[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 ^hof our existence. And initiation would mean: to show in all these three forms of educationⁱ the point in which they cease to be sufficient--and that's what Protestantism^j 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^k doctrines and church rituals and church morals^l. This ultimate^m transcends every concrete situation, but expresses itself secularlyⁿ as well as religiously in the symbols^o of secularism^p as well as in the symbols of religion^q, but is not bound to any of them...

So I would say: in education^r it succeeds not only to use the humanistic^s counterbalance