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

THE FINAL YEARS 179

place, as did all other things including the Gods themselyes—the whole permeated by the Divine. It was the view of the world held before the power of conceptual thought had been developed, when humans saw themselves not as independent and separate individuals but as part of a natural and divine order. The First Revelation was thus, for Mitrinovic, the revelation of the Divine in the world; a view which found its philosophical expression in the Vedanta and of which Rudolf Steiner was the most significant exponent in the twentieth century.

The Second Revelation was the Christian revelation of the Divine in humanity. Solovyov’s interpretation of Christianity was considered by Mitrinovic¢ to be the key expression of this revelation. According to Solovyov’s interpretation Christianity affirmed that the spirit of the whole, God, was incarnated in one man, Jesus Christ, who was thus both man and God, and who embodied the whole potentiality of humanity. The second revelation, then, was the revelation of the Divine in a single Person, Jesus Christ; and the duty of humanity was to follow the example and way of Christ for “no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”

If the First Revelation was of the permeation of the Divine throughout the whole cosmic and natural order, and the Second Revelation was of the Divine in a single person, the Third Revelation was of the Divine within every person. According to the First Revelation there are deities, but no single God except for the Divine Whole. The view of the Second Revelation was radically opposed to this conception. It asserted that there was a centre to the universe—God incarnated in Jesus Christ from whom all values were derived. The essence of the Third Revelation was that there are many centres, each being of ultimate value in itself. According to Mitrinovi¢ the outstanding prophet of this Third Revelation was Erich Gutkind who, as we have seen, asserted that the responsibility for the future of humanity lay with humanity itself and, in particular, those individuals who attained a new level of human consciousness beyond the limits of the narrow individual self. Mitrinovié referred to such philosophers as Nietzsche, Otto Weininger and Max Stirner as major exponents of this Third Revelation, each of whom affirmed the sovereignty of the individual and the power of human beings to shape their own future without reliance on or reference to external or supra-mundane forces or deities.

According to Mitrinovic each of these revelations was equally valid as a way of approaching reality. It was possible to view phenomena from the perspective of the world as a whole, from the standpoint of the individual, and from a position which emphasised the inter-relatedness of individuals