Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

162 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

He (DM) might talk about creating Human Household ... You created, as it were, an invisible entity. These various invisible entities had different names. If it was Human Household you talked around that subject. You created a reality between you, so to speak ... We spoke in a way imagining that we are now a Human Household . . . How do we proceed? . . . So that as a result of it you felt that you had sort of built it in imagination and were able to reproduce it to someone else who knows nothing. You then had the experience . . . It was a reality that you had created. It was a composite reality . . .

You might have to write up the points that you had agreed on, so that you had some formulation . . .

Then you would have to include someone else. Then it was taken for granted that it would be part of your attitude with anyone you met .. .

It wasn’t just a good idea. If you had created it and had agreed together that this was the right thing, the right way to be, then you would do it, you would be it.22

In addition to such group formations there appeared to be a pattern which could be likened to concentric circles around Mitrinovi¢ at the centre, with members graded according to their degree of intimacy with the more esoteric aspects of his thought and practice. On the periphery were those ‘important personages’ who, it was believed, could be of value to the wider aims of the group in some way or another. Perhaps they had access to the media or to circles which were not normally accessible to Mitrinovic or his followers. Perhaps they had funds which could be tapped, or ideas and intellects which made them valuable contacts. They included people who had made major contributions in one way or another to Mitrinovi¢’s publications and with whom he shared certain areas of common ground such as Major-General Fuller, Professor Soddy, S. G. Hobson, Ben Tillett, Charles Purdom and the like. They were not exposed to the possible torments of group sessionsthey were like visiting dignitaries and treated as such.

Within this outer circle of acquaintances, collaborators and patrons there were other circles or levels. Just as within the New Britain Movement there had been a central group at the heart, the membership of which was not widely known amongst the rank and file and to which access was only obtained by personal invitation, so within the group around Mitrinovic there were ‘secret’ circles. It was a rule of group life that what transpired in one group belonged only to those who were in that group and was not to be divulged to anyone else. The link between the members of a particular circle might be, for instance, the possession of some particular insight or