Aquarius Now: Radical Common Sense and Reclaiming Our Personal Sovereignty

What Thomas Paine did for the American Revolution with Common Sense, Marilyn Ferguson has done for the transpersonal revolution.

Ferguson is one of the foremost thinkers and interpreters of research on the cutting edge of human consciousness. Her seminal 1980 work, The Aquarian Conspiracy, has sold millions of copies, remains continuously in print, and was hailed by USA Today as "the handbook of the New Age."

In her later book, Aquarius Now, Ferguson revisits the paradigm shift toward a more mindful society. She argues that we are ensnared in a culture of mindless materialism one that threatens not just our spiritual well-being, but our physical survival. She calls this condition the “Cult of Numbers”: a societal obsession with measurement, competition, and economic growth. We fear what can’t be quantified and cling to an outdated economic model that values only what produces growth.

So, what can we do?

Ferguson speaks plainly: we have no enemy but ourselves. The damage we’ve done individually and collectively to our bodies, our society, and the Earth stems from our refusal to acknowledge the obvious. The imbalance we see in the world is a reflection of the imbalance within. To restore balance, we must first heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we must learn to pay attention to witness.

We must take responsibility for our actions. We must listen to the teachers and tools available to us and develop what Ferguson calls our “radical common sense.” The task isn’t to climb a mountain; it’s to navigate a river. We must stop seeing ourselves as conquerors and begin seeing ourselves as fellow travelers alongside other humans, all living beings, and the Earth itself.

Ferguson dares to ask, Can we change? Her answer is clear: we can—and we must. The Age of Aquarius will arrive when we are ready to welcome it.

Marilyn Ferguson published Brain;Mind Bulletin from 19751995. Her work not only culled the best of the new consciousness movement and put the word out, but also offered commentary and insight that helped launch a whole new way of looking at ourselves and the world we live in. She published the bestselling The Aquarian Conspiracy in 1980 (the 25th anniversary edition was published by Tarcher;Penguin in 2005). Voted the most important new age book of the 1980s, this book has remained in print continuously for a quarter of a century.