Whenever the mind feels this, the mind immediately suggests, “Try the opposite,” because the mind lives in polarity, in opposition. It says, “You have tried activity, now try passivity.” You longed too much for the world, now you renounce. You were clinging to money, renounce money. You had become much too attached to the house, renounce the house. You got involved too much with a woman, children; now leave them and escape from all this. The mind suggests to try the opposite and it seems natural and logical: you have done one thing, failed; do the opposite, maybe the opposite succeeds.

Then the old type of sannyasin – the monk, the monastery, the Himalayas – is born. Then you escape from activity, you try just the opposite. Then you try not to desire, but to not desire is still a desire. Then you try to leave the world, but the very effort to leave the world shows your attachment. If you have really become unattached, what is the point of renouncing anything?

You can renounce a certain thing only because you are too much involved in it. Then you escape from the woman, but that shows simply that your mind is still fantasizing about women. Wherever you will go, you may become the opposite but still you will remain the same.

This has to be understood: through the opposite you never change, you appear that you have changed; you remain the same. And this is one of the most important things to be understood, otherwise again, you will be in the trap.

Now the trap will be of passivity, of not desiring, renouncement, non-attachment, non-violence. First the world was your activity, now the world has become a passive thing for you, but you are the same. Now God will become your activity, moksha – a faraway world somewhere in the sky, where everything is beautiful. This world will be ugly, now the beauty is transferred to the other world. Now your object of desire changes but you don’t change. First you were asking for money, now you ask for meditation, but the greed is there. First you were asking for things of this world, now you ask for things of the other world, but the asking is persistent, the same.

People who will be looking at you from the outside may be deceived because you will look totally transformed: you don’t touch money, you don’t have much to possess, you live in a cottage or under a tree, you are a naked fakir. People who are in the world will worship you because they think now you have transformed your being, and they are still in the world. When they come to you they compare and they imagine that you must be now very peaceful because you look passive.

Passivity can give an appearance of peace. It is not peace, it is just deadness. Peace is alive, passivity is dead.