Men and women no. 5 are said to be able to self-remember, that is, to enter into the third state of consciousness at will. It is also said that at any one moment one is either a man or woman 1, 2 or 3 or else a no. 5. One is either ‘conscious’ (in the sense of third state) or not. Men and women no. 4 are neither one thing nor the other. They stand at the threshold, or as it were in the doorway, neither in the hallway nor the living room. They are ordinary people who are trying to awaken. Men and women no. 5 are said to have higher emotional centre working within them. This is said to be a part of us that is dormant unless we awaken. Gurdjieff said that we do not possess a soul, but have to acquire one. In the Fellowship only two students were alleged to have become men no. 5. One was before my time, and according to reports of others subsequently left the school, and the other was told he was man no. 5 by the teacher during the time when I was a member. When asked about this by another student he simply remarked: ‘I record it,’ that is, he was trying to make honest observations about what it might mean. Robert Burton asked him, ‘Do you feel Influence C pinching you?’ to which he replied that he did not. By the Teacher’s own account he, the Teacher, was intending to retire at that point and pass on the mantle, however things worked out otherwise and this possible man no. 5 was sidelined in the further history of the school. Two ‘conscious beings’ is not a great track record for a school that at its zenith had over two thousand members worldwide, a few of whom have by now been in the school upwards of forty years.
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. Howeve
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