Lastly, we come to speak of the Sufi sage. Here also, we find two kinds - the path of Rind and the path of Salik. The people called fakirs by Western writers, all belong to the Rind. Their life consists in learning to disregard all worldly things. A person fears most being without these things, and this makes him a hypocrite all his life, for one fears the things of the world. So this is the first thing to learn to disregard. That is why the poetry of Hafiz, Jami, Rumi, Sa'adi, and Omar Khayyam so much speak of wine. The country where they lived and died was Moslem, and wine was despised and abhorred. So they chose that word, and many other words which were representative of things abhorrent to the religion, and used them in their poetry to express the philosophy of human nature, while incurring the displeasure of the people in general. They hid the action of God and of man within these words - wine, jar, glass, roses etc.

Then, among these, are the 'dancing dervishes.' The idea is that dancing implies motion; motion means life. Dancing expresses the joy of life. And what is joy? Joy is the sign of a good soul, of a good heart. You always notice that when a jovial person, a good soul, a person with a good heart, comes into your life, he brings delight to all. Whenever he speaks, it is in good humor, and he brings pleasantness and joy. Being joyous himself, he makes others pleased. It is not hypocrisy. He is alive; he is joyous.

Take another person who comes weeping. He gives you the same inclination. Wherever he goes he brings gloom; he is taking misery along with him, and so he makes everyone else miserable and despondent too. Now what does that mean? It just means that in the depth of his heart there is some decay. He is not enjoying full life. The sign of life is having goodness, beauty, strength in your disposition, which means you have some joy, and are conscious of beauty, of goodness, of joy. Having joy in your nature and disposition you bring it to everybody you meet. Well, that is the state of the dervish. He says to himself, "If I may not dance, what shall I do?" Having the joy of the presence of his Beloved, he feels the sublimity of nature; he is conscious of all the motion going on throughout nature. It intoxicates him like wine. So naturally it comes out.

True, there is a certain ritual among some dervishes, and they trace it to the time of Jelal-ud-Din Rumi, our great Persian poet. They relate how once this poet, absorbed in the thought of all life as one beauty, in the thought of the motion and rhythm of life, he turned himself in a circle, he circled around; and the movement which the skirt of his garment made as it whirled, brought such a beautiful picture before him and his pupils, that they stored it in their memory ever after. So the dance celebrates this memory.

The teaching of Christ will be found among the dervishes; indeed, not just the teaching, but His life also. If you wished to see a living example of Christ's life you could see it among the dervishes, for among them you will find some who have taken the vow of poverty and chastity, as in the most ancient times. There is no sort of compulsion about it. They do not have to follow this life. It depends on whether they wish to follow the Christian life. So you can find the Christ-life in the dervish. Wherever you travel in India or Persia, whenever you meet a dervish, you will see the same kind of life that Christ lived.