Update: Of course, the biography of Rodney Collin didn't appear in 2008. I'm even a little hesitant to promise it before the end of 2009. Simply, it isn't finished, I have further research to do, and I've been working on other projects. However, Bardic Press is about to publish a new book by Anthony Cartledge, Planetary Types: The Science of Celestial Influence, which connects Collin's system of types with the work done by Michel Gauquelin and pushes the scientific basis of the theory and its practical implications. See Anthony's earlier article on Gauquelin and the planetary types, and his examination of Rodney Collin's life and work, The Legacy of Rodney Collin.

There is a resurgence of interst in Collin's work and all of his major titles are back in print. The Theory of Celestial Influence and The Theory of Eternal Life are now published by Mercury Publications. The Mirror of Light has recently been republished by By The Way Books (in association with J.D. Holmes, who republished the pamphlets several years ago), in addition to their earlier publication of The Theory of Conscious Harmony, which is still in print.

Rodney Collin

Project Title: The Life, Work and Teaching of Rodney Collin

The first full biography of Rodney Collin, the writer and student of P.D. Ouspensky. This is a sympathetic account written by Andrew Phillip Smith, the author of The Gospel of Thomas: A New Version Based on the Inner Meaning, and a long time student of the Fourth Way. The first section of the book covers Collin's early life as an aspiring young writer searching for some meaning to his existence. He discovers the teaching of P.D. Ouspensky and becomes a devoted student, following Ouspensky to America during the war, and back to England for the climactic last months of Ouspensky's life. The third section covers Collin's writings, his teaching in Mexico and his various projects, such as the Planetarium, ending with Collin's own dramatic death.

The book will make use of little known and unpublished writings by Collin, and material from some of his associates.

If you would like more information on the contents of this book, would like to discuss Rodney Collin's life and works, or have additional information about Rodney Collin, please contact the author at andrew@bardic-press.com

A Brief Account of Rodney Collin's Life

Rodney Collin, born Rodney Collin Smith, was one of the students closest to P.D. Ouspensky. He was born in 1909 in Brighton on the south coast of England. He attended the London School of Economics and became a professional writer and an enthusiastic hiker. His first book, Palms and Patios, was an account of a walking tour through Spain, and was published in 1931, when he was twenty-two years old. During the early 1930s he wrote for a variety of English publications such as the Evening Standard, the Spectator and the New Statesman, and was on the team for the Daily Express Encylopaedia. He joined a number of organizations that were typical of the interests of the time—Toc H (a Christian society), the newly formed Youth Hostel Association, and finally the Peace Pledge Union, an extraordinarily popular pacifist movement that appeared in the run up to World War II. He was evidently searching for some meaning in life, and contributed actively to each of these societies, moving from one to the other, editing both the Toc H journal and the YHA newsletter the Rucksack. He met his wife, Janet, on a Toc H pilgrimage to the passion play at Oberammergau in 1930.

In 1931 he read a New Model of the Universe by P.D. Ouspensky, and in 1935 he and his wife attended some talks given by Maurice Nicoll, who had been a pupil of both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, but he did not continue with Nicoll’s meetings. Through one of the members of the Peace Pledge Union, Robert de Ropp, he was introduced to Ouspensky’s lectures.

Rodney and Janet became active members of Ouspensky’s group, which was going through a period of expansion and increased activity. He attended lectures and meetings, and worked in the grounds of Lyne Place, a large house in Surrey devoted to Ouspensky’s activities. 1938 saw a presentation of Gurdjieff’s movements, and a visit by Rodney to Damascus and Aleppo, where he contacted the Mevlevi dervish groups. The Collin Smiths bought a house in Virginia Waters to be closer to Lyne, and their daughter Chloe was born. Rodney worked in the gardens and spent many hours in the British Library, studying esotericism, art and civilizations.

The Second World War led to a reduction in the activities of Ouspensky’s groups, and the situation in London eventually became so difficult, with blackouts and the loss of Ouspensky's private flat and Colet House, that Ouspensky had to move to America in order to keep his groups going. Janet and Rodney assisted in the buying of Franklin Farms in Mendham. Rodney worked as a censor in the British Security Commission, which enabled him to transfer to New York, by way of Bermuda. He travelled to America, by chance, on the same ship as Ouspensky did, the s.s. Georgic, and hence had some closer contact with his teacher.

