How to meditate continuously for 24 hours?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): A couple of days ago, I asked you a question regarding thoughts at the time of meditation, and you completely destroyed me, and I’ve been trying to assimilate what you had said. So, the point you had mentioned is that Meditation cannot be only a one-hour practice a day or two-hour practice a day. It has to be something, which… throughout the day you are able to be in a state, where you don’t engage in actions that develop thoughts that bother you during meditation. And, I’ve been listening to you and I’ve been trying to understand this, but I am not able to get the full grasp of it.

The mind keeps coming back saying, “How can you be in action during the day trying to do things, trying to achieve things, and the purpose of meditation is that you want to sit probably for one hour a day just to be calm, trying to do some prayer, trying to do some listening to keep yourself down”.

The effect of that you can see that after you do the prayer and meditation, you’re able to feel calm, but during the day, unfortunately, it slips out, the mind slips out. You get aggressive, you want to prove things. Your identity steps in. So probably, the question which I have is, is there a way that you be in a meditative practice throughout the day?

So, through the last two, three days of Satsang with you, which have been very useful, I see that you need to engage in actions that do not create conflict in you. So, that is something which I am taking away from the Satsang, but I am not able to get it clearly.

Acharya Prashant (AP): You don’t need to do anything. This one special hour of meditation is something that you do. When it is something that you do, then it remains a function of the doer. So, the doer expresses himself as another doing called ‘meditation’.

You’re anyway doing a lot of things. See what is it that you are doing. And, if you see no peace in that, good for you. If you are saying that you have tried to observe your daily actions, thoughts, emotions, etc., and you have seen anger, and conflict, and distraction, and therefore you feel that meditating twenty-three hours a day is difficult, then your Meditation is actually succeeding…