|
Newsletter
Subscription
Rodney
Collin Smith
(1905-1956)
Collin: The English
Student
First
son of a merchant and a hotel proprietor’s daughter, Rodney Collin Smith was
born in Brighton, England, on April 26, 1909. The young Rodney spent his school
holidays reading, often as much as one book a day, as well as walking and
exploring the beautiful countryside. In 1926, Collin spent his summer vacation
in France, and the next year in Spain, where he toured the Andalusia for three
months and learned Spanish. That journey gave him the material for his first
book, Palms and Patios, published when he was nineteen.
After graduating from the London School of Economics, Rodney Collin began
working as a free-lance journalist on art and travel, which allowed him to
travel extensively. From 1929 to 1931 he visited Austria, Germany, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, and Dalmatia, and during one of these trips he met his future
wife, Janet Buckley. They were married in London in March 1934.
Collin meets Ouspensky
In the autumn of 1936 Collin and his wife met Peter Ouspensky. Rodney
immediately recognized that he had found what he had been searching for in his
readings and travels. From then on he dedicated all his time to the study of
Ouspensky’s teaching. His daughter Chloe was born in 1937.Collin and his
family moved to a house in Virginia Water near Lyne Place, which was the work
center for Ouspensky and his wife. During this period Collin spent much of his
time at the British Museum Library, studying religion, philosophy, science, and
art as they relate to the Fourth Way ideas.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, his wife and daughter went to the United
States to prepare to receive the Ouspenskys, who planned to move to New Jersey
within a few months. Collin remained at Lyne Place, working in London in the
censorship during the day and in the local air raid defense at night. In 1941 he
was transferred to Bermuda, and traveled by coincidence on the same ship that
took Peter Ouspensky to the United States.
Rodney Collin in Mexico
After only six months in Bermuda, Collin joined the British Security
organization in New York. For the next six years he spent more and more time
with Peter Ouspensky, becoming deeply attached to him. When Ouspensky returned
to London in early 1947, Rodney Collin followed him, and remained with him until
Ouspensky’s death on October 2, 1947.
In June 1948, he and a small group of his followers left for Mexico, a country
that he had visited many times and that he felt was the right place for a new
beginning. In Mexico Collin finished The Theory of Eternal Life, which he
had begun in London. Surrounded by English friends who had followed him and by
new ones who had joined his group, Rodney Collin began teaching the Fourth Way
ideas at regular meetings held in a flat in Mexico City. After the first
translations into Spanish of Peter Ouspensky’s books, Collin formed the
publishing company, Ediciones Sol, which published fourteen titles, including
books by Maurice Nicoll, Collin, and others connected with the work. As a
consequence of the distribution of these books in Latin America, groups were
started in Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. His masterwork, The Theory of
Celestial Influence, was first published in Spanish in 1952, and in English
in 1954. Collin converted to Catholicism in 1954. In January 1955, Collin
visited the groups in Lima and Buenos Aires and went to Cuzco and Machu Picchu
to study the remains of the ancient civilizations. He died in Peru on May 3,
1956.
Books by Rodney Collin:
The Theory of
Celestial Influence (Right)
The Theory of Eternal Life
The
Theory of Conscious Harmony
Mirror of Light
 Susan Zannos
Susan has been a lifelong student of the Fourth Way. She was born in Minnesota,
grew up in Iowa, has worked in Lithuania, and now lives in California.
She has written all her life, with poetry, fiction, and travel articles.
Book by Susan：
Human
Types
"Ah,
fill the cup:--what boots
it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn Tomorrow and
dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if Today
be sweet!"
--Omar Khayam
FOURTH
WAY |
|
Naked Men Dancing the Pyrrhichios
|
