Marilyn Ferguson Quotes

General Systems Theory, a related modern concept [to holism], says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family, a culture if you isolate it from its context. Relationship is everything.

Cynics know the answers without having penetrated deeply enough to know the questions. When challenged by mysterious truths, they marshall 'facts.

Sometimes in astronomy, a heavenly body has been virtually invisible until a single observer detects its presence and points it out to his colleagues, who then see it with increasing clarity. Perhaps a myriad of unknown senses are only awaiting our consciousness.

We cannot leave the trap until we know we are in it.

The East contemplated the forest the West counted the trees...the mind that knows that trees and the forest is a new mind.

War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien cultures, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot impose your brand of enlightenment on anyone else.

If we continue to believe as we have always believed, we will continue to act as we have always acted. If we continue to act as we have always acted, we will continue to get what we have always gotten.

only that which is deeply felt can change us. Rational arguments alone cannot penetrate the layers of fear and conditioning that comprise our crippling belief system.

...As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.

Our past is not our potential.

Love is a context, not a behavior.

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

New perspectives give birth to new historic ages. Humankind has had many dramatic revolutions of understanding - great uses of fire and the wheel, language and writing. We found that the earth only seems flat, the sun only seems to circle the earth, matter only seems solid.

The spiritual quest begins, for most people, as a search for meaning.

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing.

Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence; to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationships, context.

The mind aware of itself is a pilot... vastly freer than a passenger mind.

Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.

The other side of every fear is a freedom.

The popular prophets have underestimated how strange the truth can be. The human brain, that 'perfect instrument,' that 'fabulous electronic dance,' can be our open sesame to an infinitely richer life than we have believed possible. The fluent, liberating, creative, healing attributes of the altered states can be incorporated into consciousness. We are just beginning to realize that we can truly open the doors of perception and creep out of the cavern.

The most disturbing and wasteful emotions in modern life, next to fright, are those which are associated with the idea of blame, directed against the self or against others.

The difference between transformation by accident and transformation by a system is like the difference between lightning and a lamp. Both give illumination, but one is dangerous and unreliable, while the other is relatively safe, directed, available.

So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves.

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing. We have not fully recognized this process of leaping ahead, however, in part because textbooks tend to tame revolutions...They describe the advances as if they had been logical in their day, not all shocking.

Those who have most at stake in the old culture, or are most rigid in their beliefs, try to summon people back to the old ideas.'

There are legions of [Aquarian, New Age, One World Religion] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country.

Many artists have said that when life itself becomes fully conscious, art as we know it will vanish.

Mystical experiences nearly always lead one to a belief that some aspect of consciousness is imperishable. In a Buddhist metaphor the consciousness of the individual is like a flame that burns through the night. It is not the same flame over time, yet neither is it another flame.

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.

Fear is a question What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

Cultural transformation announces itself in sputtering fits and starts, sparked here and there by minor incidents, warmed by new ideas that may smolder for decades. In many different places, at different times, the kindling is laid for the real conflagration-the one that will consume the old landmarks and alter the landscape forever.

Uncertainty is the necessary companion of all explorers.

We live what we know. If we believe the universe and ourselves to be mechanical, we will live mechanically. On the other hand, if we know that we are part of an open universe, and that our minds are a matrix of reality, we will live more creatively and powerfully.

Suddenly creativity is the popular goal. Ironically, a quality dissonant with our conventional education process is greatly in demand in adults - and those who survive the system without losing their creative integrity are richly rewarded. The magic word in a book's title almost ensures sales: Creative Stitchery, Creative Cookery, Creative Gardening. ... Perhaps we are trying to develop something that was innately ours.

Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.

We live what we know. If we believe the universe and ourselves to be mechanical, we will live mechanically.

Whatever the rationale, the suppression of unorthodox cancer therapies and the sustained persecution of their proponents by government and colleagues runs counter to freedom of thought, much less freedom of choice.

When one begins the transformative process, death and birth are imminent: the death of custom as authority, the birth of the self.

Spirituality is a kind of virgin wisdom, a knowing that comes prior to experience.

A fully functioning employee with a healthy self-image is money in the bank.

Never have so many been so high so often. When a Boston research group decided to compare the effects of marijuana on experienced and inexperienced users, it took them two months to line up nine student subjects who had never used marijuana.

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal.

Health and disease don't just happen to us. They are active processes issuing from inner harmony or disharmony, profoundly affected by our states of consciousness, our ability or inability to flow with experience. This recognition carries with it implicit responsibility and opportunity.

Our biggest failure is our failure to see patterns.

If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company of those who have built bridges, who have moved beyond despair and inertia.

By definition, revolutions are not linear, one step at a time, event A leading to event B, and so on. Many causes operate on each other at once. Revolutions shift into place suddenly, like the pattern in a kaleidoscope. They do not so much proceed as crystallize.

An atmosphere of trust, love, and humor can nourish extraordinary human capacity. One key is authenticity: parents acting as people, not as roles.