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

THE SENATE INITIATIVE 167

pieces of advice or instruction. He could get furiously angry with someone for doing exactly as he suggested, whilst he would often praise people for acting contrary to his advice. He would impart to those around him some thought or interpretation of an event or book as if it was the final and absolute truth on a particular matter, only to advocate a totally contradictory insight and analysis with equal force and conviction the next night, or even on the same night to a different group. The result of such apparently unstable and certainly unpredictable behaviour was that there was never any question of trying to earn his praise or avoid his wrath, because one could never be sure of how to do so. One was therefore forced, in a way, to exercise one’s own freedom rather than rest secure under his direction and will.

In this sense the process of initiation that he orchestrated most resembled that of Zen. In Zen the person being initiated is expected to see the whole wide panorama before them, to feel strongly all the reasons for and against any action, and then to act freely in that situation “in a positive way in which the opposites are perfectly harmonized,”?! transcending the antithesis between ‘either-or, ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ This was the notion which Mitrinovi¢ expressed as “Above, between and beyond the extremes and opposites of reality.” According to Suzuki, “the Zen method generally consists in putting one in a dilemma, out of which one must contrive to escape, not through logic indeed, but through a mind of higher order.”22 Thus, the initiate would be placed in an impossible situation in which everything they did was wrong. They then had to act. If the action revealed sufficient imagination, intelligence and common sense, if it flowed “out of one’s innermost being,”*? it was accepted by the master.

To talk of initiation and to compare Mitrinovi¢’s method with that of a Zen master would seem to imply that the group life was, in essence, an ‘esoteric school’ run by a powerful master figure concerned with imparting to the pupils a higher order of knowledge and awareness—something akin to Gurdjieffs Chateau du Prieuré at Fontainebleau, or the anthroposophists who studied under Steiner. To adopt such a view, as did Philip Mairet, would be erroneous. True, the group life did involve a process of initiation in the sense of introducing people to new spheres of knowledge and new ways of comprehending the world. But this initiation was, in fact, an initiative directed towards wider social change rather than the mere introduction of higher realms of consciousness to the students. He was concerned that those around him should develop a sound basis for the changes in human behaviour and social relationships which he saw as an indispensable condition for bringing about the changes on the larger scale of social life which he deemed necessary. From this perspective the contrast with Gurdjieff, who had little