege of Einstein and major contributor to the Manhattan Project; Argentinian physicist Hugo Zuccarelli’s discovery of the biological principle of spatial hearing and his subsequent invention of the three-dimensional recording technology, Holophonic Sound®. Ferguson’s talent for communicating complex theories in elegant simplicity with wide appeal, and her knack for seeing the underlying social implications in every cutting-edge piece of research, quickly established her as a permanent fixture at every international congress and symposium on advancements in brain and mind research, learning and education, holistic health, alternative therapies, and the emerging psycho-technologies. Her 1980 watershed classic, The Aquarian Conspiracy (JP Tarcher, 1980, '87), 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 has sold millions of copies world-wide, taking a cultural phenomenon to the height of a global movement. 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 has earned numerous honors, including being named among the ten most important books of the Twentieth Century by a prestigious European literary guild 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 received the “Library Trust Award” from Brandeis University, an honorary doctorate of Literature 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 a U.S. Senator, to found the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, to establish a forum for introducing policymakers in Washington to ideas and insights of exceptional luminaries from the private sector. And Ferguson became the first speaker invited to address Congress a second time. Her work inspired a successful literacy movement in one of Latin America’s most stable Democracies. The 1985 United Nations-sponsored “Spirit of Peace” conference featured Ferguson as a keynote speaker, alongside such notables as Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. The vast success of her book helped spawn a movement in American publishing during the 1980s and 90s that would come to be known as the widely popular New Age genre. Her influence is seen today in every aspect of society, from the common use of the term “paradigm shift” within the popular culture, to the footnotes of a landmark opinion from the second highest court in the land.
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