'''Either seem as you are or be as you seem''

According to Mevlevî belief a person is born twice, once from his mother and secondly from his own body. The latter, the birth of enlightenment, is the real birth marking the beginning of a journey to the discovery of truth. The dervishes of a Mevlevî lodge undergo a long novitiate involving trials of patience and submission.For the first three days the novice must sit upon a fleece, only rising to answer calls of nature. Overcoming mortal pride is essential, and once past the first three days the novice is then expected to perform eighteen different manual tasks such as cleaning and assisting in the kitchen. If he fails to show the necessary humility his shoes are turned towards the door as a sign of rejection, and he silently leaves. Otherwise he now begins the stage of retirement and fasting known as halvet, which lasts for one thousand and one days. That is followed by fakr, when the novice at last participates in the whirling ceremony as a semazen.The semazens wear a tall felt cap known as a sikke, a long skirted garment, jacket and waistband.
The sema is accompanied by the music of the ney and the rebab, a three stringed instrument made of a coconut shell. Mevlana responded to orthodox objections to the sema by declaring that there are many ways to God, music and the sema being the way he had chosen.Mystic belief likens the universe, consisting of the world and man, to a circle drawn by a moving point which is God. To the right of this point is the outer world of appearance and to its left the inner world. According to the belief that everything returns to this point of movement, the dervishes spin in a spiritual journey to God, their circular orbit representing the circle of life.Many books have been written about Mevlevî music, and Mevlana’s greatest work, the Mesnevî, consisting of over seventy thousand couplets, has been reprinted time after time. But those who watch the sema do not need to read anything to discover the spiritual power of sema music. The sound of the ney brings tranquility to the spirit, representing a silencing of the material world. At the sema held on the night of Şeb-i Arus all Mevlevîs remember Mevlana’s words, "Death is our marriage with eternity." Mevlana encouraged his followers to search for the truth themselves rather than blindly believe in others. "To question is half of knowledge," he declared. Tolerance of human failing was another important part of his teaching: When wrongful deeds are related to you, interpret them seventy times with good will and good faith. When you are helpless tell yourself that the perpetrator of wrongdoing must surely know the secret and forget it. If you seek a friend without fault, you will be friendless. The ancient soil of Anatolia has always been fertile ground for philosophy, meditation and thought. Life is like a river which flows on without ever stopping,’ said Mevlana, expressing the unity and continuity of man’s attempts to reach God. Separate ways are in reality but one, and awareness of God’s love is what we all seek. In Mevlana’s mystic philosophy lies a message of universal peace which has drawn so many to Konya over the centuries. "If the heart of lovers had not burned and shed tears There would be neither water nor fire in the world".
''Come, whoever you might be, come Infidel, idolator, magian, let all come This is not the lodge of despair If thou hast broken the oath a hundred times, come"