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

168 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

or no direct social concern, is particularly strong; whilst Steiner's concern with social questions appears to have been more theoretical than practical, especially when compared with the range and variety of public movements, organisations and initiatives with which Mitrinovic was associated throughout his life.

It might also be argued that he was deeply concerned with the personal relationships between the individuals around him and between them and him, in a way that Steiner and Gurdjieff were not. This is not to deny that for a number of those around him he remained the ‘master, the fount of all wisdom, the hallowed source of all true knowledge. But many of those who managed to stay the course, who succeeded in surviving the pace and intensity of the public and private group activities of the prewar years, did begin to grasp what he was driving at. According to one such survivor:

DM foreswore the position of being the sole initiator and involved us in a process of mutual initiation. It was an initiation, which we were working out as we practised it, towards that most difficult human accomplishment: how to be a more normal human being, neither superior nor inferior but equal to other individuals in society—and particularly how to reconcile this equality with the acceptance of natural differences of quality, mind, character, and abilities . . .

They began to realise that the flow of influence was not all one way, even if they rarely felt adequately equipped to contradict and question him openly. “All silence is resistance” was one of his favourite aphorisms. He was particularly sensitive to the reactions of others, sensing resistance to himself or what he was proposing. If he sought to develop some particular idea or suggest a specific course of action which commanded less than total affirmation from those present, he would more often than not take this as valid criticism and change his approach or drop the notion completely.

It wasn’t a situation in which he was the person with total wisdom . . . He was learning and working things out with us in a very definite sense. Now, he may have been more adept at the working out than we were, but we felt it as a co-working out...

I have known him throw out a notion into some small group of people, and because those people didn’t react and accept it, that notion was done away with. We were a sort of sounding board. Unless we cooperated—and not just superficially, it was no use just saying “Oh yes, I agree’—he would see through that and so would the people round about you . . „34