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Marilyn Ferguson (April 5, 1938, in Grand Junction, Colorado – October 19, 2008) was an American author, editor and public speaker known for her 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy which is connected with the New Age Movement.

A founding member of the Association of Humanistic Psychology,[citation needed] Ferguson published and edited the well-regarded science newsletter Brain/Mind Bulletin from 1975 to 1996. She eventually earned numerous honorary degrees, served on the board of directors of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and befriended such diverse figures of influence as inventor and theorist Buckminster Fuller, spiritual author Ram Dass, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine[citation needed] and billionaire Ted Turner. Ferguson's work also influenced Vice President Al Gore, who participated in her informal network while a senator and later met with her in the White House.

Youth and early writing career

Ferguson was born Marilyn Louise Grasso in Grand Junction, Colorado. After graduation from high school she earned an associate of arts degree at Mesa College (now Colorado Mesa University) and later attended the University of Colorado. During her first marriage, to Don Renzelman, she worked as a legal secretary and became a published author of short stories and poetry in such national magazines as Cosmopolitan. Later she wrote freelance articles for Time and other publications. After living briefly in Houston, Texas, she moved to California with her second husband, Mike Ferguson, in 1968. That year, she published her first book, on home economics, with her husband as co-author.

The Brain Revolution and Brain/Mind Bulletin

Ferguson soon developed an enduring interest in what came to be known as the "human potential" movement, and particularly the latest research on the potential of the human brain, with its implications for learning, creativity and wellness.

This inspired her to write The Brain Revolution: The Frontiers of Mind Research (Taplinger, 1973), a successful and broadly hailed popular summary of these discoveries. Two years later Ferguson launched Brain/Mind Bulletin, a newsletter that served as an ongoing forum for her interest in cutting-edge scientific ideas. At its peak in the 1980s the publication had a worldwide base of some 10,000 subscribers, ranging from academics and intellectuals to schoolteachers and storekeepers, and helped to popularize the ideas of such notables as Prigogine, neuroscientists Karl Pribram and Candace Pert, physicists Fritjof Capra and David Bohm, psychologist Jean Houston and many others.

Death and reaction

Ferguson died unexpectedly of an apparent heart attack on October 19, 2008. The Los Angeles Times described her as a "galvanizing influence,"[3] and quoted her U.S. publisher, Jeremy P. Tarcher, who described his own personal epiphany when he first met with Ferguson and recognized the potential of the information she had collected. The New York Times called The Aquarian Conspiracy "the Bible of the New Age," and mused that the once-radical ideas of her "benign conspiracy" may now seem commonplace.

Offering a tribute on the website beliefnet.com (also on The Huffington Post's website), author Deepak Chopra described Ferguson as "a one-woman movement for hope." He recalled being a young doctor who was studying meditation when he came across The Aquarian Conspiracy in the early 1980s, and realized the book had instantly unified a movement that otherwise seemed to be resigned to the fringes. At her death, Chopra wrote, Ferguson could rest in the knowledge that "a watershed had been crossed," and that her "leaderless revolution" had steadily gained force around the world in the generation since the book was written.

The Aquarian Conspiracy was re-issued in a "Tarcher Cornerstone" edition in August 2009, featuring a new introduction by Jeremy Tarcher. In October 2009, Ferguson received a posthumous Distinguished Alumna award from Mesa State College.

Divorced in 1978, Ferguson was subsequently married to Ray Gottlieb from 1983 to 1991. She retained the last name of her first husband who remains unnamed, with whom she had three children: Eric Ferguson (born 1964), Kristin Ferguson Smith (born 1967) and Lynn Ferguson Lewis (born 1969).

Courtesy – Wikipedia
- Marilyn Ferguson

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