If we stubbornly refuse to look at that which seems magical or incredible, we are in distinguished company. The French Academy announced at one point… - Marilyn Ferguson

Mental states such as loneliness, compulsion, anguish, attachment, pain, and faith are not just "all in the head" but in the brain as well. Brain, mind, and body are a continuum. Our thoughts—intention, fear, images, suggestion, expectation— alter the brain's chemistry. And it works both ways; thoughts can be altered by changing the brain's chemistry with drugs, nutrients, oxygen. The brain is hopelessly complex. Biologist Lyall Watson spoke of the Catch-22 of brain research: "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't!"

A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought, and they may even have broken continuity with history. This network is the Aquarian Conspiracy. It is a conspiracy without a political doctrine. Without a manifesto. With conspirators who seek power only to disperse it, and whose strategies are pragmatic, even scientific, but whose perspective sounds so mystical that they hesitate to discuss it. Activists asking different kinds of questions, challenging the establishment from within.

There are heroes in education, as there have always been heroes, trying to transcend the limits of the old structure; but their efforts are too often thwarted by peers, administrators, parents. Mario Fantini, former Ford consultant on education, now at the State University of New York, said bluntly, The psychology of becoming has to be smuggled into the schools.