[430] treatment, and the autonomous ideal of creativity^a out of human freedom^b, and following the rational structure of thought and the aesthetic structure and the ethical structures; and on the other hand the religious traditions^c, which were partly very much OUTSIDE this situation. And to this moment, today, I believe there is only one possibility, namely a possibility

which I will call (and ask for your permission) by the old, beautiful and (as [with] all these words) deteriorized name: initiation--from the Latin^d, "going-into" something, namely into what?: into the mysteries, in the mystery cults, into the esoteric inner knowledge. I take this as a metaphor^e. I don't want to establish a new^f mystery religion, with this [some laughter]--for this you better go to California! [laughter]--but what I want to say is that beyond the humanistic development of man’s potentialities, beyond the public education to skills and beyond the introduction into the religious groups and their symbols^g and rites, there is something higher than all of them, namely the mysteries of life itself, the answer to the question of the meaning of our existence. And initiation would mean: to show in all these three forms of education^h the point in which they cease to be sufficient--and that's what Protestantismⁱ can do, even with itself as [an example]:

it can and must show its own insufficiency. There is in the mystery of life something which transcends the Christian answer, if the Christian answer is taken in terms of church^j doctrines and church rituals and church morals. This ultimate^k transcends every concrete situation, but expresses itself secularly^l as well as religiously in the symbols^m of secularism as well as in the symbols of religionⁿ, but is not bound to any of them... So I would say: in education^o it succeeds not only to use the humanistic^p counterbalance