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

THE SENATE INITIATIVE 169

It was as if Mitrinovié was the conductor and they the musicians. Like members of an orchestra, they showed their dissent or disagreement by not playing their part with full commitment rather than by refusing to play at all. But in addition to being the conductor, he was also the composer who wrote the score. As with any great artist, the players would not object to a note or a harmony while the composition was in progress. They would wait until they saw the significance of the whole composition before commenting, knowing that a creative genius can achieve the most marvellous results by the most extraordinary means. In other words, one might not understand all that was going on, one might be unable to comprehend the paradoxes and contradictions in his character and behaviour, but people stayed the course because they had sufficient belief in the person at the centre and commitment to the ultimate goal. They were prepared to trust that whatever happened, it was for a purpose and that it had its place in the overall design.

Everyone was aware and felt that ultimately, whatever happened, DM was for you. There wasn’t a single person in the room there who didn’t feel absolutely that in the end, whatever your problems, he would move heaven and earth to see you through. That was never doubted by anyone. Those who left him left him because the heat was too great. They didn’t leave him because they doubted his good will towards them. Then, in addition to that, he was someone who you knew was far more in control of every single action than anyone, certainly, that I haye ever met. He knew exactly what he was doing. As he himself once said, “I don’t do anything unless there are three different ideas on hand at the same time.”35

They felt they were pioneers, forging a path towards a new society created by new individuals. The path demanded changes in the institutional structures of society but also required the creation of new, ‘universal’ individuals: people with a real community of feeling for whom ‘we’ and ‘ours’ was as significant as ‘I’ and ‘mine’ but who also retained their individuality, who were able to be equal with everyone and yet recognise and acknowledge the manifold differences between people. They wanted ‘heaven on earth’ with humanity fulfilling its potential as God-like creators of this new reality. They had the model for such a new age, they were training to become the new individuals it required, and they had an exemplar before them in the shape of their guide and ‘co-equal’ Mitrinovic.

In practical terms they failed. The war came, the group was dispersed, and that stage of the initiative came to an end as they must have known it would some day. But if people never aspire to reach their dreams, that