America brought difficult times for Ouspensky. A number of the more influential English students were able to establish themselves in New York, but much had to be built again from the beginning. Ouspensky was drinking heavily and many of his older pupils have written critical accounts of this time. But after a dramatic evening when Collin confronted Ouspensky, Collin realised that Ouspensky was actually living the work and that much more could be learned from him. After this, Rodney Collin began to take a more active role in Ouspensky’s work, spending a lot of time with Ouspensky and eventually leading meetings for him.

By 1947 Ouspensky was suffering from advanced kidney disease. In January he returned to England and Lyne Place. Rodney followed in the Spring, and the last months of Ouspensky’s life were a time of miraculous possibility and intense change for Rodney. Ouspensky led a series of meetings which threw his pupils back on their own resources. He said that he abandoned the system. For many this was the end of the road, but Rodney found that many things began to come together for him from now onwards. Collin’s intimate and inspiring account of this period, entitled Last Remembrances of a Magician, was circulated soon after Ouspensky’s death, but has never been published. In August Collin wrote the outline to The Theory of Celestial Influence, a study of man and the universe acfording to the cosmological ideas of laws of the system.

In September, Ouspensky planned to sail back to America, but at the last moment refused to do so. His final few weeks were filled with extraordinary efforts. When Ouspensky died on October 2, Rodney locked himself away in Ouspensky’s rooms for a number of days without food. When he emerged he seemed by many to have changed. In the following months he wrote Last Remembrances and The Theory of Eternal Life

In 1948, along with a few followers, Rodney and Janet moved to Mexico, which he had visited a number of times during the war. They lived in Tlalpam for a couple of years. The Theory of Eternal Life was published anonymously in 1949, and around this time he wrote Hellas, a play concerned with the different stages of Greek civilization. He continued to work on the Theory of Celestial Influence, which was finally published in Spanish in 1953 and in English in 1954.

During this time Collin’s group held regular meetings, and he purchased land outside of Mexico city for group work. During the week after Ouspensky’s death he had conceived the idea of a building based on the enneagram and the diagram of the four circles used in Eternal Life. Work began on the building, which took many years and was never finished.

By 1953 Collin was entering into a new period of work. The idea of harmony became central to his aim, and he attempted to establish connections to the other groups who tried to continue the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He had good relations with Maurice Nicoll, whose books Rodney had had translated into Spanish and were published in Mexico by Ediciones Sol, but Dr Nicoll died that year. He visited Mendham again, but found both the other students of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky strangely lacking in any ongoing sense of the miraculous.

A number of new Mexican pupils joined, among them a lady named Mema Dickens, who began channeling messages from Ouspensky. Collin took these seriously, and this opened up an unbridgeable gap between him and the majority of the other work groups. Collin wrote and published a number of small pamphlets, among them The Herald of Harmony, The Christian Mystery and The Pyramid of Fire. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1955 and traveled in South America, Europe and Asia, looking for the traces of the Fourth Way, allowing himself to be guided by the messages he was receiving from Ouspensky. During this time he drove himself very hard physically, taking little rest. In early 1956 he collapsed, and seemed in retrospect to have suffered a heart attack after a marathon pilgrimage to a cathedral. In May he, his wife, John Grepe and Mema Dickens left to visit Rodney’s group in Peru. While the other party members were having a siesta he climbed to the top of a cathedral tower along with a beggar boy whom he was helping, suffered another heart attack, and fell out of the tower into the cathedral square, where he died.

Rodney Collin's writings include

Palms and Patios
Written when he was twenty-one years old, this is a vivid account of his travels in Spain.

The Whirling Ecstacy
A translation of part of Les Saints des Derviches Tourneurs, itself a translation of Aflaki's Lives of the Gnostics. This looks at Rumi and his friend and teacher Shems-ed-din.

Last Remembrances (of a Magician)
Distributed in typescript, but never published, this is Collin's intimate and unpolished account of Ouspensky's last months.

The Theory of Eternal Life
Written after Ouspensky's death, this intense book unites the various theories about death, the soul, recurrence, reincarnation and immortality.

Hellas
A verse drama which looks at different stages of Greek civilization, with homer, a Socrates and Plato who resemble Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and Plotinus and Porphyry.

The Theory of Celestial Influence
Collin's monumental work. Begun as a classification of the sciences according to the ideas of the System, it grew to include the universe, man, and civilization, all looked at from the point of view of ideas such as the Law of Three and the Law of Seven and the enneagram.

