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

THE ADLER SOCIETY 87

This was to be, perhaps, the major theme of Mitrinovi¢’s life and work: the preparation of a group of individuals for a new world-transforming initiative, to which he gave the name Senate. The function of senators would be that of working in and through all levels of society, helping people and groups to relate to each other cooperatively as constituent members of a common humanity. Senates would be composed of individuals capable of viewing all human problems within the context of a single, whole world. They would not lead or rule, or be committed to any partial cause, but speak for the whole of humanity. Alliances of individuals, extending throughout the world at all levels, committed to humanity and to one another as individuals, they would work to integrate the different parts, interests, and groupings into a genuine world community; providing each with an interpretation of their significance in the context of the wider, organic world order. The practical training of people to perform this function, was to reach its greatest intensity in the 1930s, but the origins of the group that gathered around Mitrinovié at that time could be discerned in the 1920s. Given his depiction of the whole of humanity, past, present and future, as a single developing organism it followed that a change in consciousness anywhere, if of sufficient significance, could affect the whole. The important task was to make that initial cut in human nature, to plant the seed, to achieve that change in human consciousness and action. No matter how small or insignificant in number the original bearers of the new consciousness of world responsibility might be, the effect would be felt in the course of time.

How to develop this new consciousness for the sake of the world was the problem that Mitrinovi¢ seriously began to confront in the early 1920s with the group of intimate friends and acquaintances who gathered together at Valerie Cooper’s studio in Fitzroy Street. Amongst their number was Lilian Slade, a sister of the artist Frank Slade with whom Valerie Cooper shared the studio. A woman of independent means, Lilian Slade had a house at 16 Temple Fortune Lane, Golders Green, which acted as another venue for Mitrinovi¢’s discussion groups and classes attended by a younger age group than those held at Fitzroy Street. The subjects on which he spoke were wide-ranging: philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology and the arts in general. He also led discussions of ancient religions and ‘occultism.’ He had a tremendous regard for Madame Blavatsky, “the first woman genius” he called her, acknowledging her role in bringing the religions of the orient to the west. He was not, however, interested in exploring such spheres of knowledge as mere theory, but only insofar as they gave the individual a greater power of initiative, a clearer image of the world, and heightened