3.2: Influence C in the Fellowship

When I joined the Fellowship I never questioned its authenticity as a fourth way school. I simply accepted the rules, did the exercises and enjoyed the sense of being on a meaningful journey. I felt I was able to verify the teacher through the people around me and the teaching itself. At no point did the question of lineage arise as a problem for me. Once I was asked about it in a prospective student meeting and replied that the System came to our teacher through Rodney Collin and Alex Horn, Robert Burton’s teacher. After the meeting another student quite rightly said to me that we shouldn’t claim a connection with Rodney Collin because we don’t know this for certain.

Lineage was always claimed by Robert Burton through Alex Horn, but it is not at all clear what connection Horn had with the fourth way of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. There is a suggestion that Horn visited Collin in Mexico, but there is scant evidence that he stayed for any length of time or learned anything from him. However according to Burton he, Burton, made direct contact with Influence C, understood as the disembodied spirits of previous conscious beings. He compiled a list of forty-four who are said to be guiding the school. According to Burton, Leonardo da Vinci whispers in his ear. He also claims that Influence C works directly with students.

In my early years in the Fellowship people would ask, “Have you verified Influence C?” At that time it was acceptable to admit that one hadn’t. Verification consisted in co-incidences, what Jungians might call synchronicity. So one might on a poster or in a book see a quotation from one of the forty-four conscious beings identified by Robert Burton, and the quotation happened to answer a question that had been bothering one. This might occur on a few occasions and eventually one would take this as verification. In addition we were all sensitised to the number forty-four and in consequence saw the number forty-four everywhere.

Part of me was well aware of the tendency of the human mind to see patterns where there are none. But the idea of augury goes back a long way in human history. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” as Shakespeare put it. The idea of Influence C as promoted by Robert Burton slipped into my belief system without much of a struggle, I am embarrassed to admit.