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I am not influenced by them, I only mean that what I say comes out of my own experience and knowledge. I speak about them, I use their names, because what I have known tallies with what they have known. But for me the test is my own experience.
On that test I find them right, and that is why I use their names. I am telling what I tell out of my own experience. They also prove right in my experience; therefore, I talk about them. They are my witnesses; they are witnesses of my experience as well. But this experience cannot be called new. Yet, in another sense, it can be called new. This is the riddle and fundamental mystery of religion.
A religious experience can be called new because to whomsoever this experience dawns it is absolutely new and happening for the first time. It has not occurred before. It may have occurred to someone else, but for the one who has experienced it for the first time it is new. It is so new to him that he cannot conceive that such an experience could have occurred to someone else.
As long as this experience has a relationship with the consciousness of the person, the experience is for the first time. The experience is so novel, so fresh, that whosoever experiences it never feels that it can ever be old. It is like the freshness of a flower opening in the morning, its petals wet with dew, the early rays of the sun falling on them. Looking at this flower, one who may have seen it for the first time cannot say that this flower is old, even though every morning a new flower opens.
Every morning the dew and the rays of the sun fall on new flowers. Someone's eyes may have seen these flowers daily, but whoever has seen the flower for the first time in this setting cannot even think that this flower could have been seen before. It is so new that if he says that truth can never be old, that it is always new and original, he is not wrong.
We say that religion is ancient and eternal because truth is everlasting. But religion is also new, because whenever truth is realized the experience is new, fresh, virginal. If a person believes that religion is old or if he believes that religion is new, he will not be inconsistent
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