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

THE FINAL YEARS 185

as a copy of Lao Tse, a book of Serbian folk tales and a Christian cross, all of personal significance to him.

He once confessed that he had only one regret about death, that thinking was not possible in this state. He wanted to be conscious at the end, he viewed death as a serious event which one should try to experience to its fullest. Philip Mairet recalled an occasion when a group of them had been speculating on the possibility of life after death. Mitrinovic remarked with some conviction: “Do not doubt, the decisive instant of thanatolysis, the moment of liberation from this here-below—this is a moment of the highest, purest bliss.”!2 As someone who was regarded by so many of those who met him as possessing ‘extra-normal’ powers of perception and insight, Mitrinovié had often been asked for his views on death and the likelihood of life after death. He would refer the questionner to the perspectives provided by the Three Revelations: the belief in reincarnation embodied in Eastern religions, the faith in everlasting life proclaimed by Christians, and the extinction of life once the heart and brain had ceased to function that scientific knowledge affirmed. There was no single answer, no easy solace.

David Davies recalled a typically cryptic remark made to him by Mitrinovic in the 1930s when the New Britain weekly was about to be launched: “There is, David, only one thing really important and that is to learn how to die so that you will be sure of resurrection.”!3 Dimitrije Mitrinovic died on August 28, 1953. During the last week he was only intermittently conscious and refused to receive any visitors apart from those who were administering to his needs—Dr. Ralph Twentyman, Dr. Karl KGenig, Dr. Morris Robb, and the women who were his nurses.

He was buried in Highgate Cemetary next to his brother. He left no instructions for his friends and followers, no details about how they were to dispose of his books and paintings. He also left considerable financial debts—but it was no longer his concern.

A few months after his death a commemoration meeting was held in London. Friends and associates gathered together to remember and thereby honour the man who had played such a significant part in their lives. Reading through the record of that meeting, the theme that emerges is the tremendous impact Mitrinovic—the person—made on those with whom he came into contact. In particular it was his awesome ability to ‘read’ another person, to ‘see’ within them as if he had known them for a lifetime. Thus, the Rev'd. Dr. Belden recalled that

It was quite an experience to meet a man who knows his own mind thoroughly and to discover, at the same time, that he knows you before you have opened your mouth almost . . .