Why does meditation not succeed?

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

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, while meditating I feel silence and joy for some time, but after that, I’m not able to continue it and start feeling uneasy and want to come out of the meditation soon. Why does this happen, and does it mean that I’m not reaching the meditative state?

Acharya Prashant (AP): What are you doing (addressing the questioner), and why are you trying to do that? You try several things in life for the sake of peace, don’t you? You have said while meditating you feel silence and joy for some time, which means silence and joy are your objectives. With these same objectives, you do many other things, and is the result not the same usually? Always?

You get into something, you pursue it and then you lose the motivation, then you come out of it. One visits a new place, the place seems attractive two days, four days, one week, one month, one year, the place loses its charm. You must have discarded, kept away, or donated old clothes. How did it feel when you were buying those same clothes? There was an attraction, a hope. There was a glimmer in the eye; you were looking forward to wearing new clothes. Then came a moment when you just put them aside, that’s the nature of all human activity. That’s the nature of everything in life. That’s the world, it does not last. Nothing here lasts; everything here is within the confines of time. The clock is continuously ticking.

So, you eat, and then a point comes when you leave the table. You play and then a point comes when you leave the field. You are born, a point comes when you leave the sense of being alive. Is there anything that has ever beaten time? So, you eat, you leave the table; you mate, you leave the bed; you meditate and then you leave the mat. Why are you worried? What were you thinking? What were you hoping?

You aren’t doing anything wrong, you are just in the domain where only this happens and only this can happen. If you hope for something else, then you do not understand where you are. It’s like tossing a ball up and then finding it come back to you and wondering, “What did I do wrong?” You didn’t do a thing wrong. You very rightly tossed it up, but you tossed it up within the field of gravitation, and within that…