The Pyramid of Fire
One of a series of pamphlets. This one investigates the ancient gods of Mexico.

The Mysteries of the Seed
Based around the Greek Mysteries, the authorship of this pamphlet is disputed, and it is my current opinion that, while it was definitely published by Collin, he was not the author.

The Herald of Harmony
A poetic look at school and civilization from the beginning of time until the new civilization of which Collin felt he was a forerunner. Collin sees Gurdjieff and Ouspensky as two poles of a work designed by Higher Forces.

The Christian Mystery
The events of the drama of Christ and the unfolding of Christian civilization are placed on the enneagram.

A Programme of Study
Issued for his groups, this pamphlet outlines many of the general ideas that they studied.

Lessons in Religion for a Skeptical World
A posthumously issued pamphlet, consisting of notes and fragments, mostly with a religious perspective, some of which have probably been revised by his students. A second part to this was published in Spanish only.

The Theory of Conscious Harmony
A posthumous collection of excerpts from letters. Collin was a great letter writer, and these excerpts, organised by topic, offer an encouraging and emotional perspective of the Work. Unlike some of the other posthumous publications, Conscious Harmony is entirely authentic.

The Mirror of Light
Collected from his notebooks, this feels more authentic than Lessons in Religion, but still contains some writings that were probably not Collin's. A second collection was issued in Spanish only, entitled La Nueva Luz.

Links:

Biographical:

The Legacy of Rodney Collin
Onsite article by Anthony Cartledge, author of Planetary Types: The Science of Celestial Influence
(Originally published in New Dawn magazine May-June 2000.)

Beloved Icarus
Beloved Icarus is an astrological approach to Rodney Collin's life, written by his sister-in-law, Joyce Collin-Smith

Call No Man Master
[Also by Joyce Collin-Smith. Her memoirs provide the fullest first-person account of Rodney Collin.] Call Man No Master is back in print, so the ebook has been taken down. Buy through Amazon.com

Interview with Joyce Collin-Smith
The first half of an interview by William Patterson that covers the same ground as Joyce Collin-Smith's published works.
Joyce Collin-Smith's website

Gauquelin's Legacy: New Evidence for Planetary Types
An earlier article by Anthony Cartledge, author of Planetary Types.

Gary Lachman, author of the new Ouspensky biography, In Search of P.D. Ouspensky wrote an article on James Webb for the Fortean Times, which mentions Collin.
The Damned

Other Onsite Fourth Way Material

Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll, and Many Others: an Online Anthology of Fourth Way Writings On Esoteric Christianity

P.D. Ouspensky on Christianity and The New Testament

Beryl Pogson on the Gospel of Thomas in 1959

(note: Rodney Collin's name is sometimes mistakenly written as Rodney Collins, Collins being the usual English form of surname. This note is included for the convenience of search engines.)

Don't Forget: P.D. Ouspensky's Life of Self-Remembering Bob Hunter, with a foreword by Andrew Phillip Smith Published by Bardic Press, $19.95, £11.95
Born in Russia in 1878, P. D. Ouspensky was one of the major esoteric thinkers of the twentieth century. Ouspensky had already travelled widely searching for esoteric knowledge, and was an expert on occult literature and the fourth dimension when he met G. I. Gurdjieff in 1915. The methods and ideas, both psychological and cosmological, that Gurdjieff gave Ouspensky exceeded anything he had previously encountered. Although he subsequently parted from Gurdjieff, Ouspensky never ceased to practise and teach the ideas of the system. Ouspensky's books In Search of the Miraculous, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, and The Fourth Way are still the finest introductions to the Fourth Way. Don't Forget follows Ouspensky's outer life as the revolutions and wars of the first half of the twentieth century force him from Russia to Constantinople to Paris, London and New York, in parallel with the development of his inner life and thought. Bob Hunter's biography is the fullest and most detailed available, and contains previously unpublished material on the final phase of Ouspensky's life.
Published August 2006 by Bardic Press. Softcover, 272 pages, ISBN 0-9745667-7-2, $19.95, £11.95. Buy through Amazon.com Buy through Amazon.co.uk Buy through Amazon.ca Buy through Amazon.jp Buy through Amazon.fr Buy through Amazon.de Buy through Barnesandnobles.com Buy through booksamillion.com

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