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

180 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

and phenomena. There was also a fourth point of view, that which accepted the validity of all three perspectives at the same time.

The third revelation can, in fact, be considered as the synthesis of the first two. If the thesis of the first revelation was the world as a single whole, the antithesis embodied in the second was the significance of the individual person. Their synthesis was embodied in the third revelation which pointed to the creation of a truly world community by free, self-conscious individualsthe creation of a ‘community of singles.’

This idea of the three revelations serves several different purposes at the same time. Since each one represents a radically different approach to life and thought and since each of these approaches is held by a very large proportion of the world’s population, an equal appreciation of all three revelations is necessary to anyone who acts as senate. They serve also as an introduction to a totally different way of thinking from the formal logic which is based on conventional laws of thought and which informs most of our present day intellectual thinking. This thinking denies contradiction, but in life we are faced with contradiction the whole time. It is very seldom, if ever true, that one side is wholly right and the other wholly wrong. In theory there is always a synthesis possible between the thesis and the antithesis, and equally this synthesis is never final, but is always the thesis of a new sequence. The synthesis is never on the level of the original contradiction, but always in a broader context.

In each of these triunities there is a fourth principle, which involves the simultaneous affirmation of all three; in the examples we have chosen it is the endocrine system which preserves the balance of the whole body; the ego as central to will, thought and emotion; and the family of mother, father and child. It is this affirmation of all three simultaneously which is the new element in thinking necessary for the senator. It gives a flexibility by which one is not rigidly committed to any partial point of view.

Clearly the attitude necessary for senate action and for appreciation of the Three Revelations requires a totally new way of thinking. Mitrinovic gave this the name Anthropo-philosophy. He maintained that all the ideas and notions necessary for the human future had already been thought of and expressed. Philosophy, therefore, should no longer be merely a matter of abstract speculation, but should become human wisdom and should be applied towards the fulfilment of human needs, both of the individual and of the whole world. In earlier times humanity felt that there existed a divine truth in the skies. As religion lost its power the mantle of truth fell on science. In both cases it was thought that there existed a single objective truth independent of humanity. Increasingly, however, it is being